The Sure Start Unit at the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) said last week that the Government was set to announce that from April all three-year-olds would have a free part-time nursery education place of five two-and-a-half-hour sessions a week for 33 weeks - six months ahead of Labour's election pledge of universal provision for three- and four-year-olds by October 2004.
It added that as of last September, 808,000 childcare places for more than 1.4 million children had been created since 1997 and that by 2006 'enough new provision will have been created to benefit over 2 million children'.
But a DfES spokesman said the Government was keen to make its early years support 'more flexible and better able to meet the varying needs of parents'. He added, 'We want every family to have access to good-quality childcare that they can afford. Many working families already pay for childcare arrangements and we want to support parents with high-quality provision.
'At the moment we provide universal support to all families through free part-time early education for every four-year-old, and every three-year-old by April 2004. We want to ensure that the support is as flexible as possible so it meets the needs of individual parents, some of whom need more than part-time provision.'
Earlier this month, Margaret Hodge, minister for children, told a hearing of the work and pensions select committee that the Government was 'examining a range of options' as to how to fund places beyond the two-and-a-half hours. These included 'some contribution perhaps from those who can afford to pay towards the cost of childcare', making better use of schools, 'which are closed for much of the year', as well as looking at 'how we can expand the free offer that is universal for three- and four-year-olds of 2.5 hours a day to provide something which may have some charging in it for better-off families'.
She said the Government was looking to expand wraparound care around free universal nursery education because 'the two-and-a-half hours a day of nursery education is inflexible, and those parents that are least likely to take advantage of it are the ones that cannot afford to pay for wraparound childcare privately'.
The DfES spokesman said that while the Government had 'no plans' to make parents on higher incomes pay towards the cost of their children's free place, 'the expansion of childcare is constrained by cost and the need to develop a high-calibre workforce'. As a result the Government was looking at options including the possibility of 'charging those who can afford to pay for anything over and above the free early education guarantee, and extending tax credit eligibility'.
The National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) welcomed the move. Rosemary Murphy, NDNA chief executive, said, 'It is great that the Government is looking at expanding the two-and-a-half hours of provision. But it has to take into account the fact that the nursery education grant doesn't meet the cost of daycare in nurseries and any expansion must be built on a well-paid workforce.
'The Government has to take into account basics like staff wages. The only way there is currently affordable childcare in day nurseries is by forcing salaries down.'
