DfE announces workaround for parents accessing new two-year-old funding offer
by Jess Gibson
A system is in place to support parents unable to reconfirm their eligibility for the new two-year-old funding offer until late February or March, the Department for Education announced today.
Parents planning to apply for the new funded two-year-old offer who reconfirmed their eligibility for tax-free childcare cat the end of 2023 had raised concerns about the fact that, despite registration for the entitlement offer opening in January, they would need to wait until their eligibility 鈥榬econfirmation window鈥 opened in February or March to register eligibility and receive a code.
However, the DfE has now confirmed a workaround where those families needing to wait until late February or March will be sent a separate code by letter that they can use ahead of their reconfirmation window opening.
A DfE spokesperson said: 鈥淲e are rolling out the single largest expansion in childcare in England鈥檚 history, ensuring working parents with 30 hours of free childcare a week, starting at nine months old all the way up to their child starting school. We are pleased that thousands of parents have already applied for the expansion starting in April.
鈥淗owever, a pre-existing feature in the system, where parents reconfirm their eligibility every three months, is impacting a minority of parents when combined with a small number of providers who are asking for codes much earlier than April.
鈥淧arents who can't reconfirm online until the second half of February or March will therefore automatically receive a letter with a code from HMRC before the middle of February, without needing to take any action.鈥
Commenting, 王中王开奖结果 CEO Neil Leitch said:鈥淲e know that for those parents affected, the prospect of not receiving their funded entitlement eligibility codes in time to secure places has been an incredibly stressful one, and so we welcome that fact that a workaround has 鈥 belatedly 鈥 been announced. That said, it's crucial that this new solution actually works in practice, and that parents are able to apply for places 鈥 and providers can receive funding for those places 鈥 in a timely manner.鈥
鈥淎nd, of course, eligibility codes are only one small part of a much bigger problem. We know that sustained staffing shortages 鈥 plus the fact that a significant proportion of nurseries, pre-schools and childminders still don鈥檛 know their funding rates for the new financial year 鈥 has meant that many providers still aren鈥檛 in a position to confirm whether or not they will even be offering funded places to two-year-olds under the new scheme.
鈥淯nless government also looks to address these issues as a matter of urgency, we will still see many parents left disappointed when the new offer rolls out in April."