3 & 4 year old funding/Early Educational entilement

[miche5]

My child attends a private nursery x2 mornings per week. I was told that I could claim for x2 2.5 hrs per wk and pay the remainder as the session runs from 8-1. However most confusingly they have said I can claim 10 hrs so 5 hrs per session. Is someone out able to explain this to me and how this works as I'm totally confused by it all. Thanks

You can claim 5 x 2.5 hours per week, but this must be in 5 separate sessions, ie mornings or afternoons, so a total of max 12.5 hours per week. So for any session longer than 2.5 hours you have to pay for the rest of the time. Also, to confuse the issue it is for term time only, if the nursery is open all year round, they need to average it all out and take the appropriate amount off your weekly or monthly bill. It starts from the term after 3rd birthday. Best to ask them for the actual figures.

Some nurseries will clump the hours together, my DD's nursery did this, so rather than go for 2.5hrs per day, which frankly is a pita unless you live very near to it, she did 3days, they took the 12.5hrs grant off and I paid the remainder.

Your local LA dictates the maximum hours per day that you can clump so for eg, the 2yr old funding of 10hrs is clumped in a block of 6hrs and 4hrs, if thats how you want to do it. The whole idea now is that the hours are flexible and nurseries are expected to work around what you need.

So in an ideal world if your child was at nursery 2 days a week because you worked those days you should be able to take off the full entitlement and not have too much left to pay.

The grant is term time only so approx 38wks of the year, some nurseres will average it out over the year so your invoice stays the same regardless some don't, worth checking.

The NEG is actually quite easy to calculate.

For example (based on a nursery that offers the pilot 15 flexible hours) let?s say that you DD is there for 10 hours a week and they claim for 10 hours a week (you can check what is being claimed by calling your FIS).

Let?s also say that they are open for 51 weeks per year, and that they claim NEG for the maximum 38 weeks.

In this example, 51 weeks - 38 NEG weeks = 13 non NEG or non funded weeks. So if your monthly bill is say £200 or £50 per week. You would do the following £50 x 13 non NEG weeks = £650 spread over 12 months to keep the amounts regular is £54.17 per month.

IME Mrs Dinky's right. DS is at a private nursery 4 mornings a week - so a total of 20 hours - and our nursery is able to claim for 15 hours pw.

However, as DS only goes 4 mornings (4 x 2.5) I can only claim for 12 hours a week (even though he's actually there 20, IYSWIM).

There's a set amount you get back per session as well (about £8 from memory).

The way it works for us, is that we pay our monthly fees as normal - just as we did before we claimed, and once each term, we complete the LA form (provided and then submitted by the nursery) to claim our funding, and then a few weeks later, we get a cheque from the nursery to the value of the funding. It's actually more straightforward than I thought it would be.

HTH

I think you'll find that your nursery is overcharging and completly disregarding the grants code of conduct published in 2006. You can find a copy here www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/0/1747/ sections 6.1, 13.5; annex B2 are quite interesting.

Interesting indeed, although it looks like this CoP wasn't intended to to be in force now - has it been extended? [slopes off to check the LA site as well.....]

It's actually legislation. The Local Authority (Duty to Secure Early Years Provision Free of Charge) Regulations 2008 (?The Free Entitlement Regulations?), together with section 7 of the Childcare Act 2006 under which they are made, govern the free entitlement.