Welcome, Parents

Your 2-year-old is eligible for 15 hours of funded childcare per week if you live in England and get any of the following benefits:

• Income Support
• Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA)
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Universal Credit, and your household income is £15,400 a year or less after tax, not including benefit payments
• The guaranteed element of Pension Credit
• Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit (or both), and your household income is £16,190 a year or less before tax
• The Working Tax Credit 4-week run on (the payment you get when you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit)
• Support through part 6 of the Immigration and Asylum Act – NASS support

Your child is also eligible if they:

• Are looked after by a local authority
• Have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan
• Get Disability Living Allowance
• Have left care under an adoption order, special guardianship order, or a child arrangements order

Every single child aged three and four is eligible for 15 hours funded childcare — regardless of parental employment or income.

If your child is 3 or 4 years old and lives in England, you are entitled to 15 hours funded childcare or early education per week for 38 weeks of the year (during term time). This comes to a total of 570 hours over a 12-month period.

MayGardens Little Learners is pleased to offer 30 hours funded childcare for all eligible families. All 3 and 4-year-olds in England currently receive 15 hours a week government-funded early education. If their parents are living and working in England, they may be entitled to 30 hours funded childcare — up to 1,140 hours per year in total.

If eligible, you can access the 30 funded hours from the beginning of the term following your child's 3rd birthday. We stretch the funding across 50 weeks (as opposed to the term-time 38-week period), enabling part-time families to access more of the funded hours. Please speak to the Manager for more information about how this works.

Eligibility — Work Requirements

The parent (and their partner where applicable) must be seeking the free childcare to enable them to work. Parents must earn or expect to earn the equivalent of 16 hours at National Minimum or Living Wage over the coming three months.

Where a parent is in a 'start-up period' (i.e. they are newly self-employed) they do not need to demonstrate that they meet the income criteria for 12 months.

Eligibility — Salary

• £120 per week for each parent aged over 25
• £112.80 per week for each parent aged 21–24
• £56 per week for apprentices in their first year
• You cannot get 30 hours free childcare if you or your partner expect to earn £100,000 or more per year

Eligibility — Age of Children

Your child must be either 3 or 4 years old. You can apply for funding in the term prior to your child's 3rd birthday, but the funding will not apply until the term after they turn 3.

Many families increase their child's attendance at nursery as they move into the preschool class. An increase in the number of days children attend can help prepare them for the transition to 'big school'.

Three and four-year-olds are especially keen to develop their social skills, and a preschool environment can support this development particularly well. Children also benefit from the expansive learning-through-play opportunities that a highly qualified early years professional can provide, ensuring they leave for school well prepared socially, academically, and emotionally.

Tax-Free Childcare allows eligible working families to receive a government top-up of 20p for every 80p they spend on childcare, up to a maximum of £2,000 per child per year (or £4,000 for children with disabilities).

You can use Tax-Free Childcare alongside your free hours entitlements. Apply via the government's Childcare Service.

Childcare vouchers, as well as directly contracted childcare (childcare your employer arranges with a provider, such as salary sacrifice), have been discontinued by the government for new applicants.

However, if you joined either of these schemes on or before 4 October 2018, you can still receive and use these vouchers towards your childcare payments with us — provided you have stayed with the same employer and they still run the scheme.

These schemes have since been replaced by Tax-Free Childcare (see above). If you are unsure whether to stay on childcare vouchers or switch to Tax-Free Childcare, a government calculator is available at childcarechoices.gov.uk to help you decide.