The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has rightly ordered a Competition and Markets Authority review of hidden childcare charges. However, she should also examine her own department's eligibility criteria for accessing 30 hours of funded childcare. One particularly unfair exclusion is that of PhD students, who miss out on approximately £8,000 of support that most other working parents can access, despite earning only about £20,000 per year on a typical UK Research and Innovation-funded course.
A Personal Struggle
This is the situation that will affect Jamie Evans and his wife from February next year, when their soon-to-be-born daughter turns nine months old and his wife needs to return to completing her PhD on improving patient experiences of GP services.
It is obvious to anyone who knows them that they are exactly the kind of 'working family' the policy claims to support, but unfortunately they will miss out because her stipend income doesn't meet the narrow technical definition of 'income' set by the Conservatives when designing the scheme. They ruefully refer to this as the government's 'nerd tax'.
Proposed Solution Falls Short
The Department for Education has suggested his wife could undertake 16 hours of part-time work per week to qualify, which would be a challenge on top of the 37.5 hours of PhD work her university expects, along with caring for a newborn.
Without this support, quitting the PhD becomes an increasingly tempting option. That they are forced to consider this feels very wrong; the highest levels of education, and ultimately careers in the sciences, should be available to all with talent, regardless of life stage or financial status. Surely this is a wrong that a Labour government would consider worth righting?
