Pre-School Education: Finance

Annette Brooke
To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what estimate he has made of the (a) overall cost of introducing the Early Years Foundation Stage and (b) cost of monitoring the 69 learning goals in (i) 2009-10 and (ii) 2010-11.

Beverley Hughes
The EYFS Framework was launched on 13 March 2007 and became a statutory requirement from September 2008. The cost of developing, designing and printing the original Early Years Foundation Stage statutory guidance pack for providers was £610,000. The cost of the information and communications activity surrounding the launch of the EYFS was £245,000 which included communications to raise awareness, launch events, leaflets to parents, surveys exercises and media activities.

The Department funded Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) training and development in schools through the School's Standard Fund. The level of funding provided was £5 million in 2007-08 and £7.9 million in 2008-09.

EYFS training and development in the private, voluntary and independent sector is funded through the General Sure Start Grant (GSSG). We topped up this funding during 2007-08 with an additional £7 million exclusively for the level 3 certificate in EYFS. At the same time we enabled greater flexibility of the Transformation Fund, which is designed to raise the level of professional qualifications in the early years workforce, to enable further EYFS training for the private, voluntary and independent sector. Because of the way we fund local authorities through these broad grants it is not possible to provide a breakdown of how much was spent specifically on EYFS training per se.

The Department funded QCA a total of £485,000 in 2007-08 and £888,000 in 2008-09 to provide guidance and materials, such as the EYFSP handbook and video exemplifications to support practitioners to monitor each child's achievements against the learning goals in the EYFS profile. This funding also includes the range of activities and support that QCA provides to local authorities, including accredited training and to make sure practitioner judgements are moderated and that the data are secure. We also funded QCA a total of £290,000 in 2008-09 to process and manage applications for exemptions from the EYFS learning and development requirements.

Mrs. Maria Miller
To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) how much funding has been allocated to the extension of the entitlement to free early education to all two year-olds;

(2) what estimate he has made of the cost of extending entitlement to free early education to all parents with children of two years of age additional to the funding allocated to the extension of that entitlement to the parents of the 15 per cent. the most disadvantaged two year-olds in each local authority.

Beverley Hughes
We are extending a pilot, offering free early learning and childcare to 15 per cent. of the most disadvantaged two year olds in every local authority, over the next two years.

Funding has been allocated until March 2011 to support this.

Decisions regarding the pace and scale of further rollout will be taken as part of the next spending review.