The problem with the government's free childcare scheme

Rishi Sunak has been warned that he faces a pre-election "disaster" if his high-profile childcare expansion plan fails.

The prime minister has promised 15 hours a week of free childcare for working parents of two-year-olds from April, with the scheme extending to all children from the age of nine months from September. And from September 2025, working parents of children under five will be entitled to 30 hours' free childcare per week.

But with "significant" nursery staffing shortages and fears about funding, said The Observer's policy editor Michael Savage, experts are predicting that "many parents will be unable to access the scheme just weeks before they go to the polls" in the next general election, which is likely to be in October or November.

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Staffing obstacles

According to modelling reported in The Times, up to 50,000 new nursery staff and childminders will have to be recruited by the end of the year if ministers are to meet their promises.

The analysis, using data from the Department for Education and latest census projections, suggested the sector will need to find staff to look after at least 90,000 children but the figure could rise to 265,000 if children currently using informal childcare, such as grandparents, switched to formal childcare under the new arrangement.

Sarah Ronan, director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, which carried out the analysis, said: "The sector is simply not going to be able to recruit 50,000 staff by April to accommodate this new offer to parents." The pledge is "ill thought through" and "delusional".

The Covid pandemic has worsened staffing issues, an expert told The Telegraph. Professor Sally Pearse, the strategic lead for early years at Sheffield Hallam University, said many childcare workers had re-evaluated their careers during the crisis, and are continuing to leave the profession for jobs that give them more flexibility, such as working from home.

Almost nine in 10 local authorities in England agree that a lack of staff in the sector will be an "obstacle" to the government's policy, according to a separate study in The Independent. Researchers from the childcare charity Coram Family and Childcare found that four in 10 local authorities are either uncertain or fearful over whether they will meet the deadline.

The paper previously reported warnings from experts that the pledge was "fast unravelling" amid "chaos" over funding arrangements. Council bosses have warned that the funding will not be in place in time, meaning parents face missing out on free support at the "eleventh hour".

All this means that parents will find it "extremely difficult to find a childcare place", said The Observer, and "without further guarantees over funding, some nurseries could cease to be viable".

And is it free?

An industry figure who co-owns six nurseries in Essex told the inews site that parents are being "misled" by the description of the 15-hour childcare scheme as "free".

"Ballooning" wage bills mean many nurseries are "forced to pass on" the additional cost of providing the childcare, said Jo Callaghan. In the case of her nurseries, this amounts to an additional cost of £3 per hour, per child. "It feels very much like someone in government thought 'this is a good idea' and then gave no thought about how it would work in practice," she said.

The plan is "not really the business model any accountant would sign off", wrote Lauren Abbott for Kent Online, "yet here we are". Parents "could be forgiven for thinking their prayers had been answered and the UK was finally shifting towards a Swedish-style model of well-integrated, properly paid-for, early years education", she wrote. But she feared mums and dads are "about to discover how tricky it might be to indeed get something for nothing".

The "nonsensical" plans "aren't grounded in reality", argued Annabel Denham in The Spectator. Describing the proposals as a "cynical move to woo voters", she argued that the Tories have "allowed themselves to be dragged into an arms race with Labour over childcare".

Sunak has admitted there are "practical issues" with the scheme but he insisted that the government was delivering the "biggest-ever expansion of childcare in this country's history", from which "millions of parents will benefit".