AIBU to question nursery saying 30 free hours cannot start until September?

The only thing that matters is if it's possble at the nursery she wants. They've told her it isn't. End of story surely?

It's 9 months for childcare.
At age 3 it changes and parents can essentially choose between a "daycare" setting or an "education" setting.
If education it is based on term dates.
From gov.uk

Except you’re saying it’s the term after they turn three. It’s 9 months now!

And yet not all settings work in the same way and not all LAs apply the same rules, or in fact understand the rules. What she is suggesting is perfectly possible.

Many councils have been reviewing the intakes (mine included) for funding and changed the bar as it saves them money so you might find they have switched to a 2 times year system (Sept and Jan).

Excatly this but you have worded it better than me

Depends on the nursery and other factors as op has found out

Including you.

No-one is saying her code isnt valid, she has been successfully using working parents funding until Christmas.

The problem comes when she wants to start a school based nursery half way through a term. There are cut off dates to claim each term and different setting policies that also need adhering to.

Seems fairly straight forward to me as to why they can't claim the funding - what am I missing? How can they claim funding from April when he isn't on roll then?

To be honest that is part of the problem and confusion over the funding.
There really needs to be a more clear definition of what is childcare and what is education.
When my daughter was age 3 all 3 year olds could get 15 hours of free education (3 hours a day mostly)
There were several children in her nursery class who were dropped off and collected by a childminder.
Their parents paid the childminder for the whole day and used the 15 hours for sending their children to the school nursery class.
Now with the 30 hours of funding they would be able to use that for the childminder but wouldn't be able to use the school nursery at the same time.

Except it all changed over the last couple of years… So many misinformed people on this thread.

Clearly not the point though - that’s what the hours are for!

It’s the term after they are three / been like that for a long time

@Offherrockingchair a school based nursery isn't childcare though.
It's education.

I would challenge this as the whole point of the funding is to get children into childcare and parents into work. If the rules the LA are applying around its administration mean this can’t happen, the scheme has failed. If you’re entitled to 30 hours then you’re entitled to 30 hours. Sounds like the school don’t know what they’re doing and the LA are not far behind. The ‘advisers’ at our LA are a joke - tell you one thing one day, something else the next. At the very least I would want a crystal clear reason in writing as to why they’re saying your child is not entitled to funding and potentially discriminating against them.

It's also possible your child starts after the terms headcount day in which case he can't claim for that term.

But also, you're asking them to accept 2 year old funding for that term not the standard 3 year-old funding that they accept.

Not much of a difference for me as a childminder but in larger settings this might be the line they draw, one child different to everyone else.

It will be rejected. I had the same experience with my son. We are in London with insane waiting lists for nurseries and I was desperate to get place at schools nursery because I had to go to work. I even had a meeting with schools head - they legally can't take child in this circumstances, you just wasting your time.

The LA have a cut off, called headcount, usually the second week of term, which determines what funding the school/setting receive. Only children attending that week can be funded for the term, with the exception if they are off sick or on holiday. If they claimed for you then it's fraud, you aren't attending. Payments are then made to settings, usually around half term, or some monthly, depending on the LA. It makes no difference your eligibility, you aren't attending on head count, they can't claim. Also, they would need to be registered for two year olds, to make the claim you are suggesting, which it sounds like they aren't. It's frustrating, but there has to be a cut off somewhere.

I believe you are correct here. Working parents are entitled to the 30hrs funding from 9m and the cut-off dates are all around when your child turns 9m old now. The school may decide it's their policy to accept children based on term dates but you're absolutely within your rights to ask. I've found a lot of people and schools don't understand this.

Is it because the preschool only claim the funding for 3 year olds.The funding is paid at different rates for each age group.
I’m not sure how it works in your local council but possibly the pre-school only claim the 3-4 year old 15/30 hour offer which he won’t be entitled to until the term after he is 3, which is September

In the local authority where I work, if a child hasn’t used their funding in another setting, we can claim funding as soon as they join us, even if that is mid-term.

If the funding has been allocated to another setting from the beginning of a term, and a child tries to join us mid term, then the previous setting does not have to transfer the funding (although they can choose it).

Is your child moving mid-term from another setting?

Actually reading other posters I think they are correct that the issue is that your child isn't there at the start of the term. So they can't apply for the 2-3 year old funding either, because the LA wouldn't give them the funding for the whole term if he only starts in May.

It could be that it was possible before for a nursery to get funding for only part of the term (the same way funding could be split between providers), so it didn't impact your eldest.
This change is fairly recent, as we managed to get split funding mid term for our child about 1.5 years ago, but were told it was the last term the LA would authorise it.

Not sure if you can call the council or LA yourself to check your options...?

I know that some things have changed in recent years based on discussions with our nurseries/childminders.
For instance, funding cannot be transferred anymore from 1 setting to another, when before it could be shared if the child moved mid term.

We also had a lot of confusion when our eldest turned 3, because his nursery kept telling we "had to apply" for the funded hours. But there was no mechanism for us to do so, because he was already receiving the funded hours for 2 year old.

In the end, everyone was correct I think, because on their end he was moving from the "under 3" funding to the "3-4" funding stream, so it was a different application process. But from our side we had nothing to do but reconfirm as usual, and the eligibility code stayed the same.

So I'm wondering if the nursery isn't trying to apply to the wrong "stream". They want to apply to the funding for 3 year old, when they should apply to the funding for 2 year old.