UK Parliament Education Committee: Call for Evidence

Support for childcare and the early years

Bright Horizons employs over 7,000 people in the UK, the majority of whom are front-line workers providing high quality early years education in our around 300 community and workplace nurseries. We also work with over 420 of the UK’s leading employers on programmes to support and empower working parents and carers, ranging from child and elder care solutions to coaching and online resources.

As part of our commitment to evidence-based practice, we produce regular research, such as the Modern Families Index (gauging the needs and aspirations of the UK’s working parents and carers annually since 2012), the Parental Leave Benchmark, the Work+Family Snapshot (with employees of our clients) and one-off research such as the recent rigorous evaluation of our wellbeing-centred curriculum Bright Beginnings which includes and moves beyond the Early Years Foundation Stage.

Summary of Bright Horizons response

1. Provision is not currently meeting needs. We believe employers could be part of the solution.
2. We bring evidence on the vital role of childcare in empowering female labour market participation. We comment on the disproportionate absence of education budget directed to the under 5s considering their group size relative to the under 18s and the pivotal role of early development in life chances for children as well as parental employment. We propose looking again at the workplace nursery tax exemption and bring forward several advantages of widening tax exemptions to include partnerships with groups of community nurseries. We also touch on provisions for job seekers and apprentices.
3. We explore different ways of targeting funding and propose that unused tax-free childcare funding might be better re-purposed to more closely covering the cost of funded childcare places.
4. We propose making the process more affordable to recruit from elsewhere in Europe when all UK avenues have been explored (and with a long-term focus on UK recruitment). We make other suggestions to ease hiring by reviewing the qualified / unqualified ratio at beginning and end of day, revisiting the GCSE maths qualification and other proposals.
5. We propose: a more consistent process for funding applications; starting SEND services at age 0 instead of when starting school; a standardised template for Early Health Care Plans; improved SEND training for early years practitioners and raising the status of the SENCo. Finally, we reflect that inclusion for all needs to be the focus, with a mindset that celebrates difference.
6. We suggest that a focus on ‘school readiness’ introduces an artificial concept of separate stages and appears to overlook the role of early years education as a valuable end in itself. We recognise that a definition of school readiness could have value as a developmental tool for practitioners as long as key stakeholders from all stages are involved. Finally, we reflect on the importance of funding in supporting all learners, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
7. We comment that the Sure Start flawed commercial model did not support the good aims of this scheme.

Our submission

Childcare Entitlements

1. How affordable and easy to understand is the current provision of childcare in England and what steps, if any, could be taken to improve it, especially in relation to families living within the most deprived areas in England?

Overall provision: there is a continuing decline in number of providers and places as outlined by Ofsted, with a particular loss of childminders and smaller providers from the sector due to increased costs and insufficient funding, and particularly in deprived areas.

Ease of understanding: it is well-established that many families who may need it most are missing out on support such as tax-free childcare, possibly still as many as 800,000 of the eligible 1.3m due to a range of barriers. Bright Horizons has joined in with efforts to clarify and promote this. We see a role for employers in assisting in access to quality, affordable childcare, as outlined further below. As a minimum, employers might be involved in administering tax-free childcare benefits which would encourage more people to return to work with a simplified process for accessing this money. Currently, it is a complex process,requiring parents to re-validate their eligibility every three months, which is quite an overhead.

Affordability: Our forthcoming 2023 Modern Families Index survey report (to be published in February 2023) drawing on a random sample of 3,000 UK working parents will show that families with children aged 0-2 are currently spending 23% of their monthly take home salary on childcare, and this decreases only slightly to 20% for children aged 3-5.

An alternative: Our belief is that a very effective step in increasing access to quality, affordable and easy-to-understand provision would be to empower employers to form part of the solution. This could be achieved through clarifying the workplace nursery exemption as outlined below under point 2.
 

2. Are the current entitlements providing parents/carers with sufficient childcare, and to what extent are childcare costs affecting parents/carers from returning to work full-time?

In a survey of 3,781 working parents conducted by Bright Horizons in September 2022, 13% said they were considering not returning to work after parental leave due to rising living costs.

There are concerns about recruiting and retaining skilled workers generally and women in particular. Quality, affordable, accessible childcare is a known link in the chain for women to work and to progress to more senior roles. Guidance from the Government Equalities Office underlines the role of childcare as a clear component of the evidence-based family-friendly strategies for closing the Gender Pay Gap. It is important for employers to have access to proven methods for addressing the gender pay gap given progress on closing the gap has been slow in recent years, according to analysis by PwC.

The Fawcett Society Review of Childcare Systems, highlights progressive changes taking place currently in several childcare systems around the world, linked with their impact on female labour market participation and quality outcomes. In Canada, the programme underway aims to makes childcare available to individuals for $10 a day and is acknowledged as linked with a rise in female employment. Further, employer-supported creches and shared ‘inter-entreprise’ creches are readily available and well utilised in France, for example.

There was good evidence in the documentation for the BEIS Consultation ending Nov 2019: ‘Good Work Plan – Proposals to support families’ of the decisive role of childcare in enabling female workforce participation. A box on p16 of the consultation document stated: “OECD evidence suggests that affordable quality childcare is the main driver in achieving better female labour market participation outcomes … and these effects are much more robust than the effects of paid leave or other family benefits. The evidence suggests a positive correlation between the provision of childcare services for parents of children under three years old and female participation in the labour market (full-time and part-time employment).”

The proportion of the population in England and Wales represented by children aged 0-4 is at odds with the proportion of the whole (0-18) education budget spent on this group. Figures from 2018 suggest that the proportion of the England and Wales population under 18 is 21% and that 6.2% of the overall population are under 5 years old. This is the largest group among the under 18s and represents 30% or 3 in 10 of our youth. We do not hear of a plan to direct 30% of the education spend towards this group, despite the need to enable parents to work as well as ample evidence of the vital importance of those 0-5 years in terms of development and future life chances as indicated in the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood research and many other sources. 

The burden cannot fall solely on the government to fund childcare. We would like to explore together opening up innovative solutions that enable key stakeholders such as employers to be part of the solution in a manner that benefits families, employers and providers. New thinking is vital to creating a sustainable sector and putting UK on the right footing to enable those who wish to work to do so.

Here we outline 2 proposals to improve availability and accessibility:

a)      Clarifying the scope of the workplace nursery tax exemption to enable employers to be part of the solution

b)      Expanding childcare solutions for job seekers and apprentices

a)      Clarifying the scope of workplace nursery tax exemption to enable employers to be part of the solution

Bright Horizons proposes making it easier for employers to play a role by clarifying taxation rules.

As above, childcare is a decisive enabler for working parents to work, and key to closing the Gender Pay Gap. Bright Horizons’ experience of working with over 420 of the UK’s leading employers on a range of solutions, including care solutions, shows many employers are keen to play a practical role in empowering working parents.

We have experienced an increase in employers asking for ways to support and subsidise childcare for their employees due to their concerns about a) cost of living b) mothers in particular dropping out of the workforce or holding back on career progression for childcare reasons and c) concerns about the availability of childcare and/or short notice closures. 

Not all employers have the means, the space or the timescale to create an onsite nursery and many have a dispersed workforce meaning care would be needed across a range of locations. Since employers understand the need and the business case for supporting with care, we urge another look at the workplace nursery exemption to enable more employers to provide access to care and to do this through entering into partnerships with existing local community nurseries. This is particularly relevant to those employers seeking to provide more places across a wider range of nurseries geographically, to support a hybrid workforce.

Currently, under the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 the employer must demonstrate a meaningful partnership and contribution to the management and running costs of the nursery. We believe this could be clarified to enable employers to enter into partnerships with groups of community nurseries where the involvement may amount to a substantial partnership overall yet with some of those nurseries providing just one or two places to the employer’s locally-based employees.

Making this clarification to the rules would:

• Support employers with more available skilled workers, particularly working parents and especially working mothers, and make employers part of the solution.
• Ease the cost of living for working parents through savings on tax and NI and stem the loss of talent arising when costs are unaffordable.
• Support the closing of the Gender Pay Gap in which progress is in danger of stalling since – in a male-female couple – the woman will often be the one to give up work when childcare costs are challenging, as she is often the one already on lower pay
• Bring NI savings for employers which can be ploughed into the partnership investment they must demonstrate under the rules.
• Support smaller providers who are already failing or in danger of failing due to spiralling costs of provision, giving greater certainty through employer partnerships.
• Demonstrate the Government’s commitment to making childcare more affordable for working parents, and the sector more sustainable.
• Bring revenue to the Treasury, even allowing for salary sacrifice.
• Bring the economic benefits of a more engaged, loyal, productive, mentally healthy and ambitious workforce as outlined in our research (infographic below).
• Assist with the flexibility of workers – who no longer attend their place of work for 5 days a week, in line with government support for flexible working in forthcoming legislation.

In Bright Horizons’ 2022 survey of client employees, over 1,500 employees responded across 186 of our client organisations. The infographic below illustrates the positive impact for the employer, the employee and the economy of employees using workplace nursery schemes.

Making childcare more affordable and accessible by empowering more employers to contract with groups of nurseries could stem the drain of talent. It would encourage employers to play an active role as part of the solution to the availability of skilled workers who might otherwise fall out of the workforce or downshift their careers. It would be of all-round benefit to clarify the scope for employers to partner with groups of nurseries to support their hybrid workforces across different locations.

b)      Childcare solutions for job seekers and apprentices

Bright Horizons would urge another look at pinch points which currently keep some working parents economically inactive.

For job seekers, is there scope to connect with a short-term childcare booking system (such as the systems used to provide back-up care via employers) for those attending interviews who do not yet have formal childcare in place? This could be covered by government vouchers and triggered when a potential employer confirms an interview is taking place. The job seeker could reserve a two-to-three-hour slot to enable them to attend the interview.

Currently Apprentices can access childcare support through Universal Credit (UC) if they are eligible and yet many are unsure of their options or where they stand and often not in a good position to pay the provider up-front ahead of recovering payment.

Apprenticeships can be a popular route for returners from a career break, many of whom have children. To encourage skills development and economic activity, the childcare support through UC could be promoted more routinely to Apprentices with a possible provision for upfront subsidy in the initial period.

3. Whether the current Tax-Free Childcare scheme, and support for childcare from the benefits and tax credit system, is working effectively or whether these subsidies could be better used within other childcare subsidies.

The low uptake of TFC indicates that further work needs to be undertaken to promote this to parents and carers, or to repurpose it.

If the option of putting funds directly into an account for parents (Tax-Free Childcare) has not gained traction, other options to explore would be:

• Covering provider costs more fully for the current ‘free’ childcare hours, enhancing the ability of providers to promote and encourage take up of the 15 or 30 hours childcare schemes.
• Finding a way to ensure that childcare funding which goes through local authorities is more consistently distributed, as the discrepancy in the amounts received for each child varies significantly between authorities.
• Empowering employers to be a more regular part of the solution as above
• Removing the requirement to regularly re-apply for funding, which adds to complexity and increases burden on providers, especially small providers.
• Repurposing funds into subsidised childcare which starts from the end of maternity, adoption or similar parental leave.
• Recognising that for many careers, 15 or 30 hours is not sufficient for working families, and that 3 year old funding creates a career break.
• Setting aside the insufficiency of 15 to 30 hours, options could look something like the below:

Early years provision

4. What challenges do early years providers face in terms of workforce, including recruiting, and retaining qualified staff, and the barriers faced by individuals joining the profession? To what extent has the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated workforce challenges?
    

Some of the following is similar to our submission to the BEIS Call for Evidence in July 2022.

It is well-established that the Early Years sector is facing challenges in recruitment and retention of qualified staff. We wish to highlight issues regarding the cost of hiring in Europe for roles in areas where we have failed to hire in the UK, despite consistent efforts.

As context, the sector has seen the biggest drop in the number of providers in more than six years, especially in deprived areas, as smaller providers in particular struggle to get by with rising costs – including escalating energy costs – and challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled educators.

Bright Horizons made a significant investment in pay and benefits for early years educators back in March 2022 and is finding that many who had contemplated leaving the sector do want to stay when the cost of living is addressed; however not all providers are able to keep pace with cost pressures, particularly given the shortfall in funding levels provided by local councils.

Bright Horizons has also demonstrated a long-term commitment to providing high quality jobs and career development pathways for UK workers. We committed to enrolling 700 Apprentices in the UK in 2022, including 400 existing Apprentices and 300 new recruits. Our commitment to ongoing professional development and upskilling of early years practitioners addresses some of the criticisms levelled at the UK’s childcare system in reports such as the Fawcett Society Review of Childcare Systems which shines a light on the advantage brought by highly qualified workers in other wealthy liberal nations.

However, despite our investment in financial reward, our attractive career paths and our well-regarded brand (recognised, for example for our evidence-based Bright Beginnings curriculum), Bright Horizons has been unable to hire local workers in certain UK regions, particularly where the cost of living adds to the challenge for front-line workers. In Central London, Surrey, Cambridge, South London, Oxford, South East London, North London, , Edinburgh and some other UK locations, we have been unable to hire to roles which have been open for over a year despite a dedicated hiring team and concerted recruitment ‘sprints’ in the sense of regular, focused campaigns. We are told by agencies in the area that they have no staff available. All the named locations have over 10 current vacancies and some have considerably more.   

We have children on waiting lists to attend nurseries whom we are unable to accommodate due to the lack of qualified staff. Being unable to take on children, also means there are parents who are unable to work due to lack of suitable care. This is limiting for UK PLC and adds to the mental load for parents at a time when they have already experienced higher stresses due to the pandemic lockdowns followed by the cost of living crisis.

We have therefore begun to carry out recruitment drives internationally to bring skilled workers into the UK, including from Madrid. The cost of visas is onerous, and we ask that this be looked into, in order to smooth the way in the short term, to have enough workers with the right skills in the right places while we also keep our sights on longer-term UK recruitment. The government has provided cheaper visas for “essential businesses” such as logistics/lorry drivers. Why is early years education not classed as essential?

Currently, the Visa/Sponsorship costs for 25 new recruits stands at around £192,500 (around £7,700 per person) including legal fees, Government application fees, Certificates of Sponsorship, Immigration Skills Charges, Immigration Health Surcharges and English Language Assessments. There are further requirements bringing the cost per new hire to something approaching £12,000 per capita, which we view across the 3-year commitment they are obliged to make to us. These further costs include consultancy fees for translating and mapping candidates’ qualifications to ensure they match the stringent requirements of the UK and of Bright Horizons. There are also of course costs for travel for our team, advertising, relocation support and so on. There is some argument for sharing a proportion of the costs with the new recruits; however, the visa process in itself can be off-putting for candidates: and the candidate needs to demonstrate having £3,000 in the bank, which is a sizeable sum in a relatively low-paid sector, leaving little room for them to share the cost of the process. (As candidates sponsored by Bright Horizons, we vouch for them removing the need to show a minimum balance in their bank account).

We have survey feedback to demonstrate that candidates do get put off progressing their application due to the length and cost of the visa process.

Changes to Qualified Teacher Status from 1st Feb 2023 will include candidates requiring 1 year of post graduate experience which will further reduce our candidate pool size from Spain in particular where there is a high unemployment rate within the childcare sector

We propose that the cost of visas be reviewed to ease the short-term need to bring skilled workers into much-needed vacant positions enabling Bright Horizons and others to fulfil their role as childcare and early years education providers in the UK social and business infrastructure.

Further helpful measures would include

-          Removing business rates from early years settings to allow for greater investment in staffing.

-          Improving Local Authority (LA) fairness in giving equal amounts of funding and enabling forward-planning through LAs providing funding amounts more than one month in advance, again to aid workforce investment and planning.

-          Ease the requirements around qualified vs unqualified staff at beginning and end of day (with suitable risk assessments and unqualified staff on the rota to have attended a set of essential training courses such as Paediatric First Aid, an Introduction to Safeguarding and Understanding the Setting’s Pedagogy) so qualified staff can be focused on the core day.

-          Either remove the requirement for a Maths GCSE or influence the qualification curriculum so it is a relevant qualification with more content suited to staff working with children under five.

-          Rethink fast-tracking other degrees.

-          Ease the Visa application process as outlined above

5. Whether the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) system is meeting the needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), and the improvements that could be made to better support young children with SEND within early years provisions.

We propose: a more consistent process for funding applications; starting SEND services at age 0 instead of when starting school; a standardised template for Early Health Care Plans; improved SEND training for early years practitioners and raising the status of the SENCo. Finally, we reflect that inclusion for all needs to be the focus, with a mindset that celebrates difference.

In Bright Horizons, we work with a variety of Local Authorities (LA) and Health Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).  Each of these has different thresholds for support and different practices and processes.  Having a consistent approach to SEND across all these bodies would ensure a consistent support mechanism for all children irrespective of where they live. 

There also needs to be an acknowledgement that these services should start at 0 and not be reliant on the child starting formal education. Having some National Standards for identifying SEND in the Early Years would be helpful. However, we should be aware that children cannot be compartmentalised and therefore a ‘one size fits all’ model would not work.  All too often, formal assessment of SEND takes place when the child starts formal education and by doing this, we are missing the most important part of the child’s life where we can make the real difference.  Research has shown us that by 22 months, a child’s development can predict outcomes at age 26 (Feinstein, 2003) and by 2 years 75% of a child’s brain growth has occurred (Field 2010). This then confirms that delaying specialist intervention and/or assessment until children are 5 or 6 years old, is too late to enable them to fully benefit.

The March 2022 SEND Green Paper mentioned introducing a standardised national Early Health Care (EHC) Plan template This would be useful to providers, particularly those who work across geographical LA boundaries, with each LA having their own EHC plan format, which adds to the confusion.  There is urgent need for the creation of a faster, simpler and more consistent process for the application of SEND funding, to minimise the administrative burden on early years providers and to speed up the process for children and families. This would also go some way towards improving the clarity and transparency of the funding system, so all providers are clear about what funding is available, with clear guidance as to which children in their care are eligible.

SEND provision, and indeed an EHCP, can start at birth, but this seems to have been overlooked over the past few years, and in reality, most children do not receive funding or specialist help until they are 5 years old. 

The key focus should be to improve the child development knowledge of early years practitioners, so that they are fully able to engage in the 2-year check.  Training recently developed by the DfE, to address this need has been subject to sector review, and found to be of insufficient quality. The status of the SENCo in Early Years should be raised by recognising the specialist nature of the role, and greater availability of suitable specialist training.  High quality training on early child development should be an integral part of all early years qualifications and part of the LA support offer for private, voluntary and independent nurseries.  The links between health visitors and early years settings should be further strengthened though joint working practices, to ensure that the progress check is integrated.  Currently, this would not be possible due to limited numbers of health visitors in the community.

Any SENCo qualification for EY should include a focus on parent partnership and working with external agencies. SENCos need to be proficient in completing EHCP documentation and other SEND documents. However, key to the role is knowing how to support early diagnosis and the use of funding to adequately support children in the EYFS.  In addition, any qualification should aim to raise the status of the Early Years practitioner as a SEND specialist and professional educator.  All too often Early Years SENDCos are referred to as “just the nursery” or “just the nursery nurse” – EY practitioners spend a considerable proportion of each day with children, often as much or more than their parents and yet their views are often marginalised and minimised by LA SEND teams or other professionals.

Raising the standards for inclusion and making all settings a place for all children irrespective of their needs should be a priority.  In order to secure high quality educational provision for all children in the early years, we need to identify the barriers to learning, and truly acknowledge the benefits of early intervention by making changes to the current situation.  Children with SEND are not a problem that needs to be fixed; they are children just like any other. We need to change the mindset and celebrate their differences and diversities.  By doing this we will be able to effectively meet every child’s needs.

6. To what extent does the early years system adequately prepare young children for their transition into primary education, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
    

We suggest that a focus on ‘school readiness’ introduces an artificial concept of separate stages and appears to overlook the role of early years education as a valuable end in itself. We recognise that a definition of school readiness could have value as a developmental tool for practitioners as long as key stakeholders from all stages are involved. Finally, we reflect on the importance of funding in supporting all learners, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

This notion of ‘School Readiness’ has been discussed in many situations for a number of years. However, in reality the Early Years phase, is a phase in its own right, and should not be seen as a ‘preparation’ for anything. Our youngest children, who are under 5 years old, should be free to explore, make connections and develop new skills in their early years; they should continue to develop and learn as they move into primary education. Learning is a continuum and not a start-stop process that aligns one academic phase to another. The academic phases have no basis in child development and therefore, the idea that we should have any phase of education, that will prepare for the next is a red herring and based on a ‘top down’ approach. That said, by and large, Early Years pedagogy in the UK is currently based on international research, and the highest quality provision, which is regulated by the EYFS framework (2021), allows children the time and space to explore, whilst their progress towards the Early Learning Goals (ELGs) is promoted.

A definition of ‘School Readiness’ could be provided to practitioners/providers to provide a focus for a developmental review. However, this in itself would be subject to discussion, and it would be essential to involve ‘the right’ individuals in forming the definition to avoid setting children up for failure, through the introduction of inappropriate definitions.

In addition, funding streams, such as Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP), post-code deprivation funding (IDACI - Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index) serve to add additional supplements to an underfunded early education system. A review of these ‘top up’ funds would benefit children from disadvantaged backgrounds, while a review of early years funding for 2,3 and 4-year-olds would benefit all, including those children who are more vulnerable to social disadvantage. With the current state of early childhood provision in the UK and an increase in providers who are finding it impossible to sustain high quality provision and a staffing crisis in the sector, an urgent review of funding is essential in order that there is a sufficiency of provision for all children for the foreseeable future.

7. The extent to which the reduction of Sure Start Children’s Centres has affected children and families, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the role of Family Hubs.

Sure Start Centres had the right intentions, but most were unsustainable due to the commercial model being set up incorrectly (above market wages for staff, yet running at a loss).