E Truss and the DfE announce a flat rate of £5.09 for 2 year old funding

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E Truss and her team at the DfE have announced that the flat rate to deliver the 2 year old Free Education is to be £ 5.09

Your thoughts?

Maybe i am misunderstanding but I read "on average local authorities will receive £5.09 per child per hour" so I thought it was a flat rate per authority but each authority will get a different amount with it averaging at £5.09

I can't yet find the info about what the rate is in my authority (any other).

My LA pays £6+ now...does it mean they will continue paying that or reduce it to £5.09? who knows?

I can't locate the press release on the DfE website.

Nursery World says the info is on the DfE website.

Nursery World also mentions a new tool from Ofsted, I can't find that either.

I'm clearly having a bad day in finding things. Has anyone found the things being referred to the Nursery World article?

I have spent a hour this morning trying to find it nannynick, with no success. I am normally very good at finding online info so I'm going to stick my neck out and say that it isn't there, not yet anyway. I think NW are responding to press release rather than finding the info themselves.

Oh goodness, what have i missed? Education for 2 year olds... Really? Or do we mean childcare?

Strix frantically making timestable study sheet for almost two year old DS2, whilst fretting over realisation she has dropped the ball on this one... Yikes!

Glad Im not the only one who can't find it. Maybe it is being published later today.

Education doesn't have to mean timetables Strix, in this case it is education through a balance of child and adult led care and play. :)

Which sounds far more patronising than I meant it to, sorry.

Isnt that childcare?

Oh silly me. A quick google reveals i wont qualify... Surprise surprise. now i know why itscalled education instead of childcare: because it isnt for the working population who actually NEED childcare.

It needs a bit of crunching and I am not sure I will have time before work but the numbers are here now in the PDF Local authority allocations

A quick calc (statutory place funding/estimated places, then divide by 38, then divide by 5, then divide by 3 - so 3 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 38 weeks in the year)

I make it 5.67 per hour for Isle of Silly, 4.94 per hour for Gloucestershire (figures rounded up to nearest decimal place).

Takes no account of the Building Allocation thingy, whatever that is.

Fair to say it's unlikely to be a flat rate?

Let's be absolutely clear - it is entirely up to local authorities how they spend this money and there will definitely not be a single rate that applies across the country. It is not even true (or likely if past experience with 3 and 4 year old funding which is allocated by central government through the same funding stream is anything to go by) that ANY rate will be as high as £5.09.

I will write more about this tomorrow, if any childminder has specific questions they would like to ask I will endeavour to provide an answer from their point of view (which I don't think you will get from anyone else).

So E Truss with all her good intentions to change things, as she promised, has actually changed nothing as LAs will do as they pleaseas they have done unless money ringfenced

These kids need high quality care and Truss recognises this by saying Good'Outstanding providers are the ones to deliver but then rewards us with pittance...sad I thought she would do more and expects us to 'challenge'the LAs?....we are back to square one I'm afraid

Nannynick Thank you for sharing your calculations...I will try to do them for my area and see what I get to and find out if the present rate of £6.10 will drop to £5.09 or even less
I would have thought that NCMA would have calculated this for c/ms since they have endorsed this flat rate

Quite concerning given that those in the trial who got around £6 per hour found they ran at a loss given the high care needs of the children funded.

There is an analyis of what it all means on Childminder Focus, including a calculation of the estimated rate the funding has been based on in each authority.

... it seems that the figure for Richmond is £5.53, but this is only an estimate...

Thank you..we'll see whether our LA sticks to £6.10 or drops...something tells me c/ms are not amused!!!