The DfE Early Years Census data collection will be taking place next week, w/c 13 January 2025. It is a statutory duty to complete the annual Census within the publicised timescales and deadlines.
Census Day: Thursday 16 January 2025
If you are a childminder, nursery, pre-school, out of school club, nursery unit of an independent school or governor run school, you will be receiving an e-mail about this from the Families Information Service which includes an explanation about how to complete the on-line form via the provider portal.
It is vital that your Census information is submitted on Census Day: Thursday 16 January 2025.
Please note: You are only required to complete the online Census form if you have funded children attending your provision during Census week. You should record the normal situation during week beginning 13 January 2025. If children are temporarily absent, for example, sick or on holiday, you should include them. If your provision is temporarily closed, record the situation which would have applied during the week.
If you DO NOT have any funded children attending your provision during Census week, please confirm this by e-mailing: info.fis@derbyshire.gov.uk to avoid being chased for your return.
If you do not submit your Census return, the early entitlement funding will be withheld.
Please ensure you complete the online form, which is pre-populated with your information if you completed a Census return in 2024, for your data submission via the provider portal to be processed.
DfE guidance can be viewed here: 2025 Early Years' Census - Gov.UK
It is extremely important that all children attending your provision for a funded place are included on the January / February 2025 Actuals submission. The Department for Education (DfE) allocates funding to local authorities for the early years’ entitlements based upon the information submitted by providers via the provider portal at this point in the year. This is the only funding that the local authority will have available to make payments for the forthcoming year. The local authority cannot ask for additional funding from the DfE if more is required during each term e.g., following providers missed funding claims.
Your submission must reflect the actual attendance of all funded children, their hours and weeks of attendance. It is essential that the ‘present during census box’ on the funding details tab is ticked for those children registered with you during the week commencing 13 January 2025, and that all children no longer in attendance are deleted from your ‘Actuals’ screen.
Important: The DfE are requesting feedback on the number of weeks a child will be accessing their funded place over the academic year. You will see that a new ‘Census Information’ box has been included on the provider portal to capture this data (below). This is a mandatory field once the ‘present during census box’ has been ticked. As funded hours are submitted as a term time claim, please ensure the number of weeks does not exceed 38 weeks.
![Census Information Box for weeks](https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/fancy_images/UKDCC/2025/01/10817146/ey-census-box-2025_original.png) Where a 3- & 4-year-old child is accessing both the funded entitlement and the extended entitlement hours, please ensure both boxes are completed and that the number of weeks do not exceed 38 weeks.
Please be reminded that the provider portal will close on Sunday 19 January 2025 for the submission of January / February 2025 Actuals.
Once all the information has been submitted, please remember to click ‘Send Claim’. You will see a green tick when your claim has been submitted.
If you experience any difficulties in submitting your data, please refer to the useful guidance information on the SchoolsNet - Funding and contracts tile in the first instance. If you continue to experience difficulties, please e-mail: cs.enquiries.groupcare@derbyshire.gov.uk; cs.enquiries.childminders@derbyshire.gov; cs.enquiries.schools@derbyshire.gov.uk and an Officer will make contact with you. Due to the volume of queries being received, please allow the Officer time to respond.
The Department for Education (DfE) ask local authorities to collect details on children’s ethnicity. This data is reported back to the DfE in the census collection.
Please ensure the correct ethnicity option is selected for each child, on the ‘child details’ tab, prior to submitting funding claims on the portal.
Where a parent has not completed this on their FE1 form, please choose the relevant option from the dropdown list on the portal.
As you will be aware, the National Wraparound Childcare Programme has been developed to increase the amount of out of school provision available to parents. The aim of the programme is to ensure childcare provision is regular, has longer hours and is more dependable for working parents, enabling them to access employment or expand working hours.
In the autumn term, 416 wraparound places were created or expanded in Derbyshire with funding approved for the creation/expansion of a further 587 places in the spring term.
The wraparound programme aims to remove barriers to setting up new provision or expanding current provision, including removing the financial risk of setting up new provision when demand is not yet guaranteed. The expectation is that provision will become self-sustainable through parental payments alone by the end of the funding period.
Please email the Sufficiency Team: CS.SufficiencyService@derbyshire.gov.uk, if you are considering setting up wraparound provision and would like to apply for funding or if you would like to find out more about the programme.
Sufficiency of Early Years and Wraparound Places in Derbyshire
If you are aware of any sufficiency issues in relation to the number of places available for early years or wraparound places, particularly taking into account the expansion to early years funding from September 2025, please email the Sufficiency Team: CS.SufficiencyService@derbyshire.gov.uk.
We would like to remind you of the application deadlines as we approach the final few months of the childminder start-up grant scheme.
New childminders who wish to apply for the grant will need to finalise their Ofsted or CMA registration by 31 March 2025. However, the Department for Education (DfE) recognise that in some circumstances childminder registration may be delayed due to registration checks (for example, GP health checks) taking longer than expected. For this reason, an applicant who submitted their registration to Ofsted or a CMA by 3 January 2025 will still be eligible to apply for the grant if completion of their registration is delayed beyond 31 March 2025 for reasons relating to the completion of registration checks. In these cases, the DfE will require Ofsted or the CMA to confirm that a registration has been delayed for these reasons.
They can find more information about applying for the grant here: Apply for a childminder start-up grant - GOV.UK
The Department for Education’s Do Something BIG recruitment campaign continues to highlight the huge difference early years educators make to young children and how rewarding working in the sector can be.
On average, there have been over 46,000 visits to the campaign website each week, which directs potential applicants to use DWP’s Find a Job vacancy platform to search for early years roles in their area.
Listing early years vacancies on Find a Job is free to use making it a cost-effective way of ensuring the job is seen by a large pool of candidates.
Please use the Employer | Advertise your jobs link to create an account and post any current or upcoming jobs in your setting. Providers should use the term ‘early years’ in their job advert titles and select ‘Education and childcare jobs’ as the job category.
The HUB provides a bank of resources to childcare providers. Here you will find a comprehensive library of the resources developed to support the roll-out of the early years and wraparound childcare expansion, which includes:
Local authority notification:
Should you need to close your provision due to flooding, illness, snow, or an unforeseen circumstance, please ensure you notify the funding team via the relevant in-box:
CS.enquiries.childminders@derbyshire.gov.uk
CS.enquiries.groupcare@derbyshire.gov.uk
CS.enquiries.schools@derbyshire.gov.uk
Along with the quality team via: CS.EYS@derbyshire.gov.uk
Ofsted notification:
For closures of three days or more please be reminded that there is also a requirement to notify Ofsted.
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If you are a contracted provider and would like to receive text reminders when the provider portal is open / closed, please ensure you notify us (and Ofsted of course!) of your mobile number.
Where the local authority has received a mobile number from your setting, this will automatically be included in the ‘Texting’ notifications.
Please let us know via email if you wish to be removed from this Service.
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