FREE Childcare

Under plans proposed by the Social Market Foundation parents would be offered low-interest loans to help meet the cost of childcare provision; a system of government loans that could help parents meet the cost of childcare is under development by an independent think-tank. 

To read more about this story, click here.

A fantastic example of how one provider has managed to offer parents a completely flexible offering based on their individual needs.  What the article fails to mention is that this is a maintained nursery and so will receive additional financial supplements to support them in providing an extended offering.

Read more here: 15 hours… opening 7am to 7pm

It would be interesting to hear of any private sector nurseries who are able to sustainably offer a similar level of flexibiltiy to parents.  Please get in touch if you’d like to share your story.

Despite its introduction nearly 15 years ago, free entitlement, formerly known as the Nursery Education Grant, remains a hot topic, continuing to be the subject of much debate between parents, child-carers, local authorities and the government.

Read more of Kate Peach’s blog post entitled ‘The position on free entitlement’

Nurseries are receiving as little as £2.05 per hour per child in local authority funding to foot the cost of the free entitlement for early education.

At the opening of the annual National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) conference, findings of a survey of nurseries from 133 local authorities revealed wide variations in the amount of money councils are handing out through the Early Years Single Funding Formula (EYSFF).

Read this article, published by Children and Young People Now, in full.

This week minister Sarah teather has announced that the Code of Practice will NOT be changed to enable providers to charge top up fees.  She states: ‘I hope that many providers will continue to choose to be part of the free entitlement scheme, offering a fantastic service to all families. But I accept that, for some, delivering the free entitlement may not fit within their business models and they may decide to opt out.’

You can read the full article here.

MP Zac Goldsmith has launched an Early Days Motion (EDM) entitled Save Our Nurseries requesting that

” the Houses of Parliament recognises that private, voluntary and independent (PVI) providers fulfil a vital role in the care and education of pre-school children; welcomes the work of the Save Our Nurseries Campaign; notes that the previous administration’s Code of Practice on the provision of free nursery education and the Early Years Single Funding Formulae developed by local authorities threaten PVI providers’ viability by imposing price controls and have forced, and will continue to force, providers to close or opt out of providing funded places, leading to a loss of funded nursery places and a two-tier pre-school system; requests the Government to revise the Code of Practice to allow flexibility to providers to continue to charge additional top-up fees to meet the shortfall between the funding of the entitlement and the actual cost of providing a place; and requires the entitlement truly to promote choice and diversity for parents to enable children to attend high quality provisions”.

An EDM is used for reasons such as publicising the views of individual MPs, drawing attention to specific events or campaigns, and demonstrating the extent of parliamentary support for a particular cause or point of view.  Although they don’t often get debated in parliament, they are great at raising awareness of issues.

In order to gather more support for the EDM please do contact your local MP and ask him to sign up to EDM 1483: http://www.edms.org.uk/2010-11/1483.htm

The government have recently announced that they are to review the Code of Practice which governs how free entitlement is provided.

It is hoped that the Department for Education will consult with nurseries and key stakeholders to consider whether changes should be made to the current regulations. These require nurseries to offer parents a completely free nursery place for 15 hours a week with no ‘top-up’ fees.

You can read the complete article here.

On Thursday 17 February Early Years Childcare were fortunate to have a visit by David Fitzgerald, Deputy Director of Early Years and Childcare Division at the Department for Education.

David was accompanied by colleagues, one from the Free Entitlement Funding Team, and another from the Childcare and Early Learning: Targeting Disadvantage Team.  After a tour around the nursery by manager Deniz Gordyal and managing Director Kate Peach the group spent some time discussing some of the issues facing our industry including the Code of Practice and the challenges of implementing free entitlement, the planned changes to the EYFS and how we can ensure business sustainability in this challenging economic climate.

Mr Fitzgerald explained that the current government has made adequate spending provision to continue providing ‘free’ hours to three and four years olds for the remainder of its term in office.  He confirmed that the Code of Practice is shortly due to be reviewed and that stakeholders within the industry will be asked to provide input to the Department of Education during the review.