Thank you very much, Chair. It is a really great pleasure to be here. Thank you for this inquiry, which I am really looking forward to reading the outcome of. I am here with Chris Armstrong-Stacey, who is director of early years in the Department of Education. Have I mangled your job title or is that correct?

No, that is right.

Very good. Thank you for the opportunity to say a few brief opening remarks. It is great that we are meeting today, almost exactly a year since we published the Best Start in Life strategy; it was a year ago yesterday. I thought it would be a good opportunity just to reflect briefly at the outset on some of the things that we have achieved in that year. First, on childcare and early education, the record expansion of the entitlement has gone very well this year. We now have record numbers of children in early education and are making huge savings for families as well, so around £8,000 for working families, which is making a big difference to family finances. We have also taken action to try to make sure that we have places where they are needed. We have early years teacher incentives, for example, in more disadvantaged areas and school-based nurseries. We have taken action to increase quality, doubling the number of Stronger Practice hubs and funding evidence-based interventions such as NELI. We have a real focus on reception year as well, which is so important as we drive towards our target of 75% good level of development by the end of the Parliament. On Best Start family hubs and restoring family support, it has been a huge privilege to work on restoring family services after Sure Start was so cruelly cut by the Conservative Government. I am pleased to report that there is now at least one Best Start family hub in every local authority area. We are going to get to 3,000 hubs and network sites by the end of the Parliament, which makes a huge difference for families in their community and on their doorstep. It is a place where they come for connection, a cup of tea, a conversation, and free stay and play. It is a great opportunity for those families. We are not just opening buildings but transforming the system too. We are connecting services together involving PVIs, schools, libraries and voluntary groups to take family support to where people are. I wanted to mention today just a few things that we have talked about this week that we are doing to galvanise action even further. This week, we have published procurement for a new match fund to draw in investment from philanthropists, charities and social investors alongside councils’ own funding to really maximise the funding that they have. We have begun the search for an expert delivery partner to work hand in hand with councils on the ground. Later today, I am going to meet my new delivery coalition, which is going to help me make this programme as good as it can be. Finally, Chair, if it is okay, I will just briefly say on the issue of safeguarding that I really welcome that you extended the remit of your inquiry to look at this crucial issue. I just wanted to say that there is nothing more important in my job than keeping children safe. I wanted to assure the Committee that we are doing everything that we can to do that. We have made updates to the early years foundation stage safeguarding and welfare requirements. We are making Ofsted the designated whistleblowing body for early years. We have introduced Ofsted inspections for safe sleep practices. We have also recently announced additional funding for Ofsted, which is going to be £8 million a year, to support 3,000 unannounced inspections each year, an increased number of inspectors for larger or more complex settings, and a strengthened registration process, with a sharper focus on assessing applicant suitability. Having concluded our regulatory review of large provider groups, we will give Ofsted new powers to identify risks and take actions across these groups, not just individual settings. Ongoing work is under way on the use of CCTV and digital devices in settings. I am looking forward to discussing all of these topics today. Chair, we have heard really clearly from parents, providers and everybody we talk to that statute and regulation alone is not enough. We need a brilliant, excellent safeguarding culture in all of our early years settings. As the Secretary of State said in Parliament a few weeks ago, we will be announcing further changes on this shortly.

Thank you very much indeed. I will begin our questioning this morning just by zooming out slightly. We have heard that there is broad support and a good consensus of support across the sector for the Department’s ambition to give every child the best possible start in life. However, there remains uncertainty about how this ambition will be delivered in practice. What are the top three measurable changes that you expect families to see by 2028 as a result of the strategy, and how are you tracking progress towards those changes?

That is a brilliant question. First of all, this is the first time in a long time that there has been a proper, coherent strategy for the early years. I am really pleased to hear that, broadly, the witnesses that you have had are supportive of that direction and that attempt to really focus on early years. In terms of the top three changes, on early education, the best thing I can point to is our target towards good level of development. It is not just about children being in settings. We are delighted that there are more children than ever before in early education settings, but it is about the quality of what happens in those settings, setting them up for life and making sure that they are ready for school. Our really stretching target of 75% of children being ready for school by the end of the Parliament is a really obvious way that we are going to measure that success. The second thing I would say is that parents will be feeling, by the next election, a sense of connection again in their community. They feel the absence of Sure Start. It is no coincidence that we have this huge problem with NEETs at this point in time when we have seen what happened to the destruction of family services under the Conservatives. We want to restore that sense of community and connection for families. When they are in their community, they are in that quite isolating early period of being a new parent. There is somewhere they can go where they know that they can have a cup of tea and a friendly chat, with open, non-judgmental, non-stigmatising support. At the next election, I will want all new parents to have felt that sense of connection. Also, the third thing I would probably point to is another big area from our Best Start in Life strategy. It is probably the importance of the workforce. I just want to say a huge thank you to everybody who works in early years. They do the most amazing job. It has been such a huge privilege meeting so many of them over the course of the year. They deserve the recognition and the support. Often it is not fair when you look at the recognition and support that people who work in schools get; we want that for people working in early years too. We are focusing on that in stages at the moment. We are focusing at the moment on early years teachers. We have doubled the number of funded places. We want a teacher in every setting because we think that drives equality. We want more pathways for people who are in the workforce to progress through the workforce. There are loads of great apprenticeship routes that people can take, including a new early years teacher’s degree apprenticeship route, which I was delighted that we were able to launch. It is going to make a big difference. My third top objective would be more support for the workforce so that they can see their progression through, and more teachers in early years settings.

You mentioned the expansion of Best Start family hubs, which is also very much welcomed by the witnesses that we have heard from during our inquiry. The further expansion that you have announced today is also welcome, but the funding for family hubs does remain substantially lower than the funding that we had at peak Sure Start levels. The first part of this question is about whether you accept that the current funding is still insufficient to deliver that presence in every place and every community that everybody wants to see and that is the Government’s ambition as well. Is there still further to go in securing the funding that you need?

I do accept that the quantum of funding is not the same as it was under Sure Start, but I do not accept that it is not enough. I just want to explain why. We have £900 million over the course of the next three years to deliver this, so there is significant funding. It is making a significant difference. I was in Staffordshire, a fantastic family hub, the other week, and they were talking to me about the huge relief. They had been running on a shoestring. There is now the money and the funding there to have the ambition that they have always wanted to have for their family hub. It is making a huge difference. We also want to make sure that the money is going as far as it can. That is one of the reasons that we have launched the match fund this week so that local authorities can put money in, get that funding matched, and amplify what they are able to spend in terms of provision and services. Also, we want to see significant reform of how these services are delivered. With Sure Start it was, “Build a building. Build the thing; people come”. With what we are doing with Best Start family hubs, we do not want to replicate that. We want to take these support services to where people are, which is why we have launched these network sites that we want to see in nursery settings, libraries, schools, places where children already are, and places that are already doing so much to support the families that come through their doors every day, properly connected up with an infrastructure in the local authority that really supports families. It is significant additional funding. That is making a difference. We are working to amplify that funding in innovative ways like the match fund, but also, it is a redesign and a public service reform agenda that will mean that the ambition that we are setting out is definitely deliverable within the quantum of funding that we have available.

I just want to drill in a little bit more on what families will experience at the most local level. critique that has been made of Sure Start, which lots of people who were involved in Sure Start at the time would reject, is that Sure Start was just about buildings. Sure Start was about buildings, but what buildings gave to communities was a very coherent and clear place to go for access to quite a complicated and extensive range of services. With one Best Start family hub in every local authority area, those areas are really big. If the delivery is at a neighbourhood level through lots of different services appearing in lots of different community settings, where is the coherence that gives you the accessibility for families through that delivery model? There is some confusion. It is hard to know in lots of places. We have a hub, but the hub is quite a long way from where I am. What actually does the hub mean for me and how is it a coherent and meaningful set of interventions, particularly when the strength of it is in bringing together lots of things so that families get the support that they need in the easiest possible way? The easy thing about Sure Start was that you just had to walk over the threshold of a single place and everything was there. How is this delivering the same thing in a different way? I have heard what you said about how it is a different model. How is it delivering that coherence?

That is a really great question. The first thing I would say is something I hear a lot from families. They are really fed up of the fragmented nature of everything that happens in the infrastructure around children. As a one-year-old or a mum, you do not realise that you are in a healthy baby service; you do not realise that you are in a school. You just want to be somewhere where somebody is going to help you, and you just want somewhere where you get that warm welcome and you step over the threshold and somebody is helping. That is what we want to create. With the hubs, we have the ambition for 1,000. That is a lot more of the full hubs than one in every local authority area. We are focusing those on the areas where we think they are needed the most. That will make a big difference. There will be a lot more, so I hope in your constituency and in the constituencies of the members here there will be more and more hubs opening, and they will be closer and more accessible. The bigger ambition is the 2,000 network sites. That is where we are trying to get into much more local communities so that everybody has something that is more on their doorstep. I want the same experience in those environments for somebody to be able to walk in, such as the free stay and play that is being put on by the local nursery, and to be able to feel that in that moment they are connected to the wider community of support. This is going to require a different way of doing things from local authorities. It is one of the reasons why we are rolling out the support that we are through the implementation partner and other means to support local authorities to do this, because it is a different way of doing things, and because services are quite fragmented too often in local authority areas. We want to drive a bringing-together of all of those services so that you can get that seamless support, so that it does not matter if you are in your nursery, your library, your school or your hub. You get the same experience of being able to be helped and supported by a parent. I also just want to emphasise that, in terms of the question about what families will experience, it is that universal offer that is important. It is that open door. It is the ability to come in, to meet people and to not feel like you are going in to ask for help. You do not have to have an appointment. You do not have to need to go and see somebody. You are just there because it is a nice place to be and you want to be there with your child. There are some great hubs I have been to with sessions on how to braid your child’s hair, and loads of different things that are going on that are really fantastic. We want to make sure that parents have that wonderful, universal, welcoming experience.

One of the other things that has changed in the period since Sure Start was at its peak is the number of children who are in formal nursery settings. With that, not only are they spending their day there, but also families are building trusting relationships with the staff at those nurseries. It is a welcoming place where they have known professionals. Part of the culture change we are talking about is how that becomes the beginning of a path into services those families need rather than being an isolated setting in itself.

As a Committee, we have heard evidence that integration between family hubs and services like maternity care and health visitors is not where it needs to be. In Wolverhampton and Walsall, I have seen some brilliant practice, but that is not consistent across the country. My question is why, and when will the services be truly integrated to ensure that families are getting the right support as early as possible?

I agree with you entirely about the problem. There are some wonderful examples of good practice in local authorities. Hubs can be brilliant hubs for the pulling together of all of the services. Some of the best examples I have seen are places where you are in the hub; the parents are having a cup of tea downstairs and there is a café; upstairs there is infant feeding and baby massage; there is also a multidisciplinary team from the local authority in a different room who you can pop up and see. There is everything going on in one place, and that is a physical manifestation of what we want to see. I also want to be honest. This is a big challenge, one that we are determined to rise to with how we are working with local authorities. It is one of the reasons why we are doing everything we are in terms of the reform of how these services are delivered, and spending so much time. I am hoping to be on a roadshow next year around local authorities to support them with the delivery of this. It is not just about the hubs, but how you integrate services. The implementation partner that we are procuring this week will be focusing on how we can support local authorities to do this. Across the Department, we are very focused on collectively looking at all of our policy areas and making sure we are supporting local authorities to do this in a joined-up way. I am confident that, with that continued intensive work and support with us, we will get to a position where we can expect that more consistently across all parts of the country.

To have that consistency, it is not just about local authorities; it is about engaging with health partners, local schools and wider family services. In terms of the family navigators, do you see that as a key part of delivering family hubs?

Yes, absolutely. Chris, you may want to come in on this in a moment. On health, I strongly agree about the benefits of health integration. I am really pleased that we have healthy baby services in so many local authorities now. I am really pleased that the Department of Health and Social Care has committed to that being in all local authorities as soon as possible. That is really important because you need that join-up. You are right that it is not just local authorities, but local authorities play such an important role in convening and encouraging that collaboration. We have also said to private nurseries and schools that we want to see and expect that collaboration.

One of the things we hear is a real practical barrier is often sharing information and data about families. That is hard because you have a collection of data systems locally that are not easily joined up, but it is one of the areas we are asking the implementation partner to work really closely with local authorities on and to build capacity, because there are some areas that have found a way to make it work despite data. As you asked about family navigators, one of those things is about helping families navigate an imperfectly complex system. We cannot let families wait for us to do the difficult backend wiring to be able to navigate and get the services they need.

Do you foresee positive changes occurring because of the unique child identifier and the single patient record?

Those are exactly the sorts of things that make it simpler. They do not do it on their own, but all of those start to create the enabling blocks that allow local services to do that data-sharing far more effectively.

Minister, the Department set a goal of 75% of children being school-ready by 2028. Are you on track to meet that?

Yes, we are. The latest data was just over 68%. It is a stretching target, and rightly so. We have done lots of things to try to make sure that we hit the target. Every local authority has its own specific target. We are putting a load of work into supporting teachers and staff in reception year, because the end of reception year is where this assessment is done to support with the evidence-based interventions that we need and the training that we need. A real focus on English and maths in reception year through our English and maths hubs will really help with this. Of course, local authorities also have funding to deliver evidence-based interventions on parenting and the home learning environment for three and four-year-olds, to really focus on the cohort of children who we need to get over the line for this target, which is going to make a big difference. More broadly, of course, we are also hoping that the expansion of the family services that we are bringing to every community means that all children will continue to advance and we will continue to make progress above and beyond that 75% target.

Specifically on them, who are the 25%? Who do you see them, as demographically or geographically? What are the factors that are making them the 25% who will not yet be within that target but need targeted support? What is going on with them?

There are lots of different ways that you can look at this problem, and we are looking at all of those ways. There are some geographical considerations; there are disadvantage considerations; there are special educational needs considerations. In particular, we want to drive up the data in those areas, which we will do.

Particularly on special educational needs, there is a really important balance for us. There are absolutely children identified with special educational needs who can go on to thrive, and who with the right support will be able to make the good level of development. Also, if you are doing a holistic measure of children’s development at age five, children on a different developmental pathway will almost by definition not meet that benchmark at that point. It is about making sure that we strike the balance of supporting those children where that is the right thing for them to do with support, rather than setting an artificial expectation for children where their developmental journey will just look different.

Because you mention data, what data do you have and what data do you recognise you need in order to be able to fully provide the support that you would wish to for those children? You say you need more of it. What is that?

Data practitioners effectively need to do really good assessments themselves, which is not so much about national government data. We need to equip staff working with families and in early years settings so they really know how to support children for their next developmental step. At a national level, it is really hard to do valid, reliable, broad, holistic assessments of children in a nationally consistent way, which is why we have the good level of development at age five. We need to make sure that we are making best use of the progress checker at age two and a half, and that data is feeding through.

One of the things we are looking very carefully at is how we can make the most of all of the moments that we have with children throughout that journey. It is a very live question at the moment in the Department. I also just want to emphasise on this point the breadth of things that are measured in the good level of development, which is really important, because it is emotional regulation; it is fine and gross motor skills; it is word reading and some number reading. It is everything that we are doing with more children in early education, with the Best Start family hubs and with the national year of reading. All of the things that we are driving towards as a Government are around supporting children to have those tools to be able to have the independence and the initial learning ability that they need to be able to thrive at school. It matters because inequalities that embed in that age are so hard to shake. The best way of tackling educational inequality is to get it right in the earliest years. The stat that I have here is that children who are not school-ready at four to five are three times more likely to be not in education, employment or training at 16. It is really significant that we get this right with this target.

We know that wider challenges around housing insecurity and financial challenges limit families’ potential to support their children in the early years, and especially around the early development. How important are these factors to improving school readiness and narrowing the disadvantage gap? What cross-government action is being taken already to address it?

All of the factors that you have mentioned there are really important. The best thing that I would mention is the huge ambition that we have across Government to drive down child poverty, to focus on housing, to focus on things such as, in education, free school meals and uniform costs, and the money that we are saving many families with the childcare expansion. These all make a big difference. There is the Employment Rights Act and the increase in the minimum wage. Across Government, we need to be raising living standards, helping families with the cost of living, and ensuring children have stable roofs above their heads. That is the foundation. Building on that foundation is everything that we are talking about today, which is making sure that there is somewhere in the community where parents can go and get help and support, making sure that there is access to great-quality early education, and that we get as many children as possible into that great-quality early education, because we know that children who are in early education will definitely have a better chance of getting that good level of development school readiness. It is all very important, Jodie.

I just want to ask about your engagement with other Departments. In my constituency, I have come across the most horrendous situations of families living in temporary accommodation with very young children where the nature of the accommodation has a direct impact on children’s gross motor skills, for example, because there is not anywhere for them to learn to crawl; there is not anywhere for them to learn to grab hold of things where there are hazards all about the place. That is a desperate situation for any family to be in. It has an absolutely fundamental impact on the targets that you have set for child development. I just want to ask about the engagement on that issue, because we are not seeing, for example, from the Government any shift on the local housing allowance rate, which would make a really big difference to those issues in London and other parts of the country where housing costs are very high. What is the movement on that, and what representations are you making to other Departments about the impact on children?

We have this new cross-government, inter-ministerial group, which formally got established not too long ago on child poverty. We had been meeting informally before then. That is proving already to be a really fantastic forum to force this kind of collaboration. We obviously all do it anyway, Department to Department, but it has been really fantastic to have this formal environment in which we are having those conversations. At the last meeting, we had a great conversation about this topic of housing and child poverty and the crucial importance of it. I know that Alison McGovern believes passionately in achieving that, and I am hopeful that the child poverty inter-ministerial group is going to be a great way of ensuring that cross-government collaboration.

We know that the disadvantage gap is established by five. What actions do we need to begin earlier than formal education? What is being done to support children from birth onwards to prevent those gaps widening in the first place?

You are right to go beyond early education, but I would just repeat as well that access to early education is great for children. We want to see more children in early education. We especially want to see more and more children taking up the early learning for two-year-olds entitlement. We want to see more children in early education. It is important. I do not want to repeat what I have said about Best Start family hubs, but that non-judgmental, non-stigmatising support and the open door for families to be able to get the help and support that they need is really important. For people who come through the door or who the local authority reach out to, we will be able to signpost them, if there is a need for any targeted interventions on parenting or the home learning environment, to menus of evidence-based interventions that local authorities can fund and deliver with those families. That makes a big difference. It is also important that we recognise the wider context in which we are parenting today. One of the biggest factors there is the use of screens and the amount of screentime in homes. It is a good example of where the Government have heard parents saying, “We are struggling with this”. We have gone away and we have produced some really clear guidance about the impact that screens are having on children’s development. We are taking a precautionary approach, giving guidance to families and parents to say, “Children under two should not be on screens. It should be an hour a day maximum for children above two”. That is just one example of where we are trying to step in where we see that parents are struggling with something, because they are asking us to help. They are asking us for the evidence. They are asking us for guidance, and so we have stepped in. Now we have the screentime guidance being rolled out through all of our Best Start family hubs and through our Best Start in Life online targeted campaigns with parents. We are also trying to make sure we have support online for parents as well, which can also be helpful when people do not want to be in a physical space. There is great advice available online, and we are continuing to develop our online offer.

The consultation on early years funding proposed strengthening deprivation supplements by introducing a minimum threshold and clarifying the purpose of better support for disadvantaged children and access to early education. What further measures do you think the Government need to take to ensure that this funding is effectively targeted to those children who need it the most?

Chris will come in with some details on the funding consultation in a minute. On the funding consultation, the first objective for that is how we can get disadvantage funding to the children who need it. That is one of the first objectives of this consultation, which is why we are asking those questions. The second objective is around how we can improve SEND funding. Then there is a range of things in there around improving the simplicity and efficiency of funding. If I were to step back and think about where we want to end up, when I think about the early education system, it is not how we would design it if we were to start from a blank piece of paper; none of us would think it is. It has brilliant people working in it and brilliant results, but it has developed in such a piecemeal fashion over time with different political takes and doing different things. As a Department, we have decided that we need to take a step back at this moment. We have launched the early education and childcare review. We are getting that under way. The objective of that review is to take a look at deciding where the end goal is rather than adding on things piecemeal to a system that is great but could be better. That is what the early education and childcare review is doing at the moment. We want to have a big and holistic look at some of these questions. We need to just pause and go, “Rather than more piecemeal, what is the goal? Where are we headed? How can we really deliver the best possible quality of family support and education for all of our children?” We are having those conversations. Also, it is remarkable. We as a Government now fund 80% of childcare that is delivered in this country. We have essentially created a new public service. It is time that we really question what that public service should look like. Chris, would you like to add on the funding consultation?

Yes, I will just speak to the specific proposals there. There are probably three steps. The first is to update the national funding distribution from central Government to local government, to take account of our best current data on disadvantage, and to make sure we are spreading the money to the right areas in the right way. Then within local supplements, as you say, we are consulting quite openly. At the moment, we have taken quite an enabling approach. Local authorities make different choices on the scale of funding and how they use it. We are effectively asking, “What have you learnt about what works?”, particularly about quantum, but then also whether there are particular uses of disadvantage funding through that supplement where possibly being slightly less permissive might be helpful, such as on barriers around food costs in settings, or transport or funding support for families within settings. This obviously then sits alongside the early years pupil premium, where we have had quite significant increases of 45% and then 50% over the last two consecutive years. Again, there we have done lots of work with the Education Endowment Foundation on how we make sure settings really know how they can use that money to have the most impact on those children, and how holistically that EYPP, combined with the disadvantage supplement, means that we are doing the right thing for the children who need the most support.

The consequence of the changes that are proposed in the consultation will be that funding will be redistributed away from local authority areas such as my constituency—I suspect, Minister, also local authorities such as yours—where there is still considerable child poverty and disadvantage, towards areas where there is even greater child poverty and disadvantage. That obviously gives rise to concerns that areas that are already stretched, where costs are already high, and where there are still significant numbers of children living in poverty, will lose out as a consequence of the changes that are proposed. What can you say about that? Do you think that is really an acceptable way to redistribute funding?

The consultation sets out how we would distribute the pot; it does not set the size of the pot, so we still have to go through the process of setting rates for the coming year. It talks about using the best information we currently have on disadvantage but also on labour market costs, so updating our assessment of how much it costs to run a setting in each area. We are also asking about scale of protection. Whatever the size of a pot, there will be relative winners and losers when you redistribute. It is about how you smooth that over a number of years. How much do you let any area win or lose, to use simple terms, over a one-year period?

Will you be in a position, as part of the consultation, to be able to enable local authorities to see what the consultation actually means for them? It is quite hard to respond to a consultation in a meaningful way if you do not understand what exactly the implications are.

There is illustrative data in the consultation data tables to help with that. Obviously, there are particular decisions about setting next year’s rates, which means you will not be able to work out exactly what you would get in a given year, but you will have a sense of what it would mean in terms of direction of travel.

Minister, you have rightly paid tribute to the fantastic people working across the early years sector. The reality, of course, is that one of the big challenges is recruitment and retention of the workforce, so I have a couple of questions on this. First, how confident are you that that workforce will be able to meet the growing demand for early years provision?

I am confident. We have seen a huge uptick in the numbers of people working in early education. It is a great career. It is a really rewarding job. I would encourage anybody to consider it. I think 14,000 more people are working in the sector this year compared to last year. The sector and the market have responded brilliantly to the expansion of entitlements. There are more places, more people working in it and more children in childcare. I am confident that we will, yes.

Can you say a bit more about what those specific actions are that are already leading to that 14,000 increase, but also what more you will be doing as a Department to get it to the level that can best meet that demand?

First, we run a big recruitment campaign. It is the Do Something Big campaign, which has been very effective. It gets something like 35,000 visits a week to the website, which is great. We are also looking at training, routes in and routes through, as I talked about earlier on. One of the things I often reflect on when I think about the wonderful staff who worked in my boy’s nursery is that they are absolutely brilliant and would make brilliant teachers. We want to create pathways through so that it is easy to move up from level 2, 3 and 6 and get qualified teacher status, so that the fantastic staff can really see that pathway of progression. It is a harder challenge considering that it is largely a private market, but we want to think more broadly about how we can support pay and conditions in the sector. That is something that is really important. One thing I would just reflect on there is that there is very low trade union representation among the childcare workforce. It would be great to see that increase. Do you want to add anything, Chris?

I can just talk a little bit about what we did during the expansion period. As well as a national campaign, as the Minister said, we also then worked with local areas where they are having particularly acute recruitment challenges, with things like facilitating partnerships with the local Jobcentre Plus, or running locally focused Do Something Big events to help support the benefits of a career in childcare, particularly for young people considering their career options.

How are you measuring the effectiveness of each of those different interventions? Going forward, you will want to put most effort into where you get the best bang for buck and the best people out of it. How are you going about that measuring?

As the Minister said, for the Do Something Big campaign, which has been where the large public investment has gone, we have both been looking at things like the hits on the website of 35,000 a week, but also then tracking how they follow through. We see that there is a strong connection between when we do a Do Something Big advertising burst, through to the campaign website and then through to the Find a Job platform, and seeing people actively looking. Because of the scale of expansion, it has not been possible to then draw that direct line through to, “At a local area level, it is fine”. We are seeing that that basket of measures has been able to support the growth. We are now looking at what we are learning in a more steady-state environment. What is the right level of investment and the right level of support we are putting in each area?

Did you say you can or cannot then track the conversion rate of that initial interest through to engagement through to then a qualified early years practitioner?

We can track them through to actively seeking jobs; we cannot then track them through to whether they have ended up working in the early years sector.

Is that something you feel you need to do in order to be able to effectively measure it, or are we not set up for that at the moment?

My reflection would probably be that we want to make sure we get people into the jobs. That is objective number one. We have the data for that. Objective number two is supporting the training and development pathways when they are in the jobs. We have the ways of measuring that. You do not necessarily need it in one big linear dataset.

Finally, can you say today what the shortfall currently is of the staff that you need? What is the gap you are looking to plug?

We are not seeing a nationally measurable shortfall. When we estimated the scale of workforce growth that we would need during the childcare entitlement expansion, we saw roughly that level of growth. We are not hearing local sufficiency challenges caused by lack of workforce.

I think 93% of parents get a top three choice of local nursery, so the market has responded brilliantly to the expansion. There are childcare places. There are obviously pockets where there are challenges. We are working on those, including through school-based nurseries, but overall we are very confident and grateful to the sector for responding in the way that it has to deliver this huge expansion. In terms of the entitlements and the Government spending, we have gone from £4.5 billion in 2023. My numbers are probably mangled; I will correct them afterwards. We have doubled from 2023-24 to this year, where we are at £9.5 billion of investment. It is a really significant expansion, and the sector has done an amazing job.

That is good news on recruitment. Again, just coming back to retention, for primary and secondary school teachers, we have seen the rate of people dropping out of the career slow down, but they are still dropping out, so you need to keep that fresh flow coming in. What are you seeing in early years on retention and being able to combat that challenge?

Chris can come in with some specifics if he has the data on the retention, but this is where everything else that we are doing is really important. When you have your great job and you have gone in at whatever level you have gone in at, it is about making sure that there is the status and recognition. It is about making sure that there are the training opportunities. It is about making sure that the sector is well supported. All of these things make a huge difference. I also have not mentioned but probably should mention the consultation we are currently running on early years teachers. As you know, we are focusing at the moment and first on how we can get these early years teachers into every setting. We are running a consultation at the moment on how we can reform the qualification routes for that so that we can perhaps have a unified qualified teacher status, so that the staff who are working in early years settings, who often are just as qualified but get paid less well, can go and transition over to working in a school. We are looking at all of these questions to raise the status, the standing and the training opportunities for people in the sector. Did you want to come in on retention?

We are not seeing a nationally measurable change in retention in the sector. The NFER has, for a long time, done annual studies of the schoolteacher workforce. In the last couple of years, it has run equivalent studies for the early years workforce, and you see some measurable positive elements of working in early years. They report greater wellbeing and a lower workload. There are things where you see measurable signs that working in the early years has some benefits over working in other education sectors.

We have heard that volatility in the early years pupil premium funding can undermine the ability of providers to plan and deliver sustained interventions for disadvantaged children. Based on the Department’s evidence and evaluation of the policy, what is your assessment of the early years pupil premium as a mechanism for improving outcomes for disadvantaged children and narrowing the attainment gap?

First of all, on early years pupil premium, I am really pleased that we have been able to raise it so significantly. That is really important. It is now at £655 per year per child, so it makes a real and meaningful difference to the setting. We are also seeing an increase in people claiming it, which is really good. We have managed to raise the funding level significantly. Now we are focusing on the impact of it and making sure that that is as good as it possibly can be. We are working with the EEF to run, in 10 areas, a test-and-learn approach to the delivery and the mechanisms around the early years pupil premium, to see if there are different ways that we should be doing it. That is the right thing to be doing. We have also got much more active in terms of publishing guidance and saying what should be happening with the early years pupil premium. Of course, there are wider changes that we have been making in terms of local authorities to ensure that as much money as possible is getting to the settings. We have changed the pass-through rate, and there are other things that we are doing as well.

As we talked about earlier, there is seeing the early years pupil premium in the context of being alongside disadvantage funding, which is not child-led in the same way and therefore is more stable. The value of a child-led intervention such as the early years pupil premium is that it very consciously focuses spend on that child, which is why we have been working really closely with the Education Endowment Foundation to make sure we are equipping settings with the best understanding of what they can do with that money to make the most difference for those children.

So you do not have any plans to move away from the attendance-linked EYPP funding so that settings have a longer-term stability over how much funding they are going to get this time next year?

As with schools, the intention is to maintain that blend of a child-led early years pupil premium as well as cohort-level disadvantage funding that has a more steady state and is less tied to the individual children in that particular year.

Can I just highlight an obvious contradiction with that approach? Children are in early years settings for a much shorter amount of time than they are in school for. The child-led component linked to attendance makes it very difficult for child-led support to be obtained and put in place in a way that is compatible with the Department’s objectives around boosting expertise in settings overall, and maintaining better stability and retention in the workforce, because it is impossible for settings to plan. It lends itself to bringing in an extra, most junior assistant to support a particular child on a very short-term contract rather than looking at how a setting is boosting its expertise overall in meeting the needs of children with disadvantage, SEND and all of those things. That is the problem that settings are grappling with. It is just very different to school; it is not the same type of behaviour that happens.

On its own, it is absolutely not sufficient. One of the key things for us is the other interventions to support. For example, with the new teacher retention payments, you are aiming to say that, in all settings in this area that employ a qualified teacher, that teacher will receive a payment. That is not tied to the fluctuating cohort of the individual setting. It is about making sure that those interventions have that sustainability. There is something about a child-tied payment that makes it really clear. You are right that it does have an influence on the ways in which it can be spent, but the EEF’s work suggests that there are all sorts of valuable ways that it can be spent in a way that ensures that quantum of funding for that child for that period can add real value.

I agree with everything Chris has said. I would point again to what we are doing with the early education and childcare review. These are very valid questions. We are doing everything we are doing with EEF to try to explore the best ways to maximise it, but with the early education and childcare review, we are thinking in very big-picture terms about how we would need to change the system and what the system would need to look like in its ideal end state. When we are thinking about what that ideal end state is, these are questions that will be very much part of thinking about what we should be doing differently. It will be very useful to see and hear the Committee’s reflections on that as we do that review. I would also just mention the interaction with the SEND reforms, which are important in this space, especially when you were mentioning staff paid to support particular children, for example, because obviously there is now much more up-front funding for early years settings through the inclusive mainstream fund. There is also access to Experts at Hand in those settings. This will also change that environment.

Obviously, a high-quality, trained workforce is key to children’s successful outcomes. What is the Department doing to ensure that early years professionals have access to the training and professional development that they need, particularly in areas such as child development, speech and language, safeguarding and special educational needs?

On special educational needs, there is a £200 million fund that we announced recently as part of our SEND reforms, which early education will have a good chunk of, which will be developing specific training and support for settings and staff. One of my reflections is that there is a wonderful organisation called Dingley’s Promise. It runs some of its own training. One of the things that it told me through the training that it runs is that so much of the delivery of the sufficiency of places in early years settings for children with special educational needs is a confidence question. Once you have improved the training and supported staff to be able to support children with special educational needs, you see a huge benefit in terms of the number of places that other settings are then providing, which is important. You mentioned safeguarding. There is additional new safeguarding training that we have got online recently, especially around safer sleep, which is such a critical issue. We run a variety of different training programmes on safeguarding. We have NPQs at various points for early years teachers. There is a really broad training offer. As I mentioned earlier on, there are really clear pathways too. We want to create more pathways to support training and progression in the workplace.

That is where I was going to pick up. One of the other elements of the early years teachers consultation that is out at the moment is whether we should, in the same way as we do for schoolteachers, have a core professional body of knowledge that is the same for every early years teacher training, in the same way as we have a content framework for schoolteacher training, with that being the beginning of setting that as a core body of knowledge that features into all of the entry-level qualifications, starting with early years teachers but then thinking about how you take that golden thread of the practice that the evidence tells us will be most effective through the different entry-level qualifications in the sector.

To build on that, from working in the sector, one of the problems with delivering training is the time capacity, especially when you are working in a model where you are paid by the hour, and how you can then free staff up to access that training. Has any assessment been done of the capacity of the sector to engage with the training?

It has been one of the challenges that everyone working with early years settings has faced. Some of the Stronger Practice hubs, for example, which have been working for the last two years—and we have just doubled the number, with a further cohort starting in September—have been thinking really carefully. They find that there are different models that work, depending on the nature of the training and the setting. For example, lots of them have worked out that they can best engage with childminders either on certain days of the week or at certain times of day, and have thought really carefully about how to design that in a way that works for childminders and their patterns. The other area of formal learning we have seen is the real value of the apprenticeship model, where it allows time in setting and then, for the early years teacher degree apprenticeship, for example, released time that is funded to ensure that you can both get that dedicated focus time on learning and put that learning into practice in the setting.

The Government have announced plans to phase out the early years teacher status and to replace it with QTS—qualified teacher status. What additional support could you be giving to nurseries to allow them to employ qualified teachers at similar levels of pay and conditions to those in schools?

We are consulting on that proposal at the moment, and we want to hear views from people about it. Part of the drive behind it is around trying to support that status and pay and conditions point, which is very important because early years teachers are doing just as brilliant a job as teachers in school settings and deserve the same recognition and status. Also, as Chris said, the key points there around the central body of knowledge are really important. We take our role very seriously, looking at the range of qualifications. We want to make sure that they are streamlined and that they are as strong and clear as they should be, to ensure that we have the best-quality staff as possible in settings.

The other thing I would highlight would be the early years teacher recognition payment, which is effectively restarting that expectation that an early years teacher is a professional role that requires a degree of skill, and with that comes greater pay. There is a £4,500 payment for those teachers receiving that payment. We will never have exactly the same terms and conditions, not least because the nature of provision is quite different. One of the things you might presume lies behind, for example, that NFER finding about workload and wellbeing is that, in a setting that is open all year round, yes, you do not get summer holidays in the way you would in school, but, on the flipside, you are able to take annual leave in a slightly more flexible way. It will never be an identical experience to work in each setting. Things such as the teacher recognition payment aim to start to make a greater parity between the two.

I would like to move on to safeguarding now. We have heard concerns about an operational gap between the statutory intent of safeguarding and what is happening in real-world practice. There are things such as staff concerns being raised and not being taken seriously, high turnover of staff leading to practitioners who might lack experience or training, and also the higher ratio of children to staff. What assessment has your Department made of the consistency and quality of safeguarding guidance followed in practice? What enforcement action have you taken in response?

This is such a critical question. First of all, I would say a couple of things. First, the vast majority of settings do a brilliant job of keeping children safe. It is really important to say that they go above and beyond to make sure that their provision is as good as it should be. Secondly, I do not want to abdicate responsibility as a Government for our role in making sure that we are always doing everything we possibly can in terms of statute and guidance, because that is on us. That is why we have been making changes to strengthen EYFS again. From this September, there are changes around safer sleep, banned breeds and various things that we are doing. We have to make sure continually that we are doing everything possible as a Government to make sure statute and guidance is as strong and clear as it should be. It is also our responsibility with Ofsted—and we have made significant progress in this regard recently—to make sure that, where there are concerns, they are acted upon. We have recently announced additional funding for Ofsted, which is going to mean that we can have 3,000 unannounced inspections. That is a direct response to some of the families that I have been speaking to, particularly John and Katie, Gigi Meehan’s parents, who want to see that, where parents have raised concerns, Ofsted can get there unannounced, check it out and give parents that reassurance that the setting is doing what it should be doing. I have talked about chain regulation. It is why we are giving Ofsted more funding to have more inspectors. It is why we are giving Ofsted more funding to develop. Some of the families from one of the terrible cases recently with Vincent Chan have been talking to me about needing a better system for parents to be able to raise concerns and to see those concerns acted upon. We are doing that through funding Ofsted to improve their communications. We are doing that through work that we are doing to give parents greater clarity about what to do if they have concerns and who to raise them with. We are doing it through making Ofsted the whistleblowing body for early years staff so that there is complete clarity for staff. If they have a concern and they raise it with Ofsted, there is complete clarity that Ofsted is going to be able to re-resource to make sure it is dealt with. Right the way across the board, we have to pull every lever available to us. We are trying to do that. Then, of course, as I said at the outset, it is also about a culture, because you are right. Statute and guidance alone does not achieve it; it has to be the strongest possible safeguarding culture in every setting, with staff who know, if they have any concerns at all, where they go, how to raise it and how to deal with it, with chains that know exactly what their practices and processes are, with strong oversight from Ofsted, and with parents who know what to do if they are worried about a situation with their children, and who have the confidence to know that that is going to be dealt with. This is a critical issue and one that we take extremely seriously. It is the foundation of everything that we are doing.

How would a parent contact Ofsted if they had a concern? Is there a hotline or something? Do parents know about it?

At the moment, if a parent has concerns or complaints about the setting, there is a process through which they can report to Ofsted. If it is a concern about an individual child, they can complain to the ladder—to the local authority. What I am saying is that we are committed to improving that process. We have this additional money for Ofsted. Something that we are working on very hard at the moment is to create that transparency in the system so that all parents really know it and can see transparently what is happening in their setting when they are making judgments about where to send their child.

This is one of the things that we recognise needs to be clearer for a parent in terms of when the right time is to move beyond a conversation with your own setting and to raise that concern more widely, and to give parents that information so that they understand that that is absolutely the right thing to do if you are worried about your child or other children in that setting.

DBS checks provide only a point-in-time assessment. What will the Department do to improve the sharing of safeguarding information and references when staff move between settings? What consideration has it given to introducing more robust and continuous monitoring arrangements to better protect children?

On DBS checks, we continually work with the Home Office and the Disclosure and Barring Service to make sure that they are working and fit for purpose. We have also made changes to what we expect in terms of the collection of references, in terms of notifying us if you are employing family on domestic premises. There are a range of different things that we have done to strengthen the expectations in terms of what must be asked of staff who you are employing. That is really critical.

Changes were made to the early years foundation stage last September that looked at making much clearer the expectation about references, so that they must be taken. There are much clearer expectations about the sorts of references and what you should be looking for, and an expectation that they are given by early years settings, which is equally as important as them being taken. We are looking at whether there is more that we can do—in particular, there have been cases recently where people have felt that they were not obliged to disclose things that had not yet come to trial—and about whether we can be more explicit that that hat needs to be disclosed when you start employment.

You have mentioned some of these already, but, following the recent safeguarding failures, could you tell us whether the Department is going to review whether additional measures such as CCTV coverage and a two-person rule for intimate care are needed in early years settings to strengthen child protection? Could you just tell us what your current position is on these measures and what evidence has informed that?

We are actively considering on both. As I said, our position on all of these things is that we will do whatever is necessary to keep children safe. We are actively considering on both of those questions. On CCTV specifically, you will be aware that we have had an independent panel looking at this question. I look forward to receiving the final report from that panel. What is clear to me from conversations with parents is that the value that they see in CCTV is not just prevention, where it can play an important role, but also in confidence and in prosecution, which is very important. It is a very complex area in terms of the question of mandation of CCTV, because there are many types of settings. There are some forest school settings, for example, so there are challenges with how you think about this policy question, but we are extremely aware of the calls from many parents on this front, and considering it very seriously.

Lastly, safe sleep is a crucial aspect of infant safeguarding. How confident are you that early years staff receive sufficient training on safe sleep practices? What action has the Department taken to ensure that this training is consistent across settings?

I do want to pay tribute again to John and Katie, Gigi’s parents, for their brilliant campaigning on this. They have bravery and courage. They have just been phenomenal. It has been a huge privilege to work with them on this question of safe sleep. We have done several things. We are updating the EYFS from September to make it extremely clear that all settings must be following the NHS guidance on safe sleep. This was previously linked to in the guidance, but we felt that we should clarify extremely clearly that that must be what is happening. I wrote to all settings to tell them that that change was coming. What was concerning was the number of queries that we had back to that. It showed the importance of making this change and of us being very front-footed in making sure that people are doing it. We have been able to get Ofsted to inspect safe sleep practice. John and Katie came to meet Sir Martyn with me, and I am delighted that Sir Martyn has agreed to do that. We have been clear about what a safe sleep cot is, with some new guidance to the sector recently on this, saying that it must be a cot; it must follow British safety standards. On training, we are developing a toolkit with the Lullaby Trust at the moment. We have also published additional training. It is also a critical component of the compulsory training.

We are currently commissioning an expert to produce something to go as part of the Department’s suite of free online child development training, so that there is a really clear online offer.

On the issue of safe sleep, every parent is told how to put their baby to sleep safely, and what the really clear requirements are that make for a safe sleeping environment. Do you have any idea of how we got into such a mess in early years settings on this, with children, as we know from the information that has been widely reported, being put to sleep in tents, being overly constrained with beanbags, being swaddled and being covered in far too many coverings and sleeping bags? It seems that many staff who work in early years, even without training, are parents themselves who would have received that guidance about safe sleep, and yet it seems like many parts of the sector have drifted really far away from something that is absolutely basic to safeguarding in the early years. Do you understand how the sector has got itself into that mess?

I would say that “many” is too far, in that the vast majority of settings are doing it right and keeping children very safe when they are sleeping. I think that that is important to say. Some of the examples that you mentioned there—the horrendous things that have happened to some of the children in settings, which we have read about in the news and heard about—are individual examples of abuse, mistreatment and terrible malpractice. There is a very serious question about making sure that all of the other staff who are trying to do their best by children have the very best training and awareness. That is about the safeguarding culture that we talked about in every nursery and early years setting to make sure that those expectations are clear. That is what we are trying to address through the package of measures that I have talked about today.

I suppose the surprising thing about some of the individual examples is that there is a difference between some of the horrific cases that have come to trial around abuse in nursery settings, where it clearly was an individual seeking to do things covertly to a child, and something with regard to sleep practices, which clearly happens for all to see, in a room that is observed and where there are other professionals around. From what you have said about the number of queries coming back when you sought to strengthen the guidance, it would seem that there is a problem in this area. I accept what you said about the steps that are being taken to close that gap, but it is of concern to parents as to how we can have got to a situation where there is such variation from something that is such an essential safety requirement.

I absolutely accept that it is a concern, and that is why Ofsted is going to be looking at it. It is why we are boosting the training. It is why we are being extremely clear with the expectations that we have of settings. Absolutely no setting should be taking any risks at all when it comes to keeping children safe when they are sleeping, and I am confident that, through the package of measures that we are doing and the huge willingness of the sector to get this right, we will sort the problem.

We have received evidence highlighting growing concerns in some large, multi-site nursery groups regarding governance and quality assurance. What progress has the Department made with Ofsted about ensuring appropriate accountability and oversight for large chain nursery groups?

This is something that we have been working on with Ofsted recently, and we will soon be setting out measures to outline how we are going to support Ofsted to have that function across a whole of a chain. It is very important, because you have to have the ability to deal with things at a national multi-chain level, and so we will be setting out details on that soon.

What our work has uncovered is that, effectively, this was a regulatory framework built for a very different system, designed at a point when there were far fewer larger groups. We are also now at a point where group structures are quite complex. Ofsted does not register an entire group, necessarily, in lots of cases. What we would understand as a chain or group is a collection of entities that have often been registered separately if they have been acquired by a wider group. The work with Ofsted has been teasing through the complexity of the current system and working out what the right steps are to change the framework to enable Ofsted to see properly across a group and be transparent with parents about what settings are like across a group, and then what powers it needs to take to act at group level.

Could that involve legislation? We have heard from Ofsted that it will need legislative changes to ensure that it has that oversight rather than local individual settings.

It depends on the exact model that we set out, but it is possible.

We are working really closely with Ofsted on exactly what the right model is and, therefore, what primary or secondary legislative change you would need to enact it.

We have heard heartbreaking evidence from parents who have been affected by awful safeguarding concerns. They told us in a private roundtable that they want to see an independent system for raising concerns and complaints, run by a newly established regulatory body, because they have lost faith in the current system, including Ofsted. How do you respond to those concerns? Do you believe that there is a case for an independent early years safeguarding accountability and complaints body?

I think I have had the same conversations with the same people. The experiences of their children are unthinkable, and the bravery that they show in advocating for change is remarkable. I do recognise the importance of what they are describing and discussing in terms of the ability, as I said earlier on, for a parent to feel like they can see transparently, where they have concerns, how they are acted upon and how that all gets dealt with. That is what we are doing through the additional funding that we have given to Ofsted to improve all of their systems and processes. It is also what we are doing as a Department to improve transparency. Essentially, what they are asking for is what we are trying to create, because we do agree that parents need that ability and that process to do it. Chris, I think that you are taking some of the families next week to Manchester to see Ofsted to understand the back end and to see how we might design that programme. We want to work with these families to create this system, because we recognise that there needs to be more transparency and accountability, and a way that parents can engage in the system.

It has been a real privilege to work with these families. They have been incredibly impressive at taking their personal experiences and being very systemic about how their children’s experiences might improve the system. As the Minister mentioned, I am going next week with them and the chief inspector to talk about how Ofsted’s systems currently work and to have them challenge it—“This is how it felt from our perspective. This is how we would want the system to work”—so that the resources that we have given Ofsted could be used to make the system achieve the objectives that they want to achieve.

We would certainly agree with what you have said about the parents and their really thoughtful and very dignified and gracious approach to seeking reform in this area. One of the things that I have encountered as a constituency MP is the great alarm that parents experience when there is an abuse scandal or conviction at another nursery within the same chain. I have seen really terrible practice from chains with regard to communicating with families who have children at other nurseries when something like that happens. Parents in my constituency have been left to read about things in the media without any communication or reassurance of any meaningful nature happening from the chain to those families who are paying them money to look after their children and trusting their children into their care. Would you consider strengthening the communication requirements on chain nurseries with regard to parental confidence and a requirement to demonstrate that, where something completely unacceptable has happened, they are taking action across the whole of their chain to make sure that such things are not happening in any other setting and that they are required to give parents confidence about that?

Yes, and the practice that you have described is completely unacceptable. It should not be happening, and chains should be taking every effort to talk to and communicate with parents. In answer to your question, we will absolutely consider that. It is a really good suggestion. As part of the wider measures that we are taking with Ofsted and this new system that we are creating, in addition to the powers that we intend to give Ofsted in terms of chain regulation, I am very happy to take that suggestion away and report back to you on how we fed it into our plans.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

A lot of the stats have shown that the price of childcare to families has come down significantly in the last two years, but we are also hearing that, beyond the 30 hours, it is costing many parents who need to top up to 50 hours a week £150 a week, for 38 weeks. If they have to then go full-time out of term time, costs are hitting £370 a week and so on. What we have heard is that the biggest challenge is still affordability, so it is really just to get your context on that. If we are finding that this is still discouraging some parents, and particularly mothers, from entering the workforce, to what extent do you consider the policy to have reduced childcare costs but also to have made a meaningful difference to those employment decisions that I know were partly behind the Government’s policy?

It has saved working families a significant amount of money; £8,000 a year is really significant and is making a big difference. It also has labour market impacts. There are more people in work. As a consequence, that is massively positive. I would agree with you that, of course, there are still expenses. There are still things that parents are having to pay for, which can be tough, but I probably would challenge a little bit and say that the challenges that we also face are around who can access hours and time in the setting as well. We want to be able to encourage more of the children currently entitled to the early learning 2 entitlement to get into settings. I am conscious that there are children who do not have eligibility currently for the working parent entitlement and who would hugely benefit. These are some of the questions that we are looking at in our early education and childcare review to make sure that we are helping parents with money, but also ensuring that we have that real focus on supporting the children who we want to support to get that good level of development as well.

Are you looking to respond to some of those challenges that parents have reported to us as witnesses? Of course, that will come out in the final report, but, while I am not asking you to announce government policy on the hoof, is it something that you are aware of? Would you acknowledge that there are still some challenges there for particular groups?

Yes, of course I acknowledge the challenges. We are very proud of delivering the working parent entitlement. We inherited, basically, a pledge with no plan for delivery and no money from the previous Government, and I am very proud that we have been able to keep that promise to parents and make it happen. Of course, we are aware of the very many challenges with the current system and, as I think I said earlier, I do not think anybody would design it as it currently is. The number of ways in which you can access funding for your entitlements is mind-bogglingly complicated for me—and I spend all of my time talking and thinking about it—let alone for parents. The system is imperfect. It is delivering fantastic results for parents. We are very proud of it, but we do want to have a holistic look at where we want this system to be. As I said earlier, we have, essentially, created a new public service. We are funding 80% of childcare that happens in this country. We have to ask the big questions now. We have made huge progress this year with our strategy. Now is the right time to ask the big questions about where we are headed, and all of those questions that you are rightly raising will be a part of that consideration.

I do, of course. I do not want to repeat myself, but it is a similar answer to the one I just gave to Darren. We are very aware of where there are children who cannot access hours, and who, in an ideal world, you would want to be able to. We are, through the early education and childcare review, asking all the big questions and wanting to set out what that end destination is. Some of the things that we are thinking about through that review, and some of the themes that you would really want to see in a new system, are around access, of course, but also quality of education, and integration with family services. There are lots of questions that you need to consider as you think about where your end goal is, but we are rightly engaged in those questions.

As I said, we are proud to have been able to take a promise from the last Government that just did not have any substance or delivery plan behind it, and to roll it out and keep that that promise to parents. It has made a huge and important difference to supporting families with the cost of living and into the workplace. I am proud of it. I think it is great. It has had a huge and transformational impact, with more children than ever before in early education. We have had a huge expansion in the sector, and it has been really fantastic. We are committed to driving down child poverty, as you say. We are taking lots of steps to do that with the two-child limit, and the various actions that we are taking across the board to make that happen. In the early education system, we are taking active steps in terms of increasing the early years pupil premium, ensuring that we are getting provision and early years teachers into disadvantaged areas. Everything that we are doing is around trying to ensure that the children who would most benefit are able to. On the wider question, that is what our early education and childcare review is really considering carefully.

Yes, of course. I should have declared an interest as somebody who is taking full advantage of the 30 hours of free childcare. It is fantastic, and it is fantastic that it is finally funded.

While we are in this session, the Secretary of State has made a speech in Oxford in which she has said that she believes the entitlement should be extended to cover all children. First, we just have to put on record that it is terribly poor practice for the Secretary of State to be making such a statement while active scrutiny of the Government’s work in this area is under way this morning. It puts you in an awkward position, Minister. Who is that speech for? Is it a policy announcement? Can parents of disadvantaged children who are not working at the moment take comfort from the speech that there is going to be a change in the entitlement? Is it a public row between the DFE and the Treasury? What is going on there? It appears to be that the Government are speculating about themselves in the public domain this morning, about the entitlement to early years funding?

Bridget and I have been working closely together on the early education and childcare review because we both agree, as I have said today, that we would not design the system as it is. We want to have big thoughts about where it should be, and I think that that is the spirit in which she is making her contribution later today in Oxford. I have said as much today. There are parts of the system that do not work as we want them to. There are children who cannot access the system and who, in an ideal world, you would have accessing the system. Instead of adding, bit by bit, little things on to the system in a way that creates a really confused, complicated system, we really do want to ask the big questions about where the system is headed.

You will understand that, earlier this week, you launched a formal consultation on funding for the early years that contains nothing about a change in entitlements. Now, two days later, we have the Secretary of State making a speech that is about a change in entitlements. Is that, in any way, an acceptable way for the Government to go about making policy?

What I would say is that it is important that we set that long-term direction and ambition, because we do not want to keep making piecemeal changes.

With the greatest respect, the Secretary of State could have done that in launching the consultation at the beginning of the week. Why have we got the Government saying one thing on a Tuesday and another on a Wednesday? It is extraordinary.

The Secretary of State is setting out her ambition for where she would like to see the system. It is right that we have an ambition for where we want to see the system go in the future. Of course, we need to make sure that the policy decisions that we are taking in the meantime drive towards that long-term ambition, and that is what we are trying to do through the early education and childcare review.

So parents should take from the speech today that the Government are trying to push themselves to go further on this. We are really struggling to understand what this intervention is about today.

I understand. I would want parents to hear from my contributions today and from what the Secretary of State intends to say later that we are hugely ambitious for the early education and childcare system in our country. We have established the early education and childcare review because we want to ask these big questions, because we know that we have an imperfect system and want the best possible outcome for every child in our country.

There is a lot of talk about the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. We are going to see a private Member’s Bill coming in. Those years are absolutely crucial. You can possibly even predict who is going to become a NEET at 16 or 18 by what is happening between nought and five, so we know that early years are absolutely crucial. Parents who go to work get much more childcare offered to them than the poorest parents who are not in work. Some would say that those children are the children who most need the support and guidance of trained professionals so that they get a different kind of stimulus and input than they might be getting at home. Are your policies guided by providing the best early years education for the children who most need it to close the disadvantage gap, or are they driven by getting women back to work to try to grow the economy?

That is the crucial crux of all the questions about the early education system, to be honest. You have to be able to do both.

What do you think is most important? What do you think the priority should be? Is it the children or is it giving parents free childcare so that they can go back to work?

You have to be able to do both. Both are important, and I believe passionately that getting women into work is a huge benefit for them, for their children and for the economy, and that is a wonderful thing. Childcare should be seen as infrastructure. It is important. It is massively beneficial to be able to do that. In my job, I care about child outcomes, child development and the quality of education. I care about school readiness, and we have this target on a good level of development. That is the right thing for us to focus on across the board to make sure that we are doing everything possible to get the best possible quality of early education and family support for all of our children, so that we can tackle disadvantage and get every child ready for school.

The Secretary of State is talking about her personal ambition. She is talking in broad terms about the future that she sees for the system. We are working through the early education and childcare review on these big questions, and it would be through that process that we would be able to set out further detail as a Government.

The process of the early education and childcare review is a multi-year one. We will work on that as quickly as we can. I cannot be specific, I am afraid, but it is through that process that I would expect that those kinds of decisions would be taken.

I am really worried about this. It is something that I have picked up a lot with parents who I have spoken to. I also worry that we need to understand more about the problem, because I do not think that the data that we have is sufficient to understand where there is a challenge. Essentially, what is happening is that there are parents with children with special educational needs who just cannot get a place, or do not even try, because they just do not think it is going to be possible for their child to have a place in a setting. We really want to solve that. I have heard some awful examples of parents who have said to me, “The only way I could get access to my 15 hours was if I stayed with my child the whole time”. That is unacceptable, so this is where we are doing some work. It was in our SEND consultation on what more we need to do in this area, and we are working very hard on trying to resolve those questions so that we can get the data, evidence and support that we need. That is why our training package matters, because, as I said earlier, the evidence shows that, if staff have the training, it massively increases confidence, as well as the number of places provided. It is also why the simplification of the SENIF and the DAF, as well as the inclusive early years fund, which is additional inclusive funding that we are putting into early years, now matter, so that there is the money there. It is also why Experts at Hand matters. Of course, it is also important to note that the huge £3.7 billion capital investment from our SEND reforms will also go into the early years, which can help with this challenge too. I would also just mention the Best Start inclusion practitioners who will be working out of every hub, whose job it is going to be to support those families where they are struggling with finding a place or is navigating the system, to make sure that they get the help and support that they need.

Money has gone in this year; £47 billion into the inclusive early years fund is already with settings, and so there will be an immediate benefit. We are working rapidly on the training programmes that we want to see rolled out. We are working hard on responding to some of the bigger questions. There will be a need to develop the policy in response to the consultation, but there is money now. Chris has written a number down next to me, which must mean that I need to clarify my figures.

No, you are right.

The funding has gone in for this year, which is 2026-27.

That is a really important question. Overall, we do not think that there is a sufficiency problem with childcare. As I said earlier, 93% get their top three choice. There is lots of provision, and the sector has responded magnificently and expanded hugely to the extension of the entitlements. There are places, sometimes in rural or more disadvantaged areas, where there is a lack of provision. We are trying to do what we can on that. The first thing that I would say is that we support local authorities, which have the sufficiency duty. We are checking in with them and giving them the help and support that they need to make sure that they are meeting it. Secondly, on disadvantaged provision in particular, that is where our school-based nurseries programme is quite important. Some 600 school-based nurseries have benefited from funding so far, and there is more to come. Over a third are in disadvantaged areas. That is also where other policy decisions, such as the early years teacher incentive in the more disadvantaged areas, with the £4,500 payment that Chris was talking about earlier, also helps to ensure that we have that good provision in areas where we worry that there is not enough.

Maintained nursery schools are a precious resource within our early years landscape. They do a lot of exactly what the Government want the early years sector to do. They have qualified teachers. They are inclusive settings with a high level of expertise for children with SEND, as well as purpose-built facilities. They are an excellent resource. They do not currently have a long-term, sustainable future in terms of their funding, and they continue to face the pressure of closure right across the country. We have only about 370 of them left, and they continue to face that pressure. The Government have been largely silent on the future of maintained nursery schools. I know this, because I have pushed in correspondence myself, and I have two brilliant maintained nursery schools in my constituency. What is the plan for maintained nursery schools? It is a really uncomfortable contradiction at the moment that we have this resource that is doing everything the Government would want of the sector and has a huge amount of capacity, but we are in the situation where, as the Government are seeking to expand school-based nurseries, maintained nursery schools are facing closure. It cannot go on in this way without a resolution forever. What are the Government doing to try to get to a longer-term, sustainable situation for maintained nursery schools?

I love maintained nursery schools as well. I think that they are brilliant. I talk about them a lot, as Chris will attest. My boys went to a brilliant maintained nursery school. They are consistently best practice across the sector, because they do all of the things that you say. They have SENCO. They have a teacher. They have a head teacher. They are often co-located in Sure Start, which now will be Best Start family hub provision, so that co-located family support with fantastic early education. It is a best practice model that we should learn a lot from. I am very proud of the 376 maintained nursery schools that we have. I am very conscious of your point about the challenge that many are facing within the local authority context. That is why we have additional supplementary funding for maintained nursery schools, which I think is £90 million a year. They will continue to be at the heart of our system and to be leading best practice. In fact, so many of our Stronger Practice hubs are in maintained nursery schools for the very reason that they really lead the way, and we would want to protect them for the future.

I absolutely recognise the picture that you described, Chair. We also see nursery schools that thrive through a combination of provision, often for children with particularly acute SEND, and roles such as partnership with a Best Start family hub or a Stronger Practice hub, where they have used other funding streams to consolidate and build that place of local expertise. Where they are really thriving, you can really see the value that they add. What we want to do is to encourage local authorities to find what that route is where they can get that value and use the additional funding to leverage that value from the existing wonderful network of nursery schools.

Do you have any plans to engage with the maintained nursery sector across the country and to discuss with them what might be done to get to this situation where they are no longer feeling like they are constantly in crisis or at risk?

Yes. It was my great pleasure to speak at their conference, not recently but a few months ago, and I would very much like to continue that conversation. Your suggestion of some more structured engagement with maintained nursery schools is a good idea, Chair, and one that I will take away, because I hugely value the contribution that they make.

Thank you very much. That brings our questions to a close for this morning. We will be in touch with you when we have finalised our report in due course, but thank you very much for taking the time to be with us to answer our questions today. That brings our session to a close.