Alliance launches surveys on funding and expansion of entitlement offers
By Shannon Pite
The Early Years Alliance has today (Monday 10 July) launched parallel surveys for both providers and parents/carers on the current and new early entitlement offers.
The provider survey explores how the newly-increased funding for the existing offers compares to provider’s delivery costs, as well as how – or if – settings are planning to deliver funded one- and two-year-old places when the extended entitlement is introduced next year.
It also covers other elements of the government’s plan for the sector including policies to increase childminder numbers and the ratio changes for two-year-olds in group settings.
The parallel survey for parents and carers asks for views on how easy it currently is to access early years places and, for those respondents who have or are expecting children that will be eligible for the new offer for one-and two-year-olds, their plans to take up places via the extended entitlement scheme.
The launch of the surveys follows confirmation of local authority funding rates for the existing two, three and four-year-old offers from September. The government will also shortly publish its plans for the new offers for one- and two-year-olds for eligible working families, set to come into effect from April 2024.
Both surveys are open until Friday 21 July.
The provider survey can be accessed here: and the parent survey, here:
Commenting, Neil Leitch, CEO of the Early Years Alliance, said:“Ahead of one of the biggest expansions of the provision of early education and care, it has never been more important to hear directly from providers and parents on their experiences of both delivering and receiving the existing early entitlement offers, and their plans and expectations of how the new offers will work in practice – and critically, to understand whether or not these expectations are aligned.
“All too often, early years policies are announced without the government sufficiently considering how they will impact the sector, and whether or not the families they are aimed at will actually benefit from them in practice. We hope, therefore, that these surveys will offer much-needed insight into the impact of the government's expansion plans, and that as many providers and families as possible respond and make their voices heard.”