Fair funding campaign extended to parents

Parents can now sign up as supporters of the Pre-School Learning Alliance’s Fair Future Funding campaign, launched at the end of 2016 to call on the Government to ensure early years funding covers the rising costs of delivering places now and in the future.

The Department for Education has confirmed that local authority funding rates will be frozen until 2020, with no formal annual review. This is despite inevitable increases in costs such as wages, rents and mortgages, as well as business rates, says the Alliance.

The Fair Future Funding campaign, which has 3,000 practitioner supporters, also now has the support of parenting website Netmums. The Alliance will be working with Netmums to help raise awareness of the ‘problems’ around the 30-hour offer and sector funding to parents and families. As part of this, the Alliance will also be launching a dedicated mini-site to help parents understand the current concerns of providers about the funding.

Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, said, ‘We’re very excited to be extending our Fair Future Funding campaign to parents. We know from our success with Rewind on Ratios that the sector’s voice is strongest when we speak alongside parents – as has been demonstrated more recently by the high-profile campaigns against schools funding cuts, which have made great use of parent support.

‘We’re particularly pleased to have the support of Netmums, the UK biggest parenting website, and look forward to working with them to raise the profile of the Fair Future Funding campaign among parents and families.

‘We hope that all Fair Future Funding supporters will encourage their parents to sign up to the campaign and help us ensure that neither they nor providers end up paying for a manifesto promise that Government chose to make.’

• Parents can sign up as supporters of the campaign here