Since Labour won the 2024 general election, policy focused on children in the early years – from birth to school age – and their parents has moved sharply up the political agenda.
The government’s most expensive early years commitment so far has been its decision to honour the previous administration’s pledge to provide 30 funded hours of childcare for children aged from nine months to school age whose parents are in work. This was implemented in September 2025.
If parents require their children to be in childcare for more than 30 hours a week (they might need over 50 hours to cover full-time employment), they pay the excess. Childcare providers may also charge for services on top of the funded hours, such as meals, nappies and optional activities. However, such charges cannot be mandatory conditions of accessing the funded hours.
The £9 billion allocated to this provision represents a doubling of childcare funding since 2024. The policy’s central aim is to make childcare more affordable for working parents and to increase mothers’ employment rates. It is also intended to support children’s development and educational outcomes.
We set out to explore whether increasing the funding for this system would increase mothers’ employment.
We compared England with South Korea, where a fairly similar arrangement has been on offer for a number of years. In Korea, though, early childhood education and care receives significantly higher funding. It stands at 0.9% of GDP, compared with 0.5% in the UK.
Korea has offered a universal entitlement of 35 hours of funded childcare weekly for children aged from birth to age two since 2012. This was extended to children aged three to five the following year.
Our study found systemic problems in both countries. Our findings suggest that the design of funding systems, and how they interact with labour market and parental leave policies, may matter more than funding levels alone.
Exploring similarities
England and Korea share similar early years policy goals. Both aim to support children’s development while helping mothers into work. Both also rely heavily on marketised childcare systems, meaning that different childcare providers compete to offer care. Both systems combine public, private for-profit and not-for-profit providers.
Public spending on early childhood education and care is proportionally much higher in Korea. Yet full-time maternal employment rates in Korea (56.2% in 2021) remain well below both UK (74.2% in 2021) and OECD averages (71.4% in 2021).
Possible explanations for the relatively low maternal employment levels may be found beyond the childcare funding model, in wider social and labour market conditions. In Korea, traditional gender norms and limited access to flexible, family-friendly employment practices such as paid maternity leave and flexible hours, continue to create major barriers to mothers returning to work. These issues are coupled with a wider gender pay gap.
At the same time, the childcare system itself faces structural weaknesses. Childcare provision hasn’t expanded enough to allow all children access to high-quality care, particularly in the private for-profit sectors.
In England, family-friendly employment policies, including maternity, paternity and parental leave, provide stronger support for maternal employment. But England’s childcare system also faces serious challenges.
Access and affordability problems persist. In some disadvantaged areas, “childcare deserts” mean families have no local access to good-quality childcare. With Korea, England shares the problems of limited provision for disadvantaged children, especially those with special educational needs and disabilities. In both countries, there is a problem of low pay and high staff turnover in the private-for-profit childcare sector.
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Quality in England also varies considerably. The dominance of private for-profit provision, notably large childcare corporations, shapes staff pay, qualifications and working conditions.
The early years sector has problems recruiting workers and keeping them in the profession. Between 2018 and 2025, the number of registered childcare providers dropped by nearly 20%. Complex governance arrangements often leave parents confused about eligibility and access to subsidies.
These barriers affect English mothers’ ability to participate in paid work, particularly full-time work.
In both England and Korea, despite the funded hours, families may not be able to access high-quality childcare.
Looking elsewhere
A 2025 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report argues that investment in early childhood education and care can reduce social inequalities of the kind seen in both England and Korea. But it also stresses that how governments allocate funding matters.
Earlier comparative research reached similar conclusions. This research found that the distribution of childcare support can be as important as the scale of spending itself if disadvantaged children are to benefit.
In countries where reforms have combined affordability with guaranteed access to childcare, increases in mothers’ employment have been more evident.
From the 1970s, childcare expansion in Norway has had a demonstrable effect on mothers’ employment and working patterns. Germany’s more recent childcare expansion policies achieved similar outcomes. Both countries have streamlined systems of integrated early education and childcare, while parents pay income related fees. In some German states all places are free, while in Norway they are free for low-income families. In both countries children have a legal right to a nursery place from the age of one, whether or not their parents are in work.
Both England and Korea now appear close to important childcare policy “tipping points” where radical intervention is indicated.
In England, further progress is likely to depend on extending 30-hours childcare support beyond working families, simplifying complex subsidy arrangements, and strengthening regulation of childcare markets.
In Korea, improvements in maternal employment rates will primarily require the development of stronger family-friendly employment policies, and wider efforts to challenge persistent gender inequalities in both the workplace and family life.
The wider lesson is clear. Increased spending alone is unlikely to raise maternal employment if labour market structures, gender norms and childcare market dynamics remain unchanged. Both countries illustrate the limitations of heavily marketised childcare systems in delivering high-quality and sustainable early years provision that is accessible to all. Increasing childcare funding cannot be separated from employment policy, gender equality policies, or the organisation of care itself.
Eva Lloyd received funding from the British Academy, the Department for Education, the National Centre for Social Research, the Nuffield Foundation, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She is a trustee of Foundation Years Information and Research, a charity that promotes the importance of children’s earliest years to their development and wellbeing. In recent years Eva Lloyd was a member of an Expert Group advising the Irish Government’s Department of Children, Disability and Equality on a funding model for its early learning and care and school-age childcare system, and of a Programme Oversight Board overseeing the work required to design a National Agency for Early Learning and Childcare.
Sung-Hee Lee has received funding from the British Academy, UKRI’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), NHS England, the Social Policy Association (SPA), and the Academy of Korean Studies. She is Treasurer of the East Asian Social Policy (EASP) Network and a member of the SPA Family Policy Group. She also sits on the Overseas Intelligence Committee of the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHSA), and most recently served as an International Committee Member of the Korean Academy of Family and Social Work.