Alliance publishes free guides to help nurseries contribute to the funding review
Thursday, July 16, 2015
New guidance to help early years settings calculate the real cost of providing funded childcare places is now available.
The Pre-school Learning Alliance has made two guides available for free online: Guide to calculating the cost of delivering childcare and Guide to identifying delivery costs.
The first includes a detailed cost template, alongside guidance on calculating hours of delivery, and extra advice practitioners might wish to include, such as time spent in extra meetings, SEND provision, and opening and closing routines.
The second one is a shorter, simplified version of the first to help providers identify delivery costs.
The Department for Education wants early years providers to contribute evidence ahead of the funding review and wants to hear about the costs settings have to meet to offer the early education places.
The Government has commited to increasing the funding rates for providers, ahead of the expansion of free childcare to 30 hours a week for three-and four-year-olds of working parents, which will start for some families from September 2016.
The call for evidence, which is also open to local authorities and parents, closes on 10 August. Its findings will be used to inform the review into funding, being led by childcare minister Sam Gyimah.
The Alliance said it was important that settings gave as much detail as possible, because anecdotal evidence, while still important, would be of limited use when analysing actual delivery costs and how they compare to current funding rates.
Chief executive Neil Leitch said the call for evidence was a step in the right direction and that it was vital that as many providers responded as possible, which is why the Alliance had produced the guides.
‘We hope that practitioners will find them useful in helping them to give as much specific detail as possible about the actual cost of delivering childcare and early education in their responses, as this will be crucial in helping the DfE gain a better understanding of the current funding situation and the scale of the change that is needed,’ he said.
- Both guides can be accessed for free at: https://www.pre-school.org.uk/fundingreview
- Respond to the Government's call for evidence here.
- The closing date is 10 August.
