Childcare and early years survey of parents 2009
Report looking at early years provision across the country to gauge parents' views and monitor progress in implementing policy.
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This report provides the main findings of the 2009 survey in the Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents series. The survey series is funded by the Department for Education and has been carried out by the National Centre for Social Research since 2004.
The survey has two main objectives. The first is to provide up-to-date and accurate information on parents’ childcare arrangements and their views of particular childcare providers and childcare provision in general. The second is to continue the time series and provide information to help monitor the progress of policies in the areas of childcare and early years education.
The report describes in detail what childcare is used by different types of families, changes in take-up over the years, parents’ reasons for using or not using childcare and for choosing particular providers, and parents’ views on the providers they used and on childcare provision in their local area in general.
Just over 6,700 parents in England with children under 15 were interviewed for the study, between June and December 2009. They were randomly selected from child benefit records. All the parents had children aged 14 and under, to be comparable with the previous surveys in the series and to focus on the age group most often included within government policy on childcare.