The academic evidence linking good quality childcare and early years education to improved outcomes in later life is extensive, but it is over the past decade that it has won its place as an accepted tenet of public policy. Now the idea that social and material investment in our children is a "must" has widespread, cross-party acceptance. Levels of investment in families, including in the provision of childcare and early years education have therefore been rising, with a further investment in childcare for two-year-olds announced in the Chancellor George Osborne’s autumn statement, taking the number of two-year-olds eligible for free childcare places to 260,000 by the end of the parliament.
After the introduction of the national childcare strategy in 1997 there was a huge boost in the provision of early years education and childcare. The children’s nursery market grew in this period, boosted by the "demand-side" funding available to deliver the government’s commitments to free childcare for all three- and four-year-olds and rising levels of maternal employment. Despite the change of government in 2010, investment has continued to increase. The coalition initially confirmed the increase in free childcare for all three- and four-year-olds from 12.5 to 15 hours a week and extended it to cover 130,000 places for two-year-olds in last year’s comprehensive spending review.
Research shows that support for children to develop their early language, core vocabulary and personal and social skills before they are three is crucial to ensuring long-lasting effects. Evaluations have shown the benefits two-year-olds and their families specifically accrue from provision in high-quality settings, and so the government is consulting on the appropriate quality criteria for providers looking to access this funding. Ensuring enough high-quality provision for 130,000 and then 260,000 children will be a key challenge for local authorities, particularly as it remains less available in some deprived areas.
It is also hoped that this increase in childcare will also support ambitions to get more parents into work, particularly when the universal credit is introduced in 2013. The Social Market Foundation has recently
set out the stark reality that formal childcare will grow less and less affordable over the next five years – with rising childcare costs and reduced support from tax credits at the heart of the problem. However, by expanding the two-year-old offer beyond the 20 per cent most disadvantaged – largely those in families on unemployment benefits – it will now be accessible to the children of low-income working families, providing them with a subsidy to the value of between £50 to £75 a week, which will be a vital boost in difficult times.
INSIGHT: Anne Longfield, chief executive, 4Children
There was very little good news from the Chancellor’s autumn statement. To those who thought that after two years of spending cuts we would return to business as usual in 2014/15, there was a clear message – forget it. Yet there was one ray of sunshine – a further investment in free childcare for two-year-olds with 40 per cent of families now set to benefit.
It is hard to overestimate the significance of this. It wasn’t long ago that early years education and childcare was seen as a fringe issue – the purview of a handful of female, predominantly left-of-centre politicians and commentators. Yet now it is a centrepiece of a Conservative-led government being delivered without a single anguished cry from the right.
This is for two reasons. First, the arguments about the importance of early years, including around the evidence of early brain development, have been accepted and genuinely enjoy support across the political spectrum.
And second, Frank Field’s arguments that resources should be spent on services that improve life chances rather than just go in direct cash transfers to families seems to have won out. This is controversial and unproven but does mean that fears that early years investment could be at serious risk from the change of government last year have so far proved to be wide of the mark.
IN FIGURES
£380m Annual investment until 2014/15 to expand the number of childcare places for two-year-olds from 130,000 to 260,000
£760m Total planned investment in free places for two-year-olds by 2014/15, rising from £296m in 2012/13
£4m Set aside for 18 local authorities to test new approaches in the provision for two-year-olds
£5m Available in 2012/13 to support delivery of the extended provision
Source: The Treasury
13.5% Forecast increase in typical childcare costs from 2006/7 to 2015/16
11% Percentage of full-time mothers who say they stay at home because they cannot afford the cost of childcare
£600 Additional contribution a year that low-income families will have to make to childcare costs by 2015/16
Source: The Parent Trap, The Social Market Foundation
