AIBU to hope the £100k cliff edge for funded nursery hours is removed?

454 replies

horchatatresleches · 30/03/2026 10:03

News is that the education secretary is looking at nursery funding but it’s unclear if it’s to reduce or increase the support available at either the upper or lower thresholds. AIBU to hope that the harsh cliff edge which stops all nursery funding at £100k is removed or least replaced with something tapered so that people aren’t losing money for being marginally above the threshold?

OP posts:

Violese · 04/04/2026 07:52

Scarlettpixie · 03/04/2026 18:07

This.

I thought the point of funding childcare was to encourage people back to work in lower paid jobs where there would be no benefit to them going if they had to pay childcare bills! The fact that this is available (or people think it should be available to) high earners seems mad to me.

Edited

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What about the partner of the person on £101k? Where’s their incentive to go out to work? They’d have to earn a heck of a lot to make it worth their while.

Original poster

horchatatresleches · 04/04/2026 08:06

purpleheartsandroses · 04/04/2026 00:16

Tapered would be better, yes. But presumably more expensive to administer?

In all honesty, I don't get how you can begrudge paying full whack if earning 100k+. Our children were before the free hours, youngest on the cusp with free hours from 3+. We were earning ~£35k each and cut our cloth accordingly. We were paying more than our mortgage on childcare but that was a known, temporary expense we had to consider before conception. Mortgage £1622pcm, childcare £1675ish pcm. We were absolutely broke, but it's temporary.

The threshold is such that anyone earning £100-125k with one nursery aged child, or £100-150k with two nursery age children is worse off than if they were to earn £99k. I don’t know who wouldn’t begrudge being tens of thousands of pounds worse off, especially at £100k where that amount of money is a significant amount of your salary.

Did see the post above where someone compared a household with two salaries of the average 39k and a household with a £100k salary? The £100k salary was only marginally better off so your example of two £35k salaries isn’t that far removed from a single parent earning £100k.

And since the funded hours came in place from 9 months, the day rates are nurseries have risen hugely because the government funding isn’t enough. So anyone paying full whack for nursery now is paying an artificially high rate to subsidise the funded hours which they don’t qualify for. There’s a lot of reasons the scheme just doesn’t work for people earning just over £100k threshold and why I have never seen a single person earning around that amount not reduce hours or overpay their pension to avoid it.

OP posts:

Maxme · 05/04/2026 07:56

The simple version for those unable to read long text

Due to stupid tax system you get MORE income for being paid £99k than £100k - £150k if you have young children.

It's like if someone said you can have 5 oranges for £1 or 4 oranges for £1.20. NO ONE chooses to have 4 oranges.

The system needs changing.

LilRafe2024 · 06/04/2026 19:39

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