Nearly half of children under five live in 'childcare deserts'

According to research by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), more than 1.5 million children in England are living in ​'childcare deserts.' The report states that 'exactly half' of local authorities meet this definition, but are much more likely to be the most deprived councils.

It also finds a similar picture when it comes to quality of provision. The analysis shows that the proportion of providers rated ‘outstanding’ steadily increases as you move from the most deprived postcodes to the least. In comparison, the proportion of providers rated as ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted increase as you move in the opposite direction.

Key findings

Other key findings include:

• Providers that are thriving in the current system tend to be large for-profit chains with ‘opaque financial arrangements’, with little incentive or support for providers operating with a stronger social ethos in line with the universal basic services (UBS) framework.
• With the expansion of the funded hours, 80 per cent of early years provision will be funded by the state by the end of next year. This makes early education and care a ‘de facto public service’, treating it as a ‘public good’, establishing it as a ‘fully-pledged public service’.
• Under a public service framework, a ‘good Government’ should improve the status, qualifications, pay and conditions of staff, as part of a wider effort to recognise the vital social and economic importance of care roles.

Recommendations

The research goes on to make a number of recommendations:

• To roll out a new funding system to eventually replace the existing system, based around a single gateway for parents to pay any costs they face for the hours of provision they need. Fees in addition to free hours would be determined according to what parents can afford rather than their employment status.
• To only let providers switch to the alternative funding system if they can meet specific obligations such as – be in a location where provision is needed, adhere to minimum staff pay levels, being supportive of staff unions and plans to meet ecological sustainability.
• Begin to taper off the 30 funded hours for households with higher incomes.
• Over the course of one Parliamentary term, a policy objective should be that no family needs to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on provision. Over the course of two terms, this should be reduced to no more than 5 per cent of a family’s income.
• Greater scrutiny of providers’ financial affairs, carried out by Ofsted or another regulator.

'By keeping the poorest parents locked out from the full benefits of early education, the Government risks locking their children into a lifetime of poverty.'

The report’s author and head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation, Tom Pollard, said, ‘It is no coincidence that childcare deserts show up in the poorest areas of England, when access to our early years education system is based on parents’ working status rather than children’s need. By keeping the poorest parents locked out from the full benefits of early years education, the Government risks locking their children into a lifetime of poverty.

‘The report shows that for every pound that the Government borrows and invests in early years education for children from low-income households, the Treasury receives £2.07 back in tax revenue. Conversely, it loses 33p for every pound it invests in children from high income households.

‘The Government has the opportunity here to do something truly transformative, by making early years education a universal basic service.’

Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, called the fact that children who would gain the most from access to early education and care are most likely to lose out through the universal early years offer as ‘entirely unacceptable’.