Free places for 2-year-olds
The Government has today
launched a consultation setting out their proposals on the
delivery of free early education for 2-, 3- and 4-year-old
children from September 2013.
This consultation seeks views on proposals to
- Streamline statutory guidance to local authorities on the
delivery of free early education and securing sufficient
childcare;
- Set eligibility criteria for the new entitlement to free early
education for 2-year-olds;
- Increase flexibility on when free entitlement hours can be
taken; and
- Clarify eligibility requirements that providers need to meet to
deliver free early education places.
The announcement follows the Government’s
commitment, made by the Deputy Prime Minister in October 2010, to
extend the 15 hours of free early education currently available to
all 3- and 4-year-olds to disadvantaged 2-year-olds from September
2013.
Responding to the announcement, NCMA's Joint Chief Executive,
Catherine Farrell, said, "There is much to be positive about in
today’s announcement that 140,000 disadvantaged 2-year-olds will
benefit from free early education, but critical to success will be
ensuring these very young children receive a high quality and
consistent experience. This focus on quality will also need to
remain for 3- and 4-year-olds receiving their free entitlement.
"NCMA’s response will make clear that it is
concerned the current proposal relies too heavily on the Ofsted
inspection process to drive quality improvement, particularly as
more and more local authorities are reducing the quality
improvement support that providers have relied on in the past. The
proposals for example, only requires satisfactory providers to
demonstrate one of the other eligibility criteria in order to
deliver the free entitlement
"NCMA believes that alongside the three year
inspection cycle, the proposed additional eligibility criteria
provide an opportunity to encourage quality improvement in all
providers delivering the free entitlement. Whilst many individual
providers do invest in their own professional development, some do
not. Without stronger direction from central government, the
majority of local authorities facing challenging funding priorities
will not invest in the measures needed to support a high-quality
early education experience for all of these very young
children.
"NCMA will also want to better understand the
rationale that in a childminding setting (where adult to child
ratios remain the same whether a child is 2 or 3 years old) the
funding to deliver the free entitlement may drop by up to a third
when a 2-year-old in their setting turns 3. This will place
childminders in the difficult position of only being able to
provide that child continuity of care if they are willing to accept
that significant loss of earnings."
How to respond
NCMA will be issuing a formal response to the consultation and
will be supporting members to both contribute to this submission
and also have a say themselves from next week.
The consultation will run until 3 February
2012. The results of the consultation and the Department's response
will be published by Easter 2012.
Page last updated:
11/14/2011