Full Description
Childcare is a larger political priority in the UK than it
ever has been before, and the target of unprecedented, and growing, levels of
public spending. Despite this, there is little clarity on what the purpose of
childcare policy is.
Politicians and policymakers often talk as though childcare
policy is a labour market intervention, designed to increase the employment
rate of mothers, or an educational one, designed to improve educational
outcomes for children. However, if this is truly what childcare policy is for,
then it is highly inefficient: both of these outcomes could likely be achieved
more effectively by other means.
Current childcare policy is also not effective at achieving
what we believe it should be aiming for, which is supporting parents with the
cost of raising children in the early years. This is a goal that seems to have
been lost sight of, but it is an important one. Parents often face very high
financial costs in the years between the end of parental leave and when their
children start school, because those children have to be provided with
full-time adult supervision. Whether parents achieve this by paying for
childcare or doing it themselves at the expense of paid work, these costs for
some may be prohibitively high.
This report makes several suggestions for reforms that would
re-orient childcare policy towards the objective of supporting parents,
including cash support, tax reform, and streamlining childcare regulation.
