Professionals and providers: share your experiences of childcare services
Overview
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is looking into early years education and childcare services.
These are services for children from birth until they start school around the age of 4 or 5 years old which are delivered by:
- childminders
-
providers such as nurseries, pre-schools or playgroups
Throughout this call for views, we refer to these services as “childcare”.
They do not include services for school-age children (for example, school wraparound care or holiday clubs).
We want to hear from you
We want to hear from anyone involved in providing early years education and childcare services, including:
- people who own or manage early years education and childcare services
- childminders
- early years teachers and teaching assistants
- childcare assistants
- apprentices
- accountants and administrators for early years education and childcare services
- any other early years education and childcare services professional
We want to hear your views on childcare, including:
- what is working well
- any challenges and opportunities in the sector
- your suggestions for any improvements
Your responses will help us to develop our understanding of this sector, and the experiences of early years professionals, as we undertake our market study.
How we handle responses
Depending on the number of responses we get, we are likely to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help us review them. If the CMA does make use of AI, it will say so in a future update.
We will not publish individual responses in full, but we expect to publish some views and quotes (without naming who said them), key numbers, and a summary of the broad themes arising from the responses.
As well as this call for views for families, we're inviting:
to share their views.
We're also running a consultation on the proposed scope of the CMA’s market study. Please go to the main case page if you'd like to share additional views on how the CMA should focus its work.
What we're looking at
The formal scope of our market study is England only, because funding arrangements and regulations for childcare are different in each of the four UK nations.
However, you are welcome to share your views if you work elsewhere in the UK. We would appreciate your insights and will use them to understand how things are similar or different across the nations.
Extra support
If you need help to respond, email: childcare@cma.gov.uk.
Interests
- Markets