Changes to the Free Early Years Childcare Offer consultation

We asked

The Government are extending childcare to support more parents returning to work after their parental leave ends. By September 2025, working parents of all children from 9 months - 5 years-old will be entitled to 30 hours of childcare. In addition, the Government's ambition is to provide primary school childcare provision for every family between 8am and 6pm by September 2026.

Here is a timeline for the proposed early years changes:

from April 2024, all eligible working parents of two-year-olds will be able to access funding for 15 hours per week of education and care
from September 2024, all eligible working parents of children aged nine months up to three-years-old will be able to access funding for 15 hours per week of education and care
from September 2025, all eligible working parents of children aged nine months up to three-years-old will be able to access funding for 30 hours per week of education and care.

To find out more about the changes, you can visit the Government’s Childcare Choices website.

To help us plan and ensure that we have sufficient childcare provision, we asked Barnet parents, carers and families, plus early years providers and schools, for their views on the upcoming changes. Their responses are helping us to ensure we can meet the future needs of our Barnet families.

You said

A total of 304 questionnaires were completed. 212 completed the parents and carers questionnaire, 63 completed the childcare provider questionnaire and 24 completed the schools questionnaire.

Summary of provider questionnaire findings:

70% of providers (38 out of 54) said they currently offer FEE2 and 91% (49 out of 54) said they offer FEE3&4
73% of providers (24 out of 33) are planning to offer the 30 hours for under 5’s entitlement in Sept 2025
over half (55%) of the providers we asked said they were not at full capacity and 38% (20 out of 52) said they had the potential to extend/increase their capacity
38% (20 out of 53) of providers reported that they will be considering adjusting their 2-year-old ratios to 1:5, while 62% (33 out of 53) reported that they will not be considering this.

Summary of parent/carer questionnaire findings:

the parent/carer questionnaire revealed that 19% of children (59/317) do not access a childcare provider; 6% of children (18/317) access a childminder; 37% of children (119/317) access an early years setting and 38% of children (121/317) access a school setting for childcare provision
of the parent/carers who responded, 41% of children accessed some kind of childcare funding
56% of those who responded reported accessing at least 15 hours of childcare per week
82% of parent/carers reported that they were aware of the new scheme and 59% (104/177) said that they were planning to access the newly announced scheme.

Summary of schools’ questionnaire findings:

87% (20 out of 23) of the Barnet schools who responded reported currently offering a breakfast club and 86% (19 out of 22) currently offer after school provision
following the Government’s announcement regarding wraparound provision, over 40% of schools anticipate that the demand for breakfast club and after school provision will increase
4 out of 19 schools said they will be considering introducing/extending their breakfast club provision and 3 schools said that they will be considering introducing/extending their after-school provision in the next 12-24 months.

You can read more detail in the full consultation results.

We did

We have reviewed the findings from the questionnaires and the insights have helped shape our Early Years Expansion and Wraparound Action Plans. The findings have also informed our Childcare Sufficiency Assessment and childcare supply and demand analyses for Barnet. Additionally, we will be contacting and working closely with those providers who have reported that they have capacity to expand to explore how we can support the expansion of their provision.