Project to find innovative approaches to early years partnerships.

The Government is aware of the challenges parents face with childcare, particularly with costs and finding a suitable place. The Government has made a clear its intention to reform early years provision and this can be seen through its manifesto commitment to give 30 hours of funded childcare to working parents of three and four year olds by 2017.

This will not be without its challenges and there will be a need for more places, and more flexibility and partnership working in the childcare market in order to deliver this commitment. For some time, the Government has encouraged partnerships between schools and third party providers for early years provision.

Where schools are not able or do not want to run provision themselves, it can be a good solution for meeting the needs of parents and children. Partnership working is likely to be an important feature of the delivery of the 30 hours entitlement, and the project proposed here will inform the Early Implementers – the aim being that by using others’ experience and knowledge to minimise the time spent establishing and managing partnerships, the Early Implementers can concentrate on the actual delivery of the 30 hours entitlement.

The DfE is therefore seeking to award a four month contract to support the delivery of the 30 hours entitlement and use this project to: a) learn how existing early years partnerships work and what makes them successful in order to share experience widely; b) increase the amount of early years provision through schools by directly supporting those interested in establishing new partnerships; and c) inform the early implementers that will be running from September 2016 to test different ways of delivering the 30 hours commitment. Additional information: Download invitation to tender letter from the 'Attachments' section.