Do Childminders qualify as "early years education" for a 3 yr old?

[blithedance]

I am trying to work out childcare and how the gov't's five sessions of free early edgucation apply.

DS will be starting playgroup in September, three mornings a week, three free sessions, that's easy.

On one of the other days I will be working full time, so need to put him in nursery or with childminder for whole day.
Will the remaining 2 sessions/5 hours of childcare be offset against that cost?

The literature I have seen talks about the early education only applying to childminders who belong to a QA scheme - what's that about? Is it very common?

There are good CM's and good nurseries around us. I have a slight preference for a CM rather than having two different group settings, but the cost is another small factor.

Currently the childminder would need to be accredited and part of a network - see NCMA CCF: Early Education.
From September, things change to the EYFS, so I don't know what happens then.

Not sure how common accredited childminders are... suspect that in some areas there may be quite a few, where as in other areas very few of them. So bit pot luck.

As far as I am aware only one claim can be made for the grant...so if preschool claim for 3 of your sessions then even an accredited childminder couldn't claim for the other 2.....you would need to use one or the other.

You will as nick says possibly find it difficult to find an accredited childminder, they are few and far between as you have to jump through hoops...

LS

I am an accredited childminder. Yes, you can share the funding, in fact I was seen as the main provider as I had the child for three sessions and the nursery only two, so they had to fill in the bit about secondary providers!

One child I had for three whole days, so claimed all the funding for 5 sessions, the maximum, and took the funding off her bill.

alibubbles, are you part of a network then? How did you go about finding out about all this, please? I am interested in knowing more!

you can use both a cm and a nursery
i'm a cm and accept grants and the nursery the children go to also take the grants (we share)
the cm just fills out the form to say who she has etc and money is paid to her from the grant system

I was part of a NCMA CCF network but our EYDCP have decided to disband the network and do it themselves. We have heard nothing since January, but still manage to claim the funding directly form county.