Alliance comments on confirmation of average early years funding rates increase for 2023/24
The Early Years Alliance has issued a comment in response to the announcement from the Department for Education that local authorities in England will receive average funding increases of 3.4% for the three-and four-year-old early entitlement offer and 4% for the two-year-old early entitlement offer in 2023/24.
Commenting, Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, said:
"The early years is in crisis. What our sector needs is a comprehensive long-term strategy underpinned by substantial investment. What we are getting is the equivalent of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
"Nurseries, pre-schools and childminding settings are dealing with the consequences of years of government underfunding, alongside soaring energy prices, sky-high inflation rates and record increases in the national living and minimum wage. And yet, average funding increases of no more than 4% will amount to pennies in practice – and a few extra pennies on an already-wholly insufficient funding rate isn't going to stop prices going up for parents, or more and more settings being forced to close their doors for good.
"When it came to schools, the Chancellor rightly recognised that what the government had committed to at the last Spending Review was not enough to tackle the financial challenges that the sector is currently facing and took urgent steps to address this through a £2.3 billion boost in funding. So why should the early years be any different?
"The government knows full well that early years funding is nowhere near what it needs to be to safeguard the future of the sector. What will it take for ministers to stop pretending otherwise and actually do something about it?"