When a nursery offers you your free childcare hours, they will usually offer them one of two ways: 30 hours a week during term time, or a smaller number of hours spread across most of the year. Parents often read the second as a worse deal. It is not — it is the same annual total, divided differently.
Whether it suits you is a separate question, and it depends on something quite specific: what you do during the holidays.
The same number, divided differently
Your entitlement is annual. The working-parent entitlement is 1,140 hours a year; the universal entitlement for 3- and 4-year-olds is 570.
| Model | Weeks | Funded hours per week |
|---|---|---|
| Term-time | 38 | 30 |
| Stretched over 48 weeks | 48 | about 23.75 |
| Stretched over 52 weeks | 52 | about 21.9 |
Nothing is lost in the stretched version. A provider offering 23.75 hours a week across 48 weeks is giving you exactly the same 1,140 hours.
Which suits you
Term-time works if you have holiday cover — family nearby, annual leave that lines up with school holidays, a partner with flexible work, or a job that genuinely quietens down in August. You get maximum funded hours in the weeks you need childcare most, and you pay for little or nothing in the holidays because you are not using the setting.
Stretched works if you work the same hours all year. Most employed parents do. The holidays are precisely when term-time funding leaves you exposed: thirteen or fourteen weeks a year where the funded hours have run out and the fees are at full rate. Spreading the entitlement smooths that.
The question to ask yourself is not which gives more hours — they are equal — but which weeks you actually need childcare in. If the answer is "all of them", stretched almost always leaves you better off in cash terms, because term-time funding you cannot use in August is funding you have effectively wasted.
The catch worth knowing
Providers are not required to offer the stretched model. It is permitted, not mandatory, and a setting can reasonably decline — particularly if it closes for part of the year or runs on a school timetable.
So this may not be a choice at all. If your provider only offers term-time and you need year-round cover, your realistic options are to pay for the extra holiday weeks, use a different setting in the holidays, or move. Worth establishing early rather than in July.
There are also limits on how funded hours can be delivered in either model: no more than 10 hours in a day, nothing before 6am or after 8pm, and across no more than two sites in a day.
Checking what you have been given
Your invoice should make the model explicit, usually in the header — wording like "30 hours stretched" or a stated weeks-per-year figure. If it does not, ask, because it changes what a correct invoice looks like.
Then check the arithmetic once: weekly funded hours multiplied by weeks per year should come to 1,140 (or 570 for the universal entitlement alone). If it comes to materially less, ask how the figure was derived.
Common questions
Can I switch models partway through the year?
That is between you and your provider, and depends on how they have planned staffing and funding. Ask, but do not assume — many settle the model at the start of the funding year.
Does stretching reduce my total entitlement?
No. The annual total is identical. Only the weekly distribution changes.
Can my provider charge more per hour under the stretched model?
They cannot charge for the funded hours under either model. Their rate for additional paid hours is theirs to set, but it should not differ simply because you chose one model over the other.
What happens in the weeks the nursery closes?
Funded hours can only be delivered in weeks the setting is open, which is why a provider closing for four weeks a year cannot realistically stretch over 52. Check their closure weeks before deciding.
We only need two days a week. Which is better?
Probably stretched, if the provider offers it — part-time patterns tend to leave term-time funding unused, and unused funded hours do not carry over.