Families may not get first choice of early years places, government warns
By Shannon Pite
Families hoping to access the extended entitlement offers may not receive all the hours they were promised or be able to access their first-choice provider, the education secretary has warned.
Writing in , Bridget Phillipson accused the previous Conservative government of “recklessly rush[ing] through a childcare pledge without a plan to carry it out”. She confirmed that the 2025 early entitlement expansion will go ahead, but warned that “it won’t be the sunlit uplands promised by the Tories” and that “in some parts of the country, while parents may receive the hours they were promised, they might not get their first choice of nursery or childminder”.
The education secretary said: “There’s a big shortage of staff and places: the government’s spending watchdog has said that to deliver the rollout, in some parts of the country we will need to double or even triple capacity to deliver the additional hours.” According to Department for Education (DfeE estimates, 40,000 additional educators and around 85,000 new places are required for the expanded offer rollout by September 2025.
A National Audio Office report published earlier this year found that, according to feedback collected by the DfE in March 2024,while 82% of local authorities were confident there were in enough places to meet increased demand in April 2024, this falls to just 34% for September 2024 and 9% for September 2025.
Bridget Phillipson has said that she will setting out the government’s plans to use spare primary school classrooms to create extra places and to recruit more staff by relaunching the DfE’s recruitment campaign over the coming weeks and months.