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Right I know there has been loads of great advise about the 15 hour funding but am still confused.

My preschool currently runs 2.5 hour sessions and most of our funded children do 5 sessions to get their 12.5 funded hours,any more and they pay. What I am wondering is this-in September can I continue to only offer 2.5 hour sessions or do I have to change them to 3 hour sessions?

If I could keep them at 2.5 hour long then I could fill some spaces in the afternoons which are desperately low on numbers.

Any advice gratefully received....ps am in Essex

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Hi Cait

 

How do you manage 6 x 2.5 hr sessions? Do the children do say a mon am session and then come back in the afternoon to do another 2.5 hrs session. Please excuse my ignorance if this is plain to others but my head is at exploding point with the rules and regs of this funding carry on!

 

Debbie

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How do you manage 6 x 2.5 hr sessions?

I wondered that too, Debbie so if you're ignorant then so am I! I can't imagine parents would want to come and pick them up between sessions. Is lunch club included in the free period I wonder?

 

Maz

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I'm hoping that lunch club can be charged for as a lot of our children do mornings and afternoons and we charge for lunch club which increases our revenue. If we can't charge funded children for lunch club we'll lose a horrible amount of money.

Though it is reassuring to know I'm not the only person who doesn't quite understand it all :o

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you can do back to back sessions (therefore 5hrs continous) you can only charge for lunch if it is not included in the free entitlement and is not obligatory for your parents. I think you might have problems if you charged for lunch and insisted that they stayed - or go!

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Our session times are 8.45 til 11.15 and 12.30 til 3pm with lunch in the middle for those who are staying all day or just the morning who choose to stay for lunch. We don't force parents to keep their children in for lunch club but most of them work so if they book their child in all day they happily pay the lunch club.

Hmmm still not sure whether I can continue charging funded children for lunch time or not...

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Uumm - we are the same as most of you.

At the moment we do 9-11.30, 12.30 -3 but can do 9-3 and pay for extra hour.

I'm not sure if I can offer this in sept, say by doing 8.45-11.45 then 12.45 - 3.45 and asking for any wishing to join 2 sessions together to pay for lunch time... I thought I had to offer that as 7 hours and not two lots of 3 in which case we are really out of pocket!

Does this makes sense to everyone?!

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The national framework states

no sessions longer than 10 hours

no session shorter than 2.5hours

not before 8am or after 6pm.

the full 15 hours over no fewer than 3 days (equating to no more than 12.5hrs in 2 days, or 10 hours in a single day)

parents can access their free entitlement at a maximum of 2 providers per term

 

The core delivery patterns

3 hours per day over 5 days per week

5 hours per day over 3 days per week

 

other common models of delivery flexibility are

 

over 3 days

6hrs per day + 6hrs per day +3hrs per day

 

over 4 days

5hrs per day +5hrs per day +2.5hrs per day+ 2.5hrs per day

 

over 5 days

2.5hrs per day for 4 days + 5 hours on one day

 

No conditions of access/completely free at the point of delivery (par2.7)

parents must not be required to purchase additional hours or pay LUNCH TIME charges in order to secure free provision

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Uumm - we are the same as most of you.

At the moment we do 9-11.30, 12.30 -3 but can do 9-3 and pay for extra hour.

I'm not sure if I can offer this in sept,

 

 

Why can't you do that in september? It's what we've been doing all year with the 15 hour entitlement

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Hi fairydollpink

 

I'm also in essex and went to the meeting last week about single funding etc with essex early years.

Basically you can still offer 2.5 hours provided you can meet the 15 hour requirement, so by offering back to back sessions you could achieve this. However you cant charge for lunch club if it is part of the 15 hours, just a couple of other things that were mentioned: you can no longer claim money back from previous settings if a child joins you after headcount day (and you cant charge the parent either), and if you cant meet the 15 hours you will have to show why or your funding can be withdrawn!!

This is Essex I'm sure other areas have different criteria.

 

Kris

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can i just ask if you have a child who only does 3 sessions at 2.5, which is 7.5, where do you stand with the funding as we have been told we cant claim for half an hours...................................so when you have quite a few children doing this it soon adds up as we are still paying staff............. hope this makes sense????????????????this is why we had to go to a three hour session......

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Hi everybody have confirmed with our local authority we can charge for lunch club if we wish, or you can allow parents/carers to use as part of their 15 hours entitlement. We have decided for our setting that we will continue to have this as an additional service and will continue to charge.

Yes we also have parents that will have 2 x 3hrs per day, go home for lunch and come back, [ parents choice ].

Bring back the days when it was oh so simple.

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We've been doing 15 hours funding since last September (disadvantaged area) and offer 3 hour am sessions, lunch club (45 mins) and 3 hour pm sessions - LEA are quite happy with that, and have been told that some of our children access their 15 hours with 2 1/2 days (so pay for 2 lunch clubs. However, since we offer 3 hour sessions, they can equally take up 5 mornings or afternoons.

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Right I know there has been loads of great advise about the 15 hour funding but am still confused.

My preschool currently runs 2.5 hour sessions and most of our funded children do 5 sessions to get their 12.5 funded hours,any more and they pay. What I am wondering is this-in September can I continue to only offer 2.5 hour sessions or do I have to change them to 3 hour sessions?

If I could keep them at 2.5 hour long then I could fill some spaces in the afternoons which are desperately low on numbers.

Any advice gratefully received....ps am in Essex

 

 

I have been actively involved in how this is delivered in my area. The minimum hours a provider is available will need to be a ecision that each local authority makes. Some are struggling to ensure that the 15 hours are met because of restrictions placed upon them out of their control ( i.e chutch halls). they have, therfor allowed 12.5 hours to remain as a minimum deliverery. All local authorities will need to liaise with providers to ensure that the children in their area are not left without proivision. Hope this helps.

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