Minister asked for evidence to back up funding claims
By Rachel Lawler
The Alliance has asked the Department for Education to provide the evidence supporting Vicky Ford鈥檚 claim that the 1.2% increase in early years funding, due in April 2021, will cover the cost of the increased National Living Wage.
As of April 2021, the National Living Wage (NLW) will increase to 拢8.91 an hour 鈥 up 2.2% from 拢8.72 an hour. Eligibility for the NLW will also be extended to include 23 and 24 year olds.
The Treasury has outlined plans to increase the rate of funding paid to local authorities for the government鈥檚 funded hours schemes by 1.2%.
Last week, the children and families minister claimed that the planned increase will 鈥減ay for the rate increase that is higher than the cost that nurseries may face from the uplift to the national living wage鈥 while speaking at a Westminster Hall debate.
However, in response to a from shadow children and early years minister Tulip Siddiq, Ford admitted that the DfE does not know how many early years providers will be affected by this change.
Ford said: 鈥淒ata for early years staff aged 23 to 24 is not available because the data is banded into age groups. She said that the DfE only had data on the number of staff aged between 21 and 24.
The Alliance has written to the children and families minister to ask for the details of the computation underpinning her statement.
Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Alliance, commented: "How is it possible for the Department for Education to claim that this small rise in early years funding will cover the cost of the upcoming national living wage increase when it doesn't even know what proportion of the workforce will be eligible for that increase?
"Time and time again, we see the government claim that the funding that the sector receives is more than enough to cover rising costs, when the figures simply don't stack up. If the DfE want to claim that a 1% increase in funding is more than enough to meet the rising cost of wages, then it needs to have the data to back this up.
"At a time when so many nurseries, pre-schools and childminders are hanging on by their fingernails, any discussions around sufficiency of funding need to be accurate and transparent. As such, we look forward to the DfE publishing the details of the calculation they have based this claim on shortly."