All three and four year olds in England are entitled to a funded early education place for up 15 hours per week before they reach statutory school age (the beginning of the school term immediately following your child’s fifth birthday). You can now choose whether to receive 15 hours per week term time only (38 weeks per year) or 11 hours per week all year.
Extended funding-As many of you know the Early Years Funding changed from September 2017 and children with parents who are working 16 hours or more (both parents if in a 2-parent household) are now entitled to extra funded hours. (this is commonly being referred to as the 30 hrs extended funding)
To qualify for the extended hours, each parent (or the sole parent in a single parent family) needs to earn, on average, the equivalent of 16 hours on the national minimum wage per week, and no more than £100,000 per year. A family with an annual household income of £199,999 would be eligible if each parent earns just under £100,000. Self-employed parents and parents on zero-hours contracts will be eligible if they meet the average earnings threshold.
Eligibility will be checked by HMRC and will be based on actual income earned. There will be a short grace period so that if parents lose their jobs, they do not automatically lose their childcare entitlement.
In order to get this funding parents have to log onto www.childcarechoices.gov.uk and complete an application form. If you are successful you will receive a code- you will then need to give this code to us as your childcare provider along with the National Insurance number you used to apply and we then validate the code with Devon.
Please apply in plenty of time as we have had some parents who have the process more than a little tricky!
Every 3 months parents have to reconfirm their code via the website- the plan is that you will receive an email from HMRC reminding you to do this but this doesn’t seem to be happening so it is worth making a note yourselves! Parents have lost their funding because of not reconfirming so please do check regularly!
We at Little Ones Childcare, are offering this funding stretched over the year which will mean 22 hours per week or term time only which means 30 hours a week . If you wish to use the funding in a different way or you want to split your funding between us and another provider please do talk to us.
It is important to note that all 3 and 4 year olds and the most disadvantaged 2-year-olds will remain entitled to 15/11 hours of early education per week, regardless of the employment status of their parents.
This funding can be used in a variety of ways…… please check with your nursery manager for more details.
Children become eligible in the term following their third birthday as per the following dates:
Date of Child’s Birth Term in which funding starts
Before 31st March Summer Term (after Easter holidays)
Before 31st August Autumn Term (after Summer holidays)
Before 31st December Spring Term (after Christmas holidays)
Please ask your nursery manager for more information
More information can be found here http://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk
