On Thursday 1 December the Department for Education published its response (external link) to the Early Years Funding Consultation. The consultation launched in August was the third strand of the funding consultation. The outcome of the consultation is that:
A new early years national funding formula will allocate funding to local authorities (LAs) for the existing 15 hour entitlement for all three and four year olds and the addition 15 hours for children of eligible working parents. This will include a base rate and an uplift for additional needs.
- Hourly (average) funding rates will be increased to: £4.94 from £4.56 for three and four year olds and £5.39 from £5.09 for two year olds
- There will be a minimum funding rate to LAs of £4.30.
- LAs must pass at least 93% of funding to providers.
- For the duration of this Parliament an additional £55million a year supplementary funding will be provided to LAs to support maintained nursery schools in recognition of the higher costs these providers face.
- LAs will be able to use a limited set of funding supplements (no more than 10% of funding allocated to providers) to take account of deprivation, rurality/sparsity, flexibility and quality (workforce/leadership qualifications), and for English as an Additional Language.
- A new disability access fund will be introduced to support access to free entitlements – £12.5m per year (equivalent to £615 per child accessing their free entitlement).
- Legislation will be brought forward to require all areas to set up a local inclusion fund for children with special needs and disabilities. In future this will need to be included in the Local Offer.
- The Early Years Pupil Premium will continue.