The Department for Education (DfE) has pulled together information from local authority Section 251 returns, which detail the levels of funding they give to early years providers offering 15 hours of free childcare to three- and four-year-olds.
The information presented in spread sheets allows providers to compare levels of funding and take-up of the offer across the country as well as levels of child development.
Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-School Learning Alliance, said the publication of the data was a good first step in providing greater transparency on council spending, particularly for smaller providers.
“As a national provider we have been able to compare what we get in one local authority to another,” he said. “But it is the smaller providers, who have perhaps one or two sites within a confined geographic location, who are disadvantaged because they don’t have the national picture.”
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