Education Bill

My Lords, many schools provide high-quality early education provided by parents that is good for getting children ready for school. However, schools can currently effectively offer only the free entitlement—the 15 hours a week, 38 weeks a year—that all three and four year-old children are entitled to. This is because they cannot charge for extra early years education that they provide during school hours for three and four year-old pupils over and above the 15-hours’ free entitlement. The previous Government took a power in the Childcare Act 2006 to make regulations enabling schools to charge for additional hours that they might wish to offer parents. The Bill, therefore, does not seek a power for schools to charge. It enables schools to reflect the costs of their provision in that charge. It is, in effect, a technical clause. It is about ensuring that charges for optional extras can include a proportion of building and accommodation costs and, for early years provision, the time of qualified teachers. Why are we proposing this change? Because making school-based early years provision sustainable will create greater choice for parents about the type, quality and flexibility of early years provision that they can take up for their child. We want to enable parents to take up provision above their free entitlement in the maintained sector, if they wish to, as they already can in private, voluntary and independent providers. Enabling schools to charge appropriately will help them to remain financially viable, but I stress that schools will not be permitted to make a profit from charging and will be able to charge only up to the costs of delivering the provision. I reassure the noble Baroness that that will of course be a reasonable charge and it must be within boundaries. Furthermore, it will not be permissible in any way for schools to charge for early education that is part of the free entitlement, including—I reassure the noble Baroness on this point, too—the new entitlement for disadvantaged two year-olds, or for reception provision. The Government remain committed to reception classes being free, with full-time provision of 25 hours a week from the September after the child turns four. The noble Baroness referred to the letters from my noble friend the Minister of 21 June and 20 July, which we hope will have given her further reassurances on those points. There is no ability for schools to charge for education during school hours for pupils of compulsory school age, and there is no ability for them to charge for hours provided to parents for free under the early years entitlement—a measure which the noble Baroness introduced and which we have extended in this Bill. We are committed to ensuring that reception provision is free, and there will be no ability to hold children up in reception classes, as she feared. Through the Bill, we want to ensure that schools can charge for additional, optional provision in a way that enables them to cover their costs and provides greater choice of provision for the parent and a consistent and high-quality early education for the child. If the noble Baroness raised other points which I have not covered, I will of course write to her, but I hope that, with those reassurances, she will feel happy to withdraw her objection to the clause standing part of the Bill.