In his Autumn Statement today the Chancellor failed to offer any financial help to an early years sector which is already struggling to stay afloat.
While it is good news for the low-paid early years workforce that the minimum wage for those over 23 will rise from £9.50 to £10.42 in April, there is no extra money for early years providers to cover this increase in staff costs.
Despite the DfE’s own figures indicating that the sector is underfunded by £2bn per year, there was nothing beyond the annual increases agreed in last year’s spending review of £180m in 2023-24 and £170m in 2024-25. This, despite Mr Hunt managing to find an additional £2.3bn per year for schools for the next two years.
We still await the government’s response to its recent funding consultation to find out how the below-inflationary increase will be distributed, which could see some local authorities’ funding being virtually unchanged in cash terms because of changes in the data used to calculate the allocations.
Early Education’s Chief Executive, Beatrice Merrick said:
“We have already seen parents take to the streets to protest about the unaffordable cost of paying for early education and childcare places. By failing to provide even an inflationary increase for the government-funded entitlements, the fees and additional charges for parents can only increase. The quality of early education places will be jeopardised by further cuts, and we will undoubtedly see more settings close, to the detriment of children and families. This is disastrous at a time when the sector needs extra funding to support children whose early experiences have been so significantly impacted by the pandemic.”
The National Audit Office’s new report, Improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children, finds that in 2023-24, DfE allocated an estimated £9.2 billion to specifically focus
The letter below sets out our key asks for the next government.
On 10 June, Labour announced their plans for “over three thousand new nursery classes across England to open up access to childcare hours for families”,
The Conservative Manifesto has promised to extend Family Hubs to all local authorities. This would both extend funding for the 75 local authorities where they
The Lib Dems have published their manifesto, including commitments to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK law and to
Today, Friday 17 May, the Early Education and Childcare Coalition (EECC) has launched its new manifesto, with proposals to rescue and reform England’s early education
A report published by the National Audit Office (NAO) today finds that the timetable for the roll-out of the new funded early education and childcare
In response to recent queries about why the latest DfE guidance on providing the early education and childcare entitlements has removed references to additional charges
DfE have issued an update to address the issue of parents wishing to claim their codes for the new entitlements who cannot do so because
DfE has today launched a consultation on the new funding rates which will apply for 2-year-olds and under 2s when the new entitlements are introduced
The Department for Education has today announced that the extra £204m for early years announced in the budget will be allocated to local authorities as
DfE has issued slightly more detail about the planned uplift in the hourly rates for the current and new entitlements, following the announcements in the
In today’s budget the Chancellor has confirmed several new measures on early education and childcare: Our analysis The decision to relax the ratios for 2-year-olds
Today, Early Education, the NAHT, NEU and Unison have jointly written an open letter calling on the government to address the shortfall in early years
Today, teachers from the National Education Union are striking, including many working in nursery and reception classes. In the last week, the Department for Education
The government’s latest changes to the early years funding formulae bring two key changes which we pointed out in our response to the consultation would
DfE have today announced the early years funding settlement for 2023-24, which leaves the early years sector struggling on below inflationary increases. While an additional
The tenth early years minister in ten years, Kelly Tolhurst, is now in post. It’s good news that early years is part of a Minister
We urge members to respond to the two DfE consultations on funding and ratios which close on 16 September. For information, you can view the
Early Education
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