What does the English landscape of early education and care look like in 2026?

All under-fives in England have the entitlement to some state-funded hours in early childhood education and care (ECEC) before starting school. Additionally, families may pay privately for non-funded hours in ECEC. Using the funded hours and accessing a place is not straightforward, however. This is because ECEC in England operates through a complex ‘mixed market’ of providers.

The ‘mixed market’ spans provider types across the state-maintained and non-maintained sectors. They include: nursery classes within state and independent primary schools, local authority maintained stand-alone nursery schools, voluntary sector pre-schools, private nurseries, and childminders. Within the private sector, there is a great diversity of provision, ranging from small, single-site nurseries, to large international chains backed by private equity and accountable to shareholders. Staff qualifications and staff:child ratio requirements vary across provider types. 

The makeup of provision fluctuates enormously by local area. Though in theory local authorities are responsible for ensuring sufficient ECEC for all their under-fives entitled to funded hours, there is no direct allocation mechanism of children to places, and authorities cannot compel settings to open locally nor to allow every child access.

Accessing funded ECEC relies on families knowing about, applying for, and being granted access. There is no guarantee of a place, nor of the availability of any particular type of provision. Some groups of children – including those with disabilities and those in economically deprived areas – are less likely to be able to access their entitlement.

A lack of centrally collected information on provider governance and ownership means that it is not possible to know exactly how many under-fives in England attend each type of provider – particularly within the private sector. However, based on the information available, the following is indicated for 2025:

• 7 million children accessed state-funded entitlements to ECEC in 55,000 providers spanning the multitude of provider types.
• Around 23% of all children (accessing both state-funded and privately paid places) attended maintained school-based nursery classes or nursery schools. Looking only at funded places, around 35% of funded hours were taken in these state maintained settings.
• Most ECEC places, therefore, are outside of the state maintained sector, and taken in the private, voluntary and independent sectors.
• At least 160,000 (around 9-10% of) ECEC places are delivered through large profit-making chain providers, many currently/recently backed by private equity.

The information available also indicates that:

• The number of childminders has fallen over recent years.
• The number of children accessing ECEC in a private setting has risen in recent years.

As most places are taken in non-state maintained settings, there is an inherent tension in the English ECEC system. Statutory entitlements to a state-funded place are not matched by statutory state provision of these places. Rather places are expected to be generated by the ‘mixed market.’

Reviewing the landscape of provision, the Nuffield Foundation concluded in 2021 that, ‘the system is dysfunctional’. More recently, in 2025, expert witnesses giving oral evidence to the Education Select Committee on ‘Early Years: Improving Support for Children and Families’ continued to describe overall ‘market failure,’ ‘childcare deserts,’ and a lack of ‘access and choice’ even in those areas not considered ‘deserts’. In May 2026, the Secretary of State for Education commissioned the Competition and Markets Authority to evaluate ‘how the childcare market as a whole is working’.