Let’s rewind to the autumn Spending Review in 2021. First of all, Chancellor Rishi Sunak pledged £170m more for childcare providers in early years funding by 2024-25. Following that came a surprise announcement from new Childcare Minister Will Quince that, in fact, local authorities would receive an ‘additional’ £160m in 2022-23, £180m in 2023-24 and £170m in 2024-25 to increase the hourly rate paid to childcare providers.
In a tweet at the time, Quince said, ‘This is for local authorities to increase hourly rates paid to childcare providers for the Government’s free childcare entitlement offers and reflects the cost of inflation and national living wage increases.’
While it still wasn’t quite enough, at least it was more than was expected. But now, just as chaos seems to reign in every aspect of political life, we have clarification on the funding which feels extremely muddled and is undoubtedly very bad news indeed. The DfE has just revealed that the annual investments up to 2025 are all ‘individually in comparison to the baseline for the current year 2021-22’.
This appears to mean that the extra funding for this year is actually a ‘one off’ and the future funding up to 2025 is not, in fact, ‘additional’ and will fall far short of what was expected. These adjusted rates will not meet the sector’s anticipated and well-documented cost pressures – and it is fair to say that trust in the Government is running at an all-time low.
We’ve recently seen debates in the Commons about the importance of early years teachers receiving parity of pay with those in Reception, while Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi has extolled the necessity of recruiting high-calibre early years staff. The Government’s stated aspirations for the sector are seriously at odds with its support and there has to be a wake-up call.