{"id":439094,"date":"2026-02-22T05:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T05:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/439094\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T05:05:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T05:05:13","slug":"greens-pledge-to-expand-childcare-hours-and-free-bus-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/439094\/","title":{"rendered":"Greens pledge to expand childcare hours and free bus travel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At present three to five-year-olds can get up to 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare a year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But two-year-olds only qualify for funding if their parents meet a set criteria.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mackay said: &#8220;Too many are being saddled with nursery fees that cost more than the mortgage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Too many cutting back on essentials and having their choices made for them, rather than having the independence that comes with a fairer system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That&#8217;s why, at this election, the Scottish Greens are proposing the biggest expansion of funded childcare for a generation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mackay added the policy would help end the financial &#8220;cliff-edge&#8221; families currently faced when maternity leave ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At present three to five-year-olds can get up to 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-439094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}