Unfair childcare eligibility criteria and the ‘nerd tax’ | Letters

The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is right to order a Competition and Markets Authority review of hidden childcare charges ( Report, 24 May ). However, she would do well to also review her department’s own eligibility criteria for accessing 30 hours of funded childcare in the first place. One particularly egregious exclusion is that of PhD students, who miss out on approximately £8,000 of support that the majority of other working parents can access, despite earning only about …