It was, I imagine, a common scene across the country: parents jumping for joy at the news that 30-hour early entitlement offer was being extended to one- and two-year-olds. After all, the cost of early years places in England is among the highest in the world, with families of young children often paying the steepest prices. As the mother of a child who has only just left early education, I know all too well the eye-watering impact a month’s fees can have on a parent’s bank balance.
But if you're one of those eager (and highly-organised) parents who has already contacted your local early years provider to try and reserve your funded place, there’s a good chance you’ll have been told that this wasn’t possible. Why? Because your nursery, pre-school or childminder can’t actually guarantee that they will be offering these new funded places yet.
As is so often the case with government announcements on childcare and early education, what sounds like a fantastic policy on the surface is far more complex in reality.
First of all, what are often referred to as ‘free hours’ are anything but. The money the government pays to early years providers to deliver the current funded offers to three- and four-year-olds (and two-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds) doesn’t come anywhere near the actual cost of delivering places – and every year, as delivery costs like wages, mortgages and business rates increase, that gap gets bigger and bigger.
READ MORE: It’s Nearly Time To Apply For The Government’s New Childcare Offering – Here’s What You Need To Know
Settings aren’t allowed to simply ask parents to help make up the difference, so they are forced to find other ways to make up that shortfall. That might mean expensive meals and snacks, requests for voluntary contributions or, often, higher fees for any places not funded by government – which, until now has mainly been… you’ve guessed it… one- and two-year-old places. That is why costs are so high in this country: not greedy settings, but years and years of government underfunding.
So any early years provider that opts in to offering places to one and two-year-olds has to trust that the government will fund these places properly – not just now, but in the future too. If not, the scope to make up this shortfall elsewhere down the line will be severely limited. And given the government’s track record on this, you can imagine why many in the sector are incredibly sceptical.
Worse still, the vast majority of nurseries, pre-schools and childminders have no idea how much funding they will actually receive for the new offers. The government has only just told councils how much money their local area will receive overall, but it is likely to be another couple of months minimum before individual providers receive confirmation of exactly how much they will receive – and based on previous years, many won’t receive this information until the very last minute.
Which is why the government’s decision to do a big promotional push on the new offers, encouraging parents to register for places from January, all the more outrageous. Once again, ministers are promising parents the world and expecting providers to deliver, without giving them any of the resources needed to do so.
So if you’re one of those parents desperate to sign your child up for new funded places, but aren’t able to yet, please don’t blame your early years setting. They are doing their very best in any impossible situation, trying to plan and budget for a potentially huge change to their business with little to no information to base any decisions on.
And if your provider decides not to offer the new places? I promise you that it won’t be because they don’t appreciate how difficult things are for families at the moment. It will be because years of government neglect have meant that they’ve been left with no other choice.