UNFAIR FREE ENTITLEMENT TO EARLY EDUCATION FOR 3 YEARS OLD BORN AFTER APRIL

[moemazen]

My daughter is turning 3 on the 4th April and some of her peers will receive the free entitlement from April as they were born before the 31st March, which is 4 days difference.

It does not seem fair that my daughter gets the entitlement from September, 6 MONTHS LESS than someone born only 4 days apart???

Have I missed something? Have I not understood the policy?

When I called Barnet council they said that that is the way it is and they were just following a policy created by Ed Balls and I should contact him to complain.

It just infuriates me that I cannot appeal to Barnet council and have to send an email to Ed Balls ([email protected]) who may not even read it, it seems that he created the policy. I will contact him but wanted to check if other parents also feel the same way.

Is anyone else on the same situation?

I was calculating how much this would cost our family and it turns out it is nearly £1000 for the 6 months we would miss out as my girl goes to nursery full time, outrageous!

The nursery my child goes to has been very helpful and they said the Early Years team at Barnet have not been very helpful, I felt like the lady was just giving me a COMPUTER SAYS NO kind of answer.

From my understanding. The way it works is to ensure that no one loses out financially. My son was born in sept. If this policy wasn't in place then I would have had to pay for my son's 10 hours (in Wales it's only 10) for a whole school yr, whereas a child born in June wouldn't have to pay anything despite them being in the same school year.

my ds birthday is 1st april, so we missed the cut off by one day.

My son was born on 7 Sept, do he got his funding a term "late" and started school a year "late". Annoying, but I coped.

Hello OP

It does seem unfair but speaking from experience you need to get used to this.
Between the ages of birth and 18 so many policies will change that will make it seem unfair at certain times.
There are so many in education such as changes in exam structure, testing, even what they can eat.
You would go dotty if you bothered about the unfairness of it all.
Some people have to be affected by the changes.

It's not really 6 months later either, as 1 April to 1 Sept is actually 5 months, and the funding is only during term time (ie would stop in the middle of July).

I largely agree OP I think. I feel children should be eligible for either 1 year (3 terms) or 2 years (6 terms). Not 3 if you are summer born or 5/6 if you are autumn born. It is unfair that birth date defines how much preschool education a child gets. It's not like schools kick out children when they hit 16 or 18 (unsure what the rules are) so why shouldn't the same principle apply when starting. If 2 years it not affordable to the Govt then everyone should only get 1 year. It's unfair that summer borns get half as much free education as older ones. It is not a level playing field at all.

I've fallen foul of this twice, have a mid-April baby and an early-Jan one! Irritating, but in the grand scheme of things I can understand why its done this way.

What was annoying for me wa that as a LP all it did was pay for my term time nursery and leave me struggling in the holidays with paying, I was resentful that some people got a bit of time to themselves five sessions a week while it was just business as usual for me

The trust fund payments ended a few days after I'd had dd2.

It's not true that it stops the term after DC turns 4, it continues until school

And my nursery (SW London) doesn't cap the grant to the rate that it gets from the council, in fact I get the entire 15 hours free at nearly £10 an hour for 39 weeks of the year so it is worth over £5k per year to me.

Unfortunately there has to be a cut off date and its a but unlucky that you are just a few days over but as a pp has said, overall the childcare costs from birth to school are lower for spring/summer baby than for a winter baby so its not really unfair

You can use it even after they're at school. Everyone gets the same amount of entitlement, it's just that some children will start school during it.

You are being ridiculous. Every child gets pre-school education from the term after they turn 3. Some children get this as 5 terms of 15 hours, others 4 and others 3. Those who have less than 5 get to full time school earlier and therefore get more care rather than less.

A parent with an autumn born child will pay more in childcare as they don't have full time childcare until they are almost 5 as opposed to 4.5 or even 4.
Autumn born children's parents have paid for exactly the same number of terms as you before they get to their free entitlement.

As others have said this is national policy, there has to be a cut off date somewhere.

The person who said this must be a nightmare for staffing the setting was spot on. Numbers build throughout the year as children become entitled to free hours and drop off the cliff in September.

however she is missing 1 term not six months they do not go back to pre-school until about 22nd april and break up about 27th july they have a week off in may and 6-7 weeeks july/august so she is missing 12 weeks not 6 months but there has to be a cut off somewhere you have jsut missed one which is a bit sad but whatever the date was there would always be someone who missed it by a day

it just seems with the rules in England that no-one actually gets two years because if born on 1st september can't start until jan so you get 5 terms, if born 31st august you only get 3 terms so they sell it as 2 years to sound good but rules mean you can't actually get it

As other posters have said, the 15 hrs entitlement is about early education, not childcare.
Some early years settings can do a 'stretched offer' which means they offer less than 15 free hrs per week but for more than 38 weeks of the year. Nursery schools and pre-schools that are only open during term time obviously can't do this and offer 15 hrs per week during term time.

No setting is allowed to charge parents a 'top up' fee for the 15 hrs regardless of how much/little the Local Authority pays for the place.

As someone else has said, the cut off dates in England are 31 March, August and December, regardless of when term actually starts.

Some children get 5 terms, some 4 and others 3. When the policy first started all children were entitled to 3 terms, although many Local Authorities were quick to pay for more. Some LA took a lot longer, hence the poster who said they only had 3 terms regardless of when it started.

There has to be a date. My dts birthday is the 2nd April. They miss out by 2 days, because they use a date, not the arbitrary 'first term after their third birthday. This would usually mean they could get funding from Easter depending on when it fell. And this is why they have this date. Otherwise it would be so changeable according to when term fell there would always be people grumbling that they missed out this year when they wouldn't have done the previous year.

My younger two were May birthdays so I've had to suck it up for all of mine.

This is confusing me, because you are entitled to the funding until your child starts school or up to and including the term they turn 5. Your child does not have to switch to compulsory education until the term after they turn 5.

It's personal choice to send them before then if you didn't you could use it for longer than someone who sends a child to school at 4

I think that depends, Needs, on your Local Authority. I work in a Nursery School and we can't keep children during what would be their reception year, without getting special permission from the LA and an educational psychologist. If we did, we wouldn't get any funding for the child, regardless of when their birthdate is.

Thats very odd. It even says on the gov thingy up to and including term the child turns 5.

And they do not have the legal right to force anybody to start education early

OP: As others have said, unfortunately there has to be a cut off point somewhere. Can you imagine the chaos it would cause in the pre-schools that are attached to schools if they had new starters coming every other day on the day that they turned 3? It would be madness for the poor workers!

Unfortunately somebody is always going to be affected....I am one of them too, as my boy was 2nd July...so had to wait till September for his funding (although granted a large portion of that was school holidays so he wouldn't have got it anyway). My dd is 8th Jan, so will have to wait till April for hers as well. That's just life I'm afraid.

Whatever alternative you suggested there would still have to be a cut off point...but by the sounds of it, as long as the change made things better for you, then you wouldn't be too bothered about that? You seem fairly quick to say that the system is unfair, but haven't really suggested any alternatives other than "2 years pre-school for everyone"

Mine was due to start this term but we cant get him in anywhere until sept. Its really hard to get a place now they are funding for some dc from 2.

We have ds4 on the waiting list as we are going to pay for a couple of sessions a week when he turns 2 (in feb 2015) but we cant get him in until sept 15!

I suppose there have to be cut-off points somewhere, although I agree it is a bit annoying. My daughter was born at 00:15 on 1 January, so if she'd been born 16 minutes earlier we would have got the nursery funding from the spring term. As it is we'll get it from the summer term.

My daughter was born at 00.07 on 1 April. I feel your pain, but I guess they have to cut off somewhere.