Section 4 - Hours per week spent in formal childcare
Latest data
Published
Last updated
How many hours per week respondent's child was spending in formal childcare arrangements, by SEND.
On this page
Data set details
- Theme
- Early years
- Publication
- Expansion to early childcare entitlements: Childcare Experiences Survey
- Release type
- Number of rows
- 12
- Geographic levels
- National
- Indicators
- Mean hours of childcare used per week
- Median hours of childcare used per week
- Filters
- Demographic group
- Time period
- 2026
Data set preview
| time_period | time_identifier | geographic_level | country_code | country_name | demographic | demographic_group | mean_weekly_hours | median_weekly_hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Reporting year | National | E92000001 | England | Total | Total | 27.8 | 30 |
| 2026 | Reporting year | National | E92000001 | England | Main childcare type | Childminder | 33.3 | 30 |
| 2026 | Reporting year | National | E92000001 | England | Main childcare type | Nursery class attached to primary or infants' school | 24.7 | 27 |
| 2026 | Reporting year | National | E92000001 | England | Main childcare type | Nursery or pre-school | 31 | 30 |
| 2026 | Reporting year | National | E92000001 | England | Looking after any children with SEND? | has SEND children | 27.5 | 30 |
Variables in this data set
| Variable name | Variable description |
|---|---|
| demographic_group | Demographic group |
| mean_weekly_hours | Mean hours of childcare used per week |
| median_weekly_hours | Median hours of childcare used per week |
Footnotes
- Respondents were asked to indicate whether any children in their household have Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND). Those who answered "Yes" for any of their children, even if not the child the entitlements were claimed for, are labelled "has SEND children".
- Due to the extremely small sample size, respondents using more than 70 hours of childcare per week were considered outliers and excluded from analysis.
Using this data
Download the underlying data as a compressed ZIP file
View or create your own tables
View tables that we have built for you, or create your own tables from open data using our table tool
Download this data using code
Access this data using common programming languages using the URL below.
Example code
Contact us
If you have a specific enquiry about Section 4 - Hours per week spent in formal childcare statistics and data:
Early Years Entitlements Evaluation and Analysis Team
Email: Your.childcare@education.gov.ukContact name: Julia Moldawan