Just one in 10 councils are confident they can provide enough early years places to deliver the Government’s childcare expansion on time, a spending watchdog has warned.
In the 2023 spring budget, the chancellor announced that children from nine months old would be entitled to 30 funded hours of childcare a week from September 2025.
A phased roll-out meant two-year olds were offered 15 hours a week from April 2024 – an entitlement that will expand to children from nine months old this September.
A new National Audit Office (NAO) report found that this ‘ambitious’ timetable was set amid ‘significant uncertainty’, worsened because government budget rules meant the Department for Education (DfE) could not consult on councils’ and providers’ capacity, and early trials of the scheme were cancelled.
The NAO said that while the Government is on track to meet its April 2024 target, the next stages of the roll-out will be ‘significantly more challenging’.
Last month, a DfE survey found that only a third (34%) of local authorities were confident they could meet the September 2024 milestone of 15,500 new places – reducing to just 9% for the September 2025 milestone of a further 69,300 places.
The DfE has also said 40,000 new early years workers will be needed by September 2025.
But the director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, Sarah Ronan, warned that the lack of a proper workforce strategy is ‘certain to lead to more talented, passionate professionals becoming disillusioned and exiting the sector’.
