Methodology

Expansion to early childcare entitlements: eligibility codes issued and validated

• Published: 17 October 2024

Codes issued

‘Codes issued’ counts the number of successful first-time applications made between:

• Summer Term = 2nd January 2024 and 31st March 2024 (inclusively) by parents/carers of children aged two at 1st April 2024. 
• Autumn Term = 1st April 2024 and 31st August 2024 (inclusively) by parents/carers of children aged 9 months to 36 months (younger than three years old). 

Applications were successful when a parent/carer (and partner where applicable) met the defined income eligibility criteria. If a parent/carer is eligible, they are given an eligibility code which they then take to their chosen childcare provider to access the offer. 

A parent/carer can start claiming their entitlement place the term after their child reaches the relevant age of eligibility (two years old in April 2024 or nine-months old in September 2024 and September 2025) or the term following the date their eligibility code was issued (whichever is later). This publication focuses on the new entitlement expansion, and so excludes children who would have turned three before the start of the term and become eligible for the existing entitlements, including the working parent additional 15 hours for three- and four-year-olds (see Provision for Under 5s publication for data on these children). 

By full rollout (September 2025) children will be eligible for the full 30 hours entitlement from the term after they turn nine months until they reach compulsory school age, the term following their fifth birthday. 

Codes validated

Childcare providers or local authorities will validate all eligibility codes via the ECS. A parent must have generated an eligibility code so it can then be validated to enable a child to access the offer.  

Local authorities and childcare providers can validate eligibility codes for childcare places throughout the term preceding the one in which the childcare place is used, or during that term in which the child takes up a place. This means that the number and percentage of eligibility codes for a particular term being validated is likely to increase over time.  

For the existing entitlements additional hours offer for three- and four-year-olds, which also relies on the eligibility checking service, typically validation of codes increases steadily through the term preceding that in which the child will receive the funded hours. For example, during the rollout of 30 hours for eligible 3- and 4-year olds in 2017, 71% of codes issued to three-year-olds at 31st August 2017 had been validated by 5th September 2017 (opens in a new tab); by 19th December 2017 (opens in a new tab) 94% of codes issued for that term had been validated.  

More information on the reasons children did not receive hours under the 30 hours offer for three- and four-year-olds is gathered via the Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents. See table 3.10 in the additional tables.

For the October 2024 publication, we are taking a cut of the data on the 13th October, after which date codes will continue to be validated (and issued, due to HMRC approaches described above, but at a much slower rate). 

Data quality

Data was collected from HMRC’s Childcare Service and aggregated by DfE from individual parent applications. The data was subject to a number of quality checks, including: 

• Identification of the first issuance of each unique code to remove duplicates, such as when the same code has been used to reconfirm a place. 
• Dual-running postcode to ward, LA and region data matching

Temporary codes

In January 2024 an issue was identified where parents/carers were claiming Tax-free Childcare for a child who would be two years old on or before 1st April 2024 and had reconfirmed their TFC eligibility before 2nd January 2024. Some of these individuals were unable to access an eligibility code until after the middle of February when their next reconfirmation window opened. As a result, around 57,000 ‘manual codes’ were automatically issued to any parent/carer via post. We have developed a process for dealing with cases where children have multiple codes assigned to them, as follows:

1. No codes associated with the child are validated - choose the earliest code issued to the child.
2. One code validated associated with the child - choose that validated code and the date is was issued (i.e., treat all other codes as irrelevant). 
3. More than one code validated associated with the child - choose the first code validated (i.e., capture the start of them having a place secured, and treat later codes as replacements).

Manual codes continue to be a relevant feature in the data as HMRC work through cases, although the same approach to removing duplicates (treating a child's first validated code, or first issued code where none are validated, as the relevant code for that child) has been applied to all terms of data for children of all ages. 

This means that the time series for validation rates will be largely accurate for what was observed at the time, with the exception of one specific set of cases - where the child was issued Code 1, then issued Code 2, and then validated Code 2. In this case, Code 2 is used, and so the time series does not reflect the period between Codes 1 and 2 being issued, as Code 1 is treated as the surplus unused code. 

Data protection

The data has been handled in accordance with DfE’s data protection policy, and any personal details such as National Insurance number and names have been removed during the aggregation to protect individual identities.   

Limitations

The figures presented here are drawn from the ECS which is an administrative data system and are provided to aid transparency. The numbers of codes issued does not necessarily become the number of children taking an entitlement funded place. It is possible that duplicate codes exist in the data, where a parent applies more than once for a code or where manual codes have been issued, and possible that parents obtain eligibility codes that they do not use. Caution is therefore advised when interpreting these figures. 

Each code has been assigned to an upper tier Local Authority (LA) area or ward on the basis of the postcode submitted to the Childcare Service and logged in the ECS. The latest ONS directory identifies postcodes in each LA as at August 2024. In a small number of cases codes could not be match to an August 2024 LA, for example for newly built homes. It may also be the result of a typo in the postcode when it was submitted by the applicant. 

Help and support

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If you have a specific enquiry about Expansion to early childcare entitlements: eligibility codes issued and validated statistics and data:

Early Years Analysis and Research Unit

Email: EY.AnalysisANDResearch@education.gov.uk
Contact name: Sophie Alderson

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