Hana Abid, Research & Policy Officer at UK Women’s Budget Group, lays out how the pandemic has shone a light on the failures of our childcare system - with a devastating impact on working-class women especially - and why a policy of universal free childcare would go a long way to solving these issues.
"The UK’s childcare system is not fit for purpose and is failing both parents and children. Even before the pandemic, childcare in this country was an expensive, underfunded and overly complicated mess of private providers, insufficient government support and oversubscribed waiting lists. The global health crisis worsened pre-existing issues of low pay, insufficient training, high staff turnover and underfunding. All these issues contribute to childcare not being accessible to many families, especially single-income households and working-class families who are less likely to have access to the flexible working arrangements that make it easier to juggle caring responsibilities with paid work. Today, the pandemic and the national lockdowns have pushed childcare providers to the brink and are at risk of making early years education even more inaccessible and unaffordable than before.
High-quality accessible childcare is good for children and parents. Early years education is essential for developing children’s social, emotional and cognitive skills. It also reduces social inequalities by helping disadvantaged children access high-quality support earlier on in their education. For parents, childcare allows them to take up or remain in paid employment, or undertake training or other activities, such as care for other relatives, or volunteering in their community, knowing their child is safe and looked after. Accessible childcare can also go a long way to removing the barriers to employment for women, who are disproportionately responsible for caring responsibilities within a family.
Childcare in the UK is one of the most expensive in the world. It is the single biggest barrier to women’s career progression and couples often weigh the cost of it against the mother’s salary when deciding caring responsibilities. We found that part-time childcare for younger children absorbs 63% of women’s average earnings. Women are more likely to be working part-time due to having to balance their caring responsibilities with paid work. The same type of childcare for three- and four-year-olds absorbs 24% of women’s median earnings, after accounting for the free childcare entitlements.
The significant difference in childcare costs for younger and older preschool-age children shows the importance of the free entitlements that only kick in for most children after age three. The maths of this means that many single mothers will not be able to return to work before their child turns three at the earliest, or reaches school-age, by which point she may have spent up to five years outside of the labour market and will have lost on earnings and career progression opportunities.
It is easy to see then how the unaffordability of childcare has a direct negative impact on women’s career progression and earnings, severely limiting the choices they can make within and around the labour market. Many women, particularly women in low-paid jobs and single parents, are caught between a rock and a hard place: they can’t work because they can’t afford childcare, and so they struggle to provide for their families.
As many have predicted at the onset of the pandemic, the last 18 months are exacerbating some of the issues the childcare sector was already facing. Many childcare places have been lost because of the pandemic. Recently published data from Ofsted shows that childcare providers have been closing at a concerning rate, with almost four times more providers closing between September 2020 and March 2021 than between March and August 2020. Now that restrictions are lifted, the demand for childcare is expected to increase again, and fewer places combined with the affordability crisis is likely to make it harder for many mothers to remain in their jobs.
This is likely to hit working-class mothers a lot harder than others. During the pandemic when many childcare providers were closed, working-class women did the least childcare and home-schooling hours among employed women, and they were also the women least likely to reduce their hours or change their work schedules because of the time they were spending on childcare or home-schooling. This is because flexible working arrangements which would allow them to better manage multiple demands are less accessible in the jobs that working-class women do.
In a recent survey of more than 20,000 parents conducted by a coalition of women’s organisations including Women’s Budget Group, Pregnant Then Screwed, and Mumsnet, 83% of working-class parents (97% of respondents were mothers) said they had "had difficulty finding appropriate child care that met their needs" compared to 73% of all parents. Working-class parents are also more likely to be forced into debt. Working-class women who are not afforded flexibility in their paid work, need flexible and accessible childcare provision both in terms of availability as well as affordability.
At the UK Women’s Budget Group, we advocate for the introduction of free, universal childcare provision year-round and on a full-time basis, from the age of six months onwards, including for older children, through comprehensive extended school activities before and after school, and throughout school holidays, regardless of whether parents are in paid work or not. This is in step with public opinion: 83% of parents in the same survey support universal free childcare funded by the taxpayer.
Universal free childcare of good quality has benefits not only for children, who would benefit from crucial early years care and education, and parents, who would be able to better combine work and family life, but it also has important economic returns: more jobs created in this sector and across the economy, increased tax revenue and savings in social security spending, that means the initial cost of investing in a free universal system are nearly all recouped by the government.
We believe this is the best way to create a caring economy which brings us closer to living in a gender-equal world. Unfortunately, we are a long way from realising the full benefits of this vision in the UK. The current system is certainly not fit for purpose, and free entitlement hours that cover the cost of childcare provision is the bare minimum of state support that should be provided by the Government."
Hana or someone else from Women's Budget Group will be coming back onto the thread early next week to answer your questions.