The minister's comments follow the major childcare reforms announced by the Chancellor in the Budget that will see the Government phase in more entitlements to ‘free’ childcare for working parents, starting with two-year-olds from next April.
The Budget report said the Government would ‘substantially uplift the hourly funding rate paid to providers to deliver the existing free hours offer in England’ to the tune of £204m in 2023-24, increasing to £288m in 2024-25.
However, until now there had been little detail on the funding rates that providers could expect to receive for increasing the entitlements for younger children.
Writing exclusively for Nursery World Coutinho said ‘Over the next couple of years, the entitlements will also expand to 30 free hours for eligible working parents of children aged between nine and 36 months. This will be fully rolled out by September 2025 giving parents of very young children more choice as they consider going back to work.
‘And of course, we will match that again with appropriate funding rates – set to be around £11 per hour for under-twos from the introduction of the offer.
‘This is huge progress on our journey to deliver flexible and affordable childcare for hard working families across Britain. But there is still more to be done in terms of helping the sector increase capacity to meet higher levels of demand.’
She also said that funding for two-year-olds was likely to be a national average of around £8 an hour from this September.
‘Alongside the 4 per cent increase to uplift the average rate for three– to four-year-olds to over £5.50 per hour from September 2023, there have been clear promises from the Chancellor of more to come,’ she said.
- Read Claire Coutinho’s opinion piece in full here