Except for households blessed with rather generous incomes, most mothers these days have to work to keep a family decently fed and housed. Some kind of subsidised childcare is therefore an unfortunate necessity. The government recognises this, and has just introduced a new scheme. When fully up and running, it will give parents working full-time who earn less than £100,000 a free 570 hours a year of child-minding or early education for each child between nine months and four years. Plus it will (in effect) also hand them a basic rate tax deduction if they want to spend a further £10,000 per year on it. This will be over and above a free 570 hours available to any parent of any child aged three or four.
Generous? On the contrary, not nearly enough, says a body called the Early Education and Childcare Coalition (EECC) in a report produced this morning. Free childcare needs to go to all children up to their fifth birthday without exception, whether or not the parents are working.
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