When will the conservatives implement the 30 free hours childcare promised

[milkyman]

aibu to think it wont happen?

I hope it never happens.

I'm more than happy for it to be means tested but I'm never going to be willing to pay taxes which will fund 30 hours childcare for everyone, regardless of income.

I wonder where all the provision will come from? What qualifications the extra staff will have? How the staff to children ratios will change?

Doubling the free provision for children is going to have a huge impact on the type and quality of the settings available.

No it's 3 now. When they qualify for free childcare you are required to seek work or carry out mandatory work related activity (workfare etc).

No, it's still 5 and it'll still be 5 when universal credit comes in.

No, they'll privatise the NHS first. There's already the torygraph article asking whether the nhs is any good

No one I know has been expected to find work. A few of my friends have children in my sons nursery class. They all go 9-11.45 5 days a week at the primary. They have been there over a year and starting in September, which is when my friends are starting to look for work.

There have been hints on how they'll provide it.

Higher ratios were proposed in the More Great Childcare paper from Liz Truss. It was Nick Clegg who was seen to veto it after a huge campaign against it.
Sam Gyimah has said the current funding levels are adequate and drawn attention to those nurseries able to operate 1:13 ratios. He has indicated he wants more settings to do this.
OFSTED advocate 2 year olds being cared for in schools.

Put those together and we have the free entitlement of 30 hours a week being offered in schools with 1:13 ratios.

BubGal its 8 hours work, I think as a minimum. And due to be implemented in 2017 apparently. Probably just as my youngest is about to start school!

The free 15 hours for 3 year olds was introduced shortly after my DS turned 4. My DD turns 4 in November 2016 so I'm thinking 2017 sounds about right :(

They'll be funding it in 2016 with a small tax rise on those bringing home more than £2000 a week. As stated, we're all in this together.

Just seen 2017. Just as dd starts school.

They will fund it by cutting more benefits from ordinary people and by slowly asset stripping the NHS.

Yes, and that means that some childminders will be paid less than £4 per hour. Would you work for less tgan £4 an hour? That is why childminders won't offer it and then it will be hard to find 30 hours free childcare. You have day nurseries/pre schools but what will they have to cut out (cheap meat, cheap wipes etc) to pay their staff etc when they're receiving less than £4 per hour for each child?
Just something to think about.....

"Yes, and that means that some childminders will be paid less than £4 per hour."

Per child....

Its not working for £4 an hour though is it? Its having 2 or 3 or more children in your care at once, each at £4 an hour.

And no one can say oh but what if a childminder only has one child in their care - well if there's that many people taking it up, childminders will be run off their feet busy like, wont they? surely they'll be having to turn work away! even taking into account the tidying up, insurance, cleaning, preparation of activities, materials, writing up learning journeys or whatever, £12 an hour isn't bad going for doing what most mothers of 3 do on a daily basis, whilst keeping written records of it .

And there will always be families who need a CM yet don't qualify for the free hours, hence they will be paying full rate, so that will bump it up even more. The CM will have a choice of mindees, just as they do now, and may perhaps take 2 with free hours and one full rate paying.

I had my two youngest with a childminder while I waited for nurseryI spaces, and i can assure you that with looking After my two, plus the rare luxury of not having to pay childcare for her own preschooler, she had better take home pay than I did.

Pretty sure it won't happen.

Well I don't mind them introducing it as long as they are prepared to pay for it - I just took a cut of 23% on my early years funding & I may have to pull out of offering it when it rises to 30 hours

It's alright, they'll surely just reduce the funded rate to £1.50/hr and then we can have all the free hours we want.

I wish all these childminders who are making money will tell me how to......13 years in and I've probably broken even more than I made a profit & I've made a loss on 3 years

No CM in my area can afford to offer the NEG at it's current ridiculously low rate. There are hundreds of families round here who are effectively unable to access the free 15 hours at all. I expect DC would like it to stay that way, while he tells everyone how much pretend "free childcare" he is offering.

It's a headline-grabbing strategy that is virtually useless. Why only give parents of 3-5 year olds help with childcare? It's not as though you stop needing childcare when they turn 5, is it? My kids are both at school and I pay for five hours childcare a day, per child.

Where are all these extra nursery places going to come from?

What's going to happen to the parents who'd rather their kids go to a childminder - or who don't have nurseries locally? We have lots of brilliant childminders here and one horrible day nursery. It was a no brainer when we were looking for childcare.

Shouting about free hours sounds good but is worth very little. Far better to extend the voucher system so parents can claim more, so self-employed parents can claim, and so all workplaces offer it. That way parents can choose to use them money in the way that best suits them and their child(ren).

It's rubbish is what it is.

There aren't enough childminder or nursery spaces as it is.

The current free funded childcare places are not fully funded-just partially funded.

Many nurseries and childminders will not currently take children on as funded places because they are working at a loss. They are still full-they don't have to take them to make a living-there are plenty of other children to look after whose parents will pay the going rate.

Where are all these hundreds of extra nurseries/childminders who are prepared to take on children with 30 hours that are only partially funded going to come from?!

You will not be getting 30 hours of full funding in the next 5 years!

What really pisses me off is the number of votes they probably won with this wanky unadulterated lie. Unless you have experienced the utter hopelessness of the current NEG funding, you are unlikely to see through the crappy "promise". How many people thought "free childcare has to be a good thing" before voting?

Even on this thread there are people hoping that they will benefit from it... I hope they live in a county with a better funding rate than where I live or they will be very disappointed.

Is it childcare or early years education?

The current setup is the latter, which, IMHO doesn't do enough to help working families.