{"id":251164,"date":"2025-07-09T16:08:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T16:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/251164\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T16:08:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T16:08:23","slug":"flying-start-childcare-exceeds-expansion-targets-in-wales-welsh-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/251164\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying Start childcare exceeds expansion targets in Wales | Welsh Government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>More families than ever are benefitting from high quality funded childcare as Wales\u2019 Flying Start programme exceeds expansion targets.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Phase 2 of the Welsh Government\u2019s expansion programme, to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.wales\/flying-start-programme\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">expand Flying Start childcare for all 2 year olds in Wales<\/a>, began in April 2023.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Since then, more than 10,000 children have benefitted from Flying Start childcare, exceeding the original target of reaching 9,500 additional children.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Over the last 2 years, more than 13,400 Welsh children and families have been offered funded childcare, with 80% taking up places in 2024 to 2025.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Flying Start expansion programme provides 12.5 hours of free, high-quality childcare each week for eligible 2 year olds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Minister for Children and Social Care, Dawn Bowden, said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This significant expansion has exceeded our targets, bringing quality early years support to thousands more children.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">High quality early years provision helps to maximise child development outcomes and supports the best start in life. I&#8217;m immensely proud of our Flying Start workforce for making this possible as we work towards universal childcare for all 2 year olds.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Welsh Government has invested an additional \u00a325 million this year to support the expansion to reach more families in Wales, and phase 3 is expected to reach more than 4,000 additional children nationwide.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The programme also supports the Welsh Government&#8217;s commitment to reach a million Welsh speakers by 2050, with more than 2,000 places taken up in Welsh medium settings in phase 2.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Welsh Language, Mark Drakeford, said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It\u2019s encouraging to see more families choosing Welsh medium childcare. Introducing children to the language from their earliest years creates lasting benefits and supports our ambition to reach a million Welsh speakers by 2050.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More families than ever are benefitting from high quality funded childcare as Wales\u2019 Flying Start programme exceeds expansion&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[51319,5032,96890,748,7812,14338,389,96891,23203,474,96889,1234,4884,96892,59243,2772,15982,5026,96893,53107,16,15,1764,12497],"class_list":{"0":"post-251164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-high","9":"tag-april","10":"tag-bowden","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-cabinet","13":"tag-care","14":"tag-children","15":"tag-dawn","16":"tag-drakeford","17":"tag-finance","18":"tag-flying","19":"tag-government","20":"tag-great-britain","21":"tag-introducing","22":"tag-july","23":"tag-language","24":"tag-mark","25":"tag-minister","26":"tag-phase","27":"tag-start","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-wales","31":"tag-welsh"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114824145076239145","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}