Funding and fees
Funding
We welcome children who are eligible for government funding including Working Parent Entitlement and FEET funding (Free Early Education for Two year olds). For more information, please click here to see our Fees & Funding Policy.
From the term after their 3rd birthday, all children are entitled to Universal Entitlement funding of up to 15 hours funded early education per week, this funding can be split between settings.
Further information about government funding early education can be found at www.beststartinlife.gov.uk.
Children can only claim funding at the setting if they attend for a minimum of 4 sessions per week.
Voluntary Consumables Charges
The funding received from the government through Working Parent Entitlement or Universal Entitlement is only designed to cover the very basic costs of providing early education for children. Barnett Wood Pre-School strives to give every child the very best start to their educational journey and therefore provides a curriculum and experience that goes above and beyond a 'basic' offering. Past examples include providing snacks, taking the children on local outings, inviting specialist providers to run activities with the children (e.g. yoga, music and movement etc) and arranging visits from specialist companies (e.g. theatre visits, hands on animal experiences etc).
In order to fund the setting's enhanced offering, parents are asked to pay a voluntary consumables charge which conforms to government guidelines. The voluntary consumables charges for the 2025-2026 academic year are as follows:
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Food consumables 20p per funded hour
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Non-food consumables 30p per funded hour
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Activities £1 per funded hour
Parents have the option to 'opt out' of the enhanced curriculum that the setting offers. In doing so they will receive the funded government provision of up to 15 or 30 hours per week (term time), without any additional charges. However they will be required to adhere to the setting's Alternatives Policy, details of which can be found here.
There is no option to opt out of certain elements of the setting’s provision. Where a parent has a combination of funded hours and private hours, any decision to opt in or opt out will apply to both their child’s funded and private paid hours.
The voluntary consumables charge is invoiced before the start of each term and is based on the number of hours per week that a child attends.
Fees
We charge £10/hour for all children who are not eligible for government funding or are attending for more hours than we can claim funding for.
Fees are invoiced before the start of each term. We accept childcare vouchers and encourage parents to visit www.beststartinlife.gov.uk to check what support is available to help fund their child's early education. We are able to provide additional documentation that enables parents to claim Universal Credit for childcare.