Proposed Changes to Funded Full Time Early Education Places

Overview

Birmingham City Council’s Early Years Childcare and Children’s Centre Service currently funds free full-time early education places for children who meet certain eligibility criteria. However, we no longer have the funding to continue with these arrangements and are consulting on proposed changes which will reduce the number of funded full-time early education places.

We need your views on our proposals. Your views will be taken into full consideration when we finalise our plans which will go to Birmingham City Council Cabinet for approval in April 2016.

Why your views matter

Introduction

The Department for Education gives funding to every Local Authority to provide 15 hours of free early education a week for all children from the term after their third birthday and for eligible* two year olds in the term after their second birthday. (*Criteria for identifying these are provided at the end of this document in Appendix 1).

All children are then entitled to a full-time school place in Reception Class in primary school from the September after their fourth birthday.

The 15 hours of free early education offers all three year olds the chance to attend some form of nursery. Children are entitled to 570 hours of free early education or childcare a year. This is often taken as 15 hours each week for 38 weeks of the year. Funded early education places are available in a range of different settings. All settings offering funded education places must be registered with Ofsted to check the standard of care and education provided. The different types of setting that provide the free entitlement include: nursery schools; nursery classes within primary schools; private, voluntary and independent (PVI) nursery providers; and childminders.  Different settings organise the 15 hour entitlement to free early education in different ways, for example some may offer five half days while others may offer a place for 2.5 days a week.

The 15 hours of free early education is based on evidence from the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project (Sylva et al, 2010) that 15 hours’ education makes a positive difference to children’s level of development. The government only funds 15 hours because of the evidence that spending more than 15 hours in day care or education does not make a significant difference to children’s level of development.  
Many parents need more than 15 hours of childcare a week to enable them to go to work. Some providers of early education only offer 15 hour part-time education places and do not provide full time places or day-care. However, there are many providers that will offer additional hours of education or childcare that parents can pay for.

Some schools choose to offer full-time places that are not funded by the local authority without asking parents to pay for the additional hours. This is the decision of individual settings.

Why are we consulting?

Birmingham City Council’s Early Years Childcare and Children’s Centre Service currently funds free full-time early education places for children who meet certain eligibility criteria. However, we no longer have the funding to continue with these arrangements and are consulting on proposed changes which will reduce the number of funded full-time early education places.

We need your views on our proposals.

Your views will be taken into full consideration when we finalise our plans which will go to Birmingham City Council Cabinet for approval in April 2016.

Who will be affected by this consultation?

The consultation is aimed at parents, early year’s professionals, providers of nursery schools/classes, childcare providers from the private, voluntary and independent sectors, neighbouring local authorities and the general public.