Childcare and early years survey of parents: 2011

The Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents Series provides salient, up-to-date information on parents’ use of childcare and early years provision, and their views and experiences. The survey, funded by the Department for Education and carried out by Ipsos, aims to provide information to help monitor the progress of policies in the area of childcare and early years provision.

Some key findings include:

• Nearly four fifths (78%) of all families with children aged under 15 had used some form of childcare. Over three in five (63%) had used formal childcare and/or early years provision, and 39% had used informal childcare.
• Around one quarter of parents (26%) thought it was difficult or very difficult to pay for childcare, but just over half thought it was easy or very easy to pay (51%).
• Just over half (53%) of non-working mothers said that they would prefer to work if they could arrange reliable, convenient, affordable, and good quality childcare, showing no change from the 2010 survey.

Downloads

• Download the report from the Department for Education website

 

Technical note

The survey was carried out face-to-face in parents’ homes between October 2011 and May 2012. Just over 6,350 parents in England with children aged under 15 took part. The Child Benefit database served as the sampling frame. The survey was designed to be comparable with previous surveys in the series. The survey over-sampled two- to four-year-olds to ensure adequate numbers for analysis. The response rate to the survey was 58 per cent.