So confused re funding for nurseries

[ThisCleverAmberEagle]

Hi, please can someone advise? My daughter will be hopefully starting nursery in Jan next year as will be 9 months by then. We will be eligible for the 30 hours funding a week. What I don’t understand is when they say this is for 38 weeks, does that start from August (beginning of term) or Jan (beginning of calendar year)?

So if she starts in Jan 2026 will she get 38 weeks funded, ie to September when it resets?

It's term time, basically when the schools are open and holidays are unfunded.

Many settings (not all) will smooth out the allowance though and instead of 38 weeks of 30 hours, they will give you 51 weeks of 22 hours.

Depending when she's 9 months will.depemd when the funding starts too.

Funding starts at the beginning of the 3 school terms.

So at the beginning of January she’ll be allocated that terms funding (Spring) in either the school weeks or spread out until the end of term, including the term holidays for that term.

the 38 weeks is school terms, so hers will start from the term following her reaching the required age and you applying for the funding. So if she's old enough it'll start from roughly 4th jan, stat of the school term.

Sorry I feel really stupid but when you say she gets funding from Jan does she still get the 38 weeks? Or is it less because she hasn’t started at the beginning of the school year?

Is she only doing until September then? Because otherwise it doesn't matter.

There's three funding periods a year. Jan-March, Apr-Jul, Sept-December.

No she’ll continue the next year, I’m just wondering basically do we get 38 weeks from Jan 2026 - September 2026 and THEN it resets?

No

The 38 weeks is term time only. She will get 30 hours term time every week until she goes to school unless your circumstances change

No, it's 38 weeks per school year, following standard school terms. If she starts in January she won't have the weeks that are part of the September to December autumn term that happened before she started, but by the end of the following December once she has done a full year she will have had 38 weeks.

Some settings will let you spread the free hours throughout the year so you get 22ish hours per week (depending on whether the nursery shuts down completely over Christmas) all year around if they aren't a term-time-only service.

It's irrelevant really, as you don't get to choose which 38 weeks it's for, so if you plan on putting her in during term time weeks only you will get those weeks funded at 30 hours and if you plan on putting her in the school holiday weeks too then all your weeks will have less funded hours as they will spread the hours out over the non term time weeks to cover those too. The funding starts from the term you put them in and continues as long as they are in

As others have said, it’s dependent on the nursery. Some are term time only, others aren’t and automatically stretch our funding over 50 weeks.

Generally each term has an alloted number of weeks.

From 1st Jan to 31st March = 12 weeks of funding

From 1st April to 31st August = 13 weeks of funding

From 1st Sept to 21st Dec = 13 weeks of funding

A lot of nurseries will stretch the funding so it covers all year and gives around 22 hours of funding for 51 or 52 weeks

It’s 38 weeks per whole year. My LA pays 14 weeks autumn, 12 weeks Spring and 12 weeks summer. Yours may be different. So whatever time of year someone starts they’ll get 38 weeks over a year, or a smaller amount for a part year.