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Do I get free childcare hours when my son start school?
Mouthy Money Your Questions Answered panelist, Joeli Brearley, answers a reader’s question on the help available when children start primary school.
Q What childcare help am I entitled to when my child starts school in September? Can I still claim free hours?
A The Government’s ‘free hours’ childcare scheme ends at age five when children start school. This system allows most parents to claim free hours of childcare during the school term time.
It’s currently undergoing a massive overhaul, allowing parents to claim these hours from nine months. The system is set to be fully rolled out by next year, and is available to working parents.
But when children start primary school, there are still many costs to consider including before and after-school clubs. While there may not be free hours, what many parents don’t realise is that you can claim tax-free childcare until your child is 12 years old.
The tax-free childcare scheme can save you thousands of pounds a year – as long as you or your partner don’t cross the £100k salary threshold, you are both in work and you aren’t accessing other benefits such as universal credit or tax credits.
For every £8 you put into the scheme the government will top it up by £2; with a maximum claim of £500 every 3 months for each child. This increases to £1,000 every 3 months if your child is disabled.
While this may not seem like much when compared to the annual costs of paying for childcare out of school hours, it is still a worthwhile benefit to signed up to.
It can be used for after school clubs, holiday clubs, nannies, and breakfast clubs as long as they are Ofsted approved. You can sign up on the Gov.uk website and you need to reconfirm your details every three months.
Joeli founded Pregnant Then Screwed in 2015 after her own experience of pregnancy discrimination. She is the winner of the Northern Power Women Agent for Change award, is an Amnesty International Human Rights Defender and a member of the United Nations Working Group: Women’s Human Rights in the Changing World of Work. In January 2021 she took the Government to court for indirect sex discrimination due to the way self employed mothers were being financially penalised by the income support scheme. Her debut book: ”Pregnant Then Screwed: The Truth about the Motherhood Penalty, and how to fix it’’ was published by Simon & Schuster on the 4th March 2021.
Photo credits: Pexels
