Methodology

Expansion to early childcare entitlements: Childcare Experiences Survey

• Published: 12 May 2025

1. Policy background and context

The Government has confirmed its commitment (opens in a new tab) to deliver the expansion in funded childcare entitlements first announced by the previous government at the 2023 Spring Budget. The measures announced will expand the existing system by offering up to 30 funded hours of childcare per week over 38 weeks of the year to children aged 9 months up to 2 years whose parents meet the same income eligibility criteria as applied to the existing 30 hours entitlement for 3- and 4-year-olds. 

The policy is being delivered by the Department for Education (DfE) through a phased rollout with the new entitlement offered in full from September 2025. Spend on funded childcare entitlements is forecast to increase from £4 billion a year to £8 billion a year at the end of the rollout.

The expanded entitlements rollout is being delivered in three phases:

• April 2024 – 15 hours funded childcare for 2-year-olds. 
• September 2024 – 15 hours funded childcare from 9 months old up to age 3. 
• September 2025 – 30 hours funded childcare from 9 months old up to age 3.

The purpose of this programme is to support more parents to enter the workforce or increase their existing working hours to become more economically active by improving the affordability, availability and flexibility of childcare. 

Childcare & Early Years Entitlements Evaluation 

DfE are leading the evaluation of the expansion as required by Cabinet Office and His Majesty’s Treasury. 

The policy is undergoing a comprehensive evaluation, as follows:

• A process evaluation of the Expanded Early Years Childcare Entitlements to understand how successfully the policy has been delivered by Local Authorities (LAs) and Early Years (EY) providers, and the experience of parents. 
• An impact evaluation of the new policy on parents, children and the early years sector as well as the value for money assessment. 
• The Childcare Experiences Survey of parents who have recently applied for the new childcare entitlement offer.

Childcare Experiences Survey

As part of this evaluation DfE need to collect data on the experiences of parents who are taking up the new entitlement offer, including those who may apply for a code via Childcare Choices, and the Eligibility Checking Service and then take up the offer, and those parents who may not have it validated and therefore do not take up the offer. 

Responses to the Childcare Experiences Survey will help inform how future childcare policies are delivered and findings will feed directly into evaluation of the new entitlement offer.   

For working parents who are entitled to the expanded childcare offer, six different cohorts will be tracked over two years (approximately one per term), starting in autumn 2024 with the pilot. Each cohort will receive a follow-up survey approximately six months after initial contact to measure any changes in their experiences of accessing childcare and employment. 

2. Aims and objectives of the study

The Department for Education’s (DfE) Childcare Experiences Survey programme was funded by the DfE and designed and delivered internally. To follow is information on how the data was obtained, the design and delivery of the research instrument, the methodology applied and the quality and reliability of the data.

The survey programme consists of six waves of initial data collection, each with a cohort of parents who have recently applied to use the working families childcare entitlement, plus a follow up for each cohort- totally 12 data collection rounds. Wave 1 (the current sample) was designed to be a pilot study. 

Research Aim

The aim of the survey is to understand the views and experiences of parents who have recently applied for funded childcare for working families under the Government’s childcare entitlements expansion. Findings will feed directly into the comprehensive evaluation programme,

Research Objectives

1. To explore the experiences of parents using the expanded entitlements in finding suitable childcare places; to identify common issues and key differences.
2. To explore the potential barriers to finding and using suitable childcare for families both eligible and ineligible for the new entitlements.  
3. To explore the experiences of parents applying for the expanded entitlements through Childcare Choices (opens in a new tab). 
4. To understand any changes in family and employment outcomes after the first six months following applying for the expanded entitlements.
5. To understand the experiences of parents in paying fees and additional charges for childcare.
    

3. Sampling

Issued sample 

DfE worked with His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to access the sample data via existing legislation. In September 2024, HMRC provided an extracted sample of customers who:

• had a live Child Benefit claim (ChB);
• had applied for working families’ childcare entitlements between 1st May-31st August 2024 (for their child to start childcare from September 2024).
• had a child claimed for born between 31st August 2021 and 30th November 2023 (i.e. aged 9 months to 2 years at the time of sampling).

Postal addresses on ChB records were matched to data on Childcare Services to establish the base population. Given the high take-up of the Child Benefit Record (CBR), this provides high coverage of dependent children in England, although it is likely that higher-income households (those where one or both partners earn £60,000 or more per year) are not included in the sample (see ‘Limitations of the data’ for more information). The sample was shared via HMRC Secure Data Exchange Service (SDES). 

Each survey wave targets a specific cohort, requiring a new sample to be drawn for each wave. These cohorts include all in-scope parents applying for new codes in the three months prior to the cut-off points for when their child is eligible to start using the entitlement support. For the current wave 1 sample, a stratified random sample of 39,971 parents and a reserve sample of 10,000 parents, were selected from the base population of 347,894. The samples were stratified proportionally by regions in England to capture geographical representativeness while ensuring where any labour market effects in the regions most affected by unemployment were identified. Secure Customer Records were removed from the base population prior to sampling. 

A stratified sampling approach was used to ensure that all geographical regions were represented.

The issued sample was stratified by regions; the targets were based on proportion of codes issued to each region within England. To ensure a higher representation of parents in lower-income areas, a sample boost was applied in regions with a high economic inactivity rate (opens in a new tab), particularly in the northern regions which may be experiencing a shortage of childcare. Economic inactivity was used as a proxy for deprivation, as the Index of Deprivation Affecting Children (IDACI) was out of date.

Achieved sample

The survey aimed to gather insights from families regarding the 15-hour funded childcare entitlement for working families. 6,771 participants began the survey. The screening process ensured that only eligible participants were included in the analysis. 6663 parents proceeded to the first question whereby 51 respondents were screened out for not having received a childcare code for at least one of their children aged 9 months to 2 years to receive funded childcare hours under the working families entitlement.

A total of 6,612 respondents who had received a childcare code (91% female, 9% male) in England completed the survey. 

4. Fieldwork

Parents were contacted by letter inviting them to take part in the survey. All invitation letters gave details on how to take part in the online survey, with a link and QR code. Parents were provided with an email address that they could use to contact if they experienced any difficulties. The letter contained an access code to complete the survey. See Appendix A for the survey invitation letter sent.

The survey was conducted using a 15–20 minute online questionnaire using Qualtrics. 

Fieldwork took place between 30th October and 6th December 2024. A chaser invitation letter was sent out in November 2024.

If a parent had more than one child eligible for the survey, the oldest child they were claiming working families entitlement for was selected.

At the end of the survey, respondents were asked to provide their name, email address and phone number if they consented to take part in a follow up survey, approximately six months after the current fieldwork had ended.

5. The questionnaire

The questionnaire covered the following topic areas:

Parental/Family characteristics

• Types of families (e.g. number of children, socio-economic status, location, lone/dual parented, etc.) using the expanded childcare entitlements.
• Types of jobs parents/carers using the expanded childcare entitlements hold, and how they differ from families’ ineligible for expanded entitlements childcare. 
• Types of childcare families use (Informal, formal, or both).

Applying for childcare 

• Motivations for parents to apply for the expanded childcare entitlements.
• Experiences of parents of applying for support with childcare via Childcare Choice.
• Reasons some parents applied for a code but did not go on to use the childcare.

Finding and Using childcare 

• Experiences of parents in finding an appropriate place for their child. 
• How access to provision differs between different types of families .
• How parents/carers feel about the childcare they currently use. How do they meet their needs and expectations, and whether this differs by family type.  
• What parents/carers use the time for while their children are in childcare.

Provider fees & charges 

• What fees providers charge. What these fees cover. Whether this was by choice, e.g. additional hours.
• What extra charges are parents paying for consumables (i.e. nappies, food, activities, etc).  
• How much a typical family pays towards childcare each month. 
• Perception of how affordable childcare is.

Employment 

• How parents’ intentions towards their own employment have changed from before their child was born. 
• How the expanded entitlements have affected parents’ decisions to stay at home or start/return to work.  
• To what extent childcare costs have affected parents’ decisions to keep or change their work circumstances to be eligible for the expanded entitlements.

Family outcomes 

• Looking forward, what the parents’ intentions are around childcare.
• What future intentions are around employment. 
• Parents’ views on the number of hours their child currently spends in childcare. 
• How parents feel about their children's wellbeing and development.  

6. Data processing and analysis

The survey script ensured that the correct routing was followed throughout the questionnaire and applied range checks, which prevented invalid values from being entered. 

The full set of survey responses were downloaded from Qualtrics and imported into RStudio. 

Some variables with multiple response options were grouped: 

• Household income (from £10k bands into £20k bands)
• Less common employment statuses of respondent and partner before the arrival of their child and at the time of the survey were grouped into an “Other” category, which was not reported on
• Weekly childcare hours used was grouped into ranges (except for mean/median calculations)

The following derived variables were created:

• The flag for whether parents look after any children with SEND: this was set to “has SEND children” if any of a parent’s children had special educational needs, a disability, or both (collectively denoted SEND).  If all of a parent’s children explicitly had no SEND, the flag was set to “no SEND children”.  Otherwise, the flag was considered unknown (including instances of “prefer not to say” for any children) and excluded from calculations involving SEND breakdowns.
• The age of the oldest child claimed for: for the majority of parents who only claimed entitlements for 1 child, this was that child’s age.  For parents who claimed for multiple children, it was the age of the oldest. 

Some text labels were shortened for readability in tables and graphs.  A small number of inconsistent labels were fixed.  

Data tables aggregating survey results for the desired demographic breakdowns were generated in RStudio.

7. Interpreting the data

Bases

The data tables show the total number of cases that were analysed (e.g. different types of families, income groups). The total base figures include all respondents who answered each question, or all respondents who were routed to a specific question. Thus, while the base description (e.g. respondents who look after children with SEND) may be the same across several data tables, the base sizes may differ slightly due to the exclusion of cases with missing data (those who did not answer the question).

Unweighted bases are presented throughout. This is the actual number of parents that responded to a given question.

In some tables, the column or row bases do not add up to the total base size, such as the counts per demographic group not summing to the total number who answered the question.  This means some respondents to that question did not indicate their demographic group. 

Where a base size contains fewer than 50 respondents, particular care must be taken, as confidence intervals around these estimates will be very wide, and hence the results should be treated with some caution.  This is indicated in the footnotes below tables where it applies.

Percentages

Due to rounding, percentage figures may not add up to 100 per cent. This also applies to questions where more than one answer can be given (‘multi-coded’ questions).

Continuous data

To summarise the continuous numerical data from parents’ responses to the question on weekly hours of childcare used, both median and mean values are included in the downloadable data files, but only the medians are reported here as they are less influenced by extreme values and are therefore considered a more appropriate measure of central tendency. It should be noted that ‘outlier’ values, those identified as being either impossible or suspect responses, were removed from the dataset prior to data analysis. As such, the extreme values which remain can be considered as valid responses which lie at the far ends of their respective distributions.

8. Limitations of the data

The figures presented here are drawn from the Childcare Experiences Survey, which is a push-to-web (online) survey of parents claiming Child Benefit, who had applied for working families’ childcare entitlements between 1st May-31st August 2024, and had a child aged 9 months to 2 years at the time of sampling.

The issued sample was stratified by regions; the targets were based on proportion of codes issued to them and then a sample boost was applied to areas of high economic inactivity (the northern regions) to try to capture a higher proportion of parents in lower income areas. However, due to participant anonymity during data collection, geographical data was not collected in the first wave. Without geographical data and measures of economic activity during the sampling stage, the achieved sample cannot be weighted to reflect the actual distribution of the population, potentially leading to biases in the results. However, as this was a pilot, the aim is to amend this in the future.

Response rate

The response rate for this survey was 17%. This is in line with other push-to-web surveys but lower than surveys that are carried out face to face. The relatively low response rate means that non-response bias is more likely.

Non-response bias

Non-response bias occurs when certain types of parents are less likely to respond to a survey than others. There is existing evidence [see pp. 71-76 Childcare and early years survey of parents 2023: Push-to-web mode trial (opens in a new tab)] that parents who respond to an online survey (rather than one conducted face-to-face) are more likely to be:

White, female, unmarried, living with a partner, more highly educated, in work, working from home at least some of the time (among those in work), living with a partner who was working from home at least some of the time (among those with a partner in work), in a household with two working parents, in a household earning £45,000 or more per year, and living in owner occupier accommodation’. 

Weighting was not possible to correct for non-response bias,  mainly because geographical data was not collected in the survey.

Non-coverage bias

It is likely that some higher-income households (those where one or both partners earn £60,000 or more per year) are not included in the sample. This is because the eligibility criteria for Child Benefit changed in 2013 so that higher-income households (those where one or both partners earn £60,000 or more per year) ceased to gain financially from Child Benefit, resulting in them becoming disproportionately likely to be missing from the Child Benefit Register (CBR). Using the CBR as the sole sampling frame introduces non-coverage bias that reduces the accuracy of survey estimates.

Although the issued sample was stratified to try to ensure that all geographical regions were represented it was not possible to calculate the distribution of geographical regions in the achieved sample because geographical data was not collected in the survey. This also meant that the data could not be weighted to correct for non-coverage bias.

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Early Years Entitlements and Delivery Analysis Team

Email: Your.childcare@education.gov.uk
Contact name: Hannah Doust

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