The provision of support to subsidise childcare has been a salient policy topic in recent years. In 2023, the Conservative Government announced an expansion of support for workers, offering 15 free hours a week for two-year-olds. From September 2024, this expands to babies from nine months old, rising to 30 free hours of support from September 2025 for 38 weeks a year.
Postgraduate students (on taught courses and researchers) who are parents have been forgotten. They are currently ineligible for the childcare grants available to undergraduate students and for the same free hours entitlements available for workers. This creates a barrier for those with childcare responsibilities who wish to undertake postgraduate studies.
This lack of equitable provision disproportionately affects women and those from lower-income communities, hampering efforts to increase the diversity of the higher education and high-skilled workforce.
Postgraduate studies are critical for the high-skilled jobs of the future, providing upskilling / reskilling opportunities for many career paths and delivering ambitions to be a science superpower.
GW4 (an alliance of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter universities) is urging the Government to extend the current undergraduate Childcare Grant to postgraduate students as a welcome first step to improving access for the most economically disadvantaged, while considering how to extend the free-hours entitlements only available to workers to a critical part of the research workforce: those in postgraduate education.