Tax free childcare and school

[hannahbanana2007]

Wondering if anyone has similar or can give any info - I used tax free childcare scheme at nursery, but now my kids are at school I can't use it for the school as the after school club has to be paid for via parentpay. When I signed up to ParentPay I assumed I would just be able to transfer money from the TFC account to it to pay the school but you can't do that. I tried emailing them but they don't understand my question and replied with info about free school meals instead. My school don't seem to know anything about the tax free childcare scheme so they couldn't help either. Does anyone else have this situation? How can ParentPay be allowed to do this i.e. not support the govt TFC scheme?! It's costing me a lot of money and I can't seem to use a scheme I'm eligible for!

Perhaps the after school club is not a registered childcare provider. Is it run by the school?

Can you ask to pay via bank transfer and then just use the tax free childcare account?

Email again. Our wraparound care had to register with our childcare voucher provider and then manually put in on parent pay.

They may have decided not to register on the TFC system... it is optional for providers.

Is it something you could take up with School trustees / governing body?

You can't use TFC on Parent Pay. Email the school again and ask them if they have registered for TFC. I pay my wraparound care through TFC and then email that school admin to let them know I've paid.

I had to send our school a link to I go about TFC. Some time later (up to a year?) they did arrange for TFC payments to be made to the school then allocated to parent pay accounts. Now we have sims/ pay360 and it’s the same process.
Basically, you need to persuade them to set up an account

On your tax free childcare account see if you can find the afterschool club on the drop down box to pay into. If it's there do it that way.

Sorry my notifications are off so I didn't realise I had any replies! Thank you all - sounds like I need to go back to the school then. They run the after school club so if I can persuade them to register that sounds like it should solve it!

My school weren’t registered for tax free childcare which really surprised me! They also acted confused but did sort it out

Hi, wondering if anyone can let me know what I'm doing wrong. So I've set my gov.uk tax free childcare account up, picked the school I want paying and then paid some money in via standing order, the bank recognises the details. But, a few hours later it's back in my bank account never having been in my tax free childcare account and now at nearly 6pm on a Friday evening I can't get hold of anyone. Thank you x

Hi,

Do you have the link or guide that i can send my school to show them how to setup for TFC. They use parentpay system, so we need to tell them how to sign up and then how we pay them and they add to our parentpay account.

@Wokkk

They have to register for tax free childcare.

Once they've done that, they can receive money from your account.

However, it won't link with parent pay. In our school, you have to let the admin know how much you are transferring from your TFC account and send proof of the transfer. They then credit your parent pay account with that amount. Then you can book you childcare using the credit.

They money from TFC doesn't go directly to your parent pay account. It can only go into the one of the school's income streams - hence having to send proof of how much you have paid in before it is credited.

www.gov.uk/guidance/sign-up-to-tax-free-childcare-if-youre-a-childcare-provider