ECE Hours & Funding Types

ECE Hours

The government subsidises all children who attend early learning services, known as the 20 Hours ECE, and this is a higher funding subsidy.

It means that if a child is 3, 4 or 5 year old and goes to an early learning service or kōhanga reo that offers 20 Hours ECE, the cost can be fully subsidised for up to 6 hours a day and up to 20 hours a week.

You can find more information on funding rates in the Ministry's funding handbook.(external 

Your families can choose to use as many or as few hours of 20 Hours ECE as they want, up to 6 hours a day and 20 hours a week. Your early learning service or kōhanga reo may, however, have a minimum number of hours or days of enrolment as part of your policy.

Funding in Discover

There are three funding types in Discover:

1. Normal - Normal ministry funding, frequent absence and 3-week rules apply
2. Casual - Similar to normal except that funding is received only if the child attends on a booked day
3. Unfunded - Always unfunded

When a child turns 6, regardless of whether you have changed the status to unfunded or not, Discover will automatically stop the funding in your RS7.

When entering or editing an enrolment for a child, Discover will assess if the child is entitled to ECE hours and automatically work out the optimum allocation of those ECE hours across the booking.

If you wish to have Discover NOT pre-populate the 20 ECE hours navigate to  Centre Settings > Enrolment Settings section >"Disable Automatic ECE Hour Allocation" to disable for the centre.

If you wish to change this for a single child, open the Enrolment, select the gear icon and disable the ECE allocation.