To ask the Minister of Education to provide an update on plans to support childcare for school-age children.

Mr Givan

When I took up post in February, I realised that urgent action was needed to make childcare more affordable. I secured an additional £25 million of Executive funding in May to implement a package of measures in this financial year that are already making a real difference to thousands of children and families across Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland childcare subsidy scheme, which came into operation in September of this year, is one element of that package. Parents now benefit every month from the scheme's 15% subsidy. The scheme is currently focused on working parents who are eligible for tax-free childcare and have children below primary school age. We prioritised that group because they typically face the highest costs due to their requirement for more childcare hours. This is also the period when mothers make decisions about returning to employment following maternity leave, and the high cost of childcare can be a significant barrier. Uptake of the scheme has exceeded our expectations, with nearly 13,300 children and 1,550 providers registered and £2 million in savings delivered for families in September and October. When combined with the tax-free childcare, those parents will have saved over £4 million in total. Having listened to both parents and providers, it is my intention to bid for the funding required to sustain the scheme beyond the end of March 2025 and, indeed, until a longer-term strategy is in place. I appreciate that there have also been calls to increase the level of the subsidy and to extend it to others, such as parents with school-age children. I will consider those options over the coming months. The scheme is set up in such a way that we can easily expand it, if there is a case to do so and the required funding is made available by the Executive. I will bring forward recommendations in due course.

Mr Givan

The Member is right to raise the issue of helping to support school-age children. I alluded to that in the original response. The reason we focused on preschool-age children is that that is typically the period when families face the highest childcare costs. It is in that period that mothers are transitioning back to work following maternity leave. The initial focus was on that category of children not only because of childcare costs but because the early years are critical to the educational value that an early learning childcare strategy needs to have. That has been the focus. We have developed many other aspects of the scheme. Prioritising children of preschool age is, I think, justified, but I very much agree with the Member. I want to do more, and I have every intention of making proposals to do more. I hope that Executive colleagues will support me to provide the necessary resources.

Mrs Mason

Minister, the community and voluntary sector provides first-class care for children of school age with breakfast clubs and after-school clubs. Unfortunately, we do not have enough of them. What plans do you have to further support and stabilise that sector, specifically in respect of staff and attracting new workers to the sector?

Mr Givan

Childcare providers are in a private marketplace. How would that be regulated? How would you do it? I am picking up something that another Member asked about how you would provide a scheme to support the pay and the terms and conditions of the people involved in after-school clubs and so on. One of the proposals in the early years childcare strategy is to identify whether there is a need to support businesses where there could be a critical failure in the marketplace. The Department for the Economy leads on that. I am supporting it in identifying whether there are measures that we need to take forward around supporting businesses and employment practices. I hope that that work can be completed before the end of the financial year to help inform the outworkings of the strategy.

Mr Martin

In light of the Budget the week before last and the changes to employers' National Insurance contributions and the minimum wage, is the Minister considering additional support for the childcare sector generally?

Mr Givan

Obviously, there has been an impact as a result of the change that has been made through the National Insurance contributions and the minimum wage. Many businesses are raising the issue of how they will meet the additional expenditure that is now required. As we review the outworkings of all of that, we will seek to provide as much support as we can. That is part of the work that the Department for the Economy is looking at in its assessment of employment and helping to meet the need, but that is something for the Department for the Economy to lead on and provide the evidence base. If the Executive want to provide support, that will be a wider Executive decision outwith what I would be able to do in the Department of Education.

Mrs Guy

I have met many stakeholders in the childcare and early years sectors, and the consensus seems to be that the Department has everything that it needs to produce a childcare strategy. What specifically is holding up the publication of an early learning and childcare strategy?

Mr Givan

The Executive and I, as Minister, wanted to make sure that action was taken, not just words. A strategy is a document that outlines what you want to do. I wanted to do something, and the Executive wanted to do something, hence the focus has been on standing up the childcare subsidy scheme as well as all of the other support that we have put in, for example, to stabilise Sure Start funding that we provided to early years organisations. If I had gone with a strategy first, Members would rightly have asked me when I was going to take action. I have taken action, and the benefit of the approach that I have taken is that 13,300 children and more than 1,500 providers are registered. That all provides us with information and gives us the data that we need around the costs and patterns here, which then informs the strategy. I can advise the Member that, in the past number of weeks, the Department has turned to developing the comprehensive strategy. I have said before that I want this to be brought to the Executive in 2025, and I remain committed to doing that. Initially, we wanted to take action, and now the work on the strategy has started.

Ms McLaughlin

The general allocation of £170 million for education in the monitoring round is very welcome. Will any of the money go to the provision of 22·5 funded preschool hours a week? If not, how can the Executive deliver on their key priority in the Programme for Government?

Mr Givan

I assure the Member that we have already secured the funding to take forward the first tranche of the standardisation programme within the early learning and childcare funding pot. Twenty-five million pounds was allocated to that, and that is allowing us to identify at least 100 settings that, by 1 September next year, should be able to deliver over 2,000 more places moving from part-time provision to full-time provision, which is that 22·5 hours. I have already announced for consultation two tranches that identify the settings on the basis of the criteria that have been used. There is another tranche that needs to be announced to do that. The Executive have already agreed that we are moving towards delivering 22·5 hours of provision in our preschool settings, whether that is statutory or non-statutory. Work is taking place for the first phase of that to start. It will become more challenging, as we need capital funding to increase the physical capacity of some of the premises to fulfil that commitment, but we have started that work.