This week sees the start of the new school year.
As much as the school holidays can be fun for families spending time together, the new school term can come as a relief for many parents, after a summer of juggling work with their childcare responsibilities.
Childcare is a big expense that too many families struggle with – and not just during the summer holidays. So much so that childcare costs can stop some parents from returning to careers that matter to them, or make them think twice about working as many hours as they would like.
This government is doing something about that, with our 30 hours free childcare offer. It’s about supporting working families by making childcare affordable.
Working parents of three and four year olds who earn less than £100,000 a year are eligible, and over 200,000 families have already received their codes to take up the offer this term.
This new childcare policy should save around £5,000 per year for each child - and that’s on top of the support already available to many families through Tax-Free Childcare, which is available to around two million families in the UK. Parents can open an online childcare account and pay into this directly, meaning for every £8 you pay in, the government will add an extra £2 – up to £2,000 per year for each child under 12 years old.
All of this is a huge boost to families’ finances and takes away some of the barriers that might have been preventing parents from working. That’s certainly been the case for many of the 15,000 families that benefitted from the offer when we tested it out early in a number of areas across the country.
An independent survey of parents in eight of the councils that started the offer last September found four in five families said their finances improved.
Kurstie, a working parent in Staffordshire was one of the parents who benefitted from the offer early. She told us that having access to 30 hours of free childcare was the “greatest gift a working parent can be given”.
All this is backed up by our record investment of £6 billion per year in childcare, which includes an extra £1 billion per year by 2020 to deliver the free offers. This has meant more money for local authorities to pass on nurseries, childminders and other providers that will be delivering this offer.
For me as Education Secretary, this isn’t just about helping families with the big costs of childcare. We now know that high-quality childcare helps our children to develop, play and learn, helping them to go further at school. The good news is that nine in ten early years providers are now rated as good or outstanding, so parents can feel confident that their children will be getting a great education. And that ultimately will be the longer term impact of the government’s new policy on childcare – young people getting a better start in life.
Information for parents
More than 200,000 codes have already been issued to families and around 2,000 parents are successfully applying through the website every day. We know that there have been technical issues for some parents and we want to reassure them that no one should lose out because of this. Anyone who has experienced issues should call the childcare service helpline on 0300 123 4097. You can find out more at www.childcarechoices.gov.uk
Children and Families Minister, Robert Goodwill, will be responding to questions and comments on this post shortly.