PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Pre-school Education: Finance (22 January 2021)

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the decision to fund local authorities on the basis of their January 2021 census for early years provision, what assessment he has made of the effect of that decision on the financial viability of early years providers; and if he will bring forward proposals to raise the cap on top-up funding to 100 per cent of the January 2020 level for local authorities that demonstrate a commensurate growth in spring term attendance.

Asked by:
Darren Jones (Labour)

On 17 December 2020 the government announced a return to funding early years settings for the spring term on the basis of attendance, as measured by the January 2021 census. The early years census count has gone ahead as expected and the census guidance is unchanged. To support local authorities, we issued some technical advice on how that guidance can be applied this year.

If attendance rises after the census is taken, we will top-up councils to up to 85% of their January 2020 census level, where a local authority can provide evidence for increased attendance during the spring term. This will give local authorities additional financial confidence to pay providers for increasing attendance later in the spring term. We were expecting a small decrease in the number of children taking up the entitlements to manifest in the January 2021 census due to projected demographic changes, irrespective of the COVID-19 outbreak. Therefore, there will be fewer children to fund for the entitlements than last year.

As is usual, the Early Years dedicated schools grant funding allocations published in December are provisional and based on the January 2020 census, as the most recent available data point. We expect lower demand to manifest in the January 2021 census due to a range of factors, including known demographic changes, irrespective of the COVID-19 outbreak, which will feed into future allocations updates.

We plan to spend £3.6 billion on the early years budget envelope in the 2020-21 financial year to fund the free early education and childcare entitlements.

We stay in regular contact with the early years sector and have heard from them already on this subject. We publish regular official statistics on attendance in early years settings here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak. We will be closely monitoring both parental take-up of places and the capacity and responses of providers.

Answered by:
Vicky Ford (Conservative)
1 February 2021