Nursery World - Extended entitlement: MPs warn of workforce and funding challenges for early years sector

The Department for Education faces ‘huge challenges’ in increasing the number of places to meet Government plans to extend childcare for working parents in England, MPs have warned.

MPs have highlighted concerns around the expansion of the childcare entitlements for working parents PHOTO Adobe Stock

Dame Meg Hillier, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, has written to the permanent secretary of the Department for Education with conclusions and recommendations of the MPs' inquiry into the DfE's childcare entitlement expansion.

The letter to Susan Acland-Hood has been published instead of a full report ahead of the dissolution of Parliament on 30 May before the general election.

As of 7 May, the parents of 247,500 two-year-olds had registered for the scheme with 211,000 children with a place.

But ‘this early phase did not involve creating significant numbers of new places’, the committee note.

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