Discover is designed to automatically optimise your funding, whilst ensuring your service remains compliant per the Ministry of Education Funding Handbook.
This guide is designed to assist you in understanding how Discover will handle funding rules.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Funded Child Hours
Child Hours can only be claimed when the Centre is open, with the exception of an emergency closure.
On the Enrolment screen there is the option for Enrolment Type which has an impact on funding
Normal: The booked hours are claimed regardless of attendance.
Casual: Only the hours Attended are funded.
Unfunded: Child is not funded and hours are not claimed at all.
Child hours are also broken into several categories for both the License and Funding rate purposes:
Under two years are funded at a specific rate, and subject to the Under Two license.
Two year old's and those not claiming Twenty Hours ECE are funded at a specific rate and subject to the full license including Under Twos.
Twenty Hours ECE funding is broken into two rates, Twenty Hour and Plus Ten, where Twenty plus Ten equals 30 hours. The Twenty Hour portion is funded at a specific rate and the Plus Ten is funded at the normal Two year rate.
Children under 3 or not claiming 20 hours ECE hours:
Child hours are derived from the booked enrolment - Discover will use these booked hours rather than the hours the child actually attends.
However, if a child is booked for less than 6 hours, but their attendance extends beyond the booked time, Discover will indicate a claim for the remaining time - up to 6 hours for the day.
For example:
Maia is regularly booked in for a 4-hour session every Monday 9:00am through 1:00pm, but one week her family have another engagement that means they cannot pick her up until 2:00pm.
The additional hour that is logged in the Attendance screen between 1:00pm and 2:00pm will be claimed, meaning 5 hours will be claimed for that Monday.
However, if Maia were to be picked up from the centre early one day, at 12:00pm, 4 hours will still be claimed as this is her regular ongoing booking.
How does this look in Discover?
When enrolling a child, you will see the ECE row in the enrolment timetable - this will not be editable as Discover will automatically allocate the hours to maximise funding.
Where the duration of a booked sessions exceeds 6 hours Discover will apply the maximum of 6 hours for that session up to a total of 30 hours per week.
Please note: The hours will not show in the ECE hours row.
You can view funding allocation for individual children in the Centre Funding for Child report via Reports > Children.
Funding can be viewed from a monthly view, or day-by-day with hours visible in the Under 2 and Over 2 columns.
Children over 3 claiming 20 hours ECE Hours:
When enrolling a child over the age of 3, it is best practice to manually assign the funding hours via the Enrolment, after consultation with the family.
The Ministry indicates that the 20 hours cannot be doubled up by claiming at multiple different services, so close attention should be paid to the initial enrolment and any subsequent adjustments to ensure the child is only receiving a grand total of 20 hours across the centre/s.
For this reason, though Discover will claim funding per the hours indicated in the Enrolment, if the child's attendance exceeds their booking, the system will log this additional time as Plus 10 hours (up to 6 hours total funding per day).
Discover will never claim more than the declared 20 hours per the enrolment.
For example:
Kai is regularly booked for a 5 hour session every Tuesday 7:00am through 12:00pm.
The centre has manually entered the 5 hours of 20 hours funding through the enrolment.
If Kai were to attend until 2:00pm, Discover will automatically apply 1 hour of Plus 10 Hours, ensuring the manually entered 20 hours ECE hours are maintained, and the total funding hours do not exceed 6 hours for the day.
How does this look in Discover?
When enrolling a child, you will see the ECE row in the enrolment timetable - this can be edited to manually allocate the 20 hours of funding (or however many hours of the 20 hours remain if the child attends another centre).
Manually assigned 20 hours and Discover-assigned Plus 10 hours can be viewed in the Centre Funding for Child report via Reports > Children.
Funding can be viewed from a monthly view, or day-by-day with hours visible in the 20 Hours and Plus 10 Hours columns.
Please note: The report below details the funding for the child's enrolment above. See the Plus 10 hours being assigned on a Monday (02/10) in which no 20 Hours have been assigned.
Frequent Absences
Frequent Absence rules are applied to check enrolment or bookings against actual attendance.
Discover runs checks against child/ren's attendance as below (with Rules 1 and 2 counted at the same time due to their similarity):
Rule 1 & 2: Checks for absences, or days booked but not attended, to establish a repeating monthly pattern over a 4 month period.
Rule 3: Checks for attendances shorter than booked hours, to establish a repeating monthly pattern over a 4 month period.
When a pattern is established for 4 months or more, Discover indicates funding is stopped or limited:
Rules 1&2: funding is terminated for X days in a month.
Rule 3: funding is reduced by X hours for X days per month.
These rules apply to Normal funded children (not Casual).
When a Centre is closed for two or more weeks in a month, this month is excluded from the calculation.
How does this look in Discover?
Frequent Absences and the applied rules can be reviewed in the Frequent Absence Report found in Reports > Children. A guide to this report can be found here.
Absence Exemptions
Children with ongoing medical situations may be eligible for an absence exemption.
Centres will need to complete either an EC12 or EC13 form, which can be stored in the Notes section of the child's profile.
To ensure the absence does not impact the funding rules, an absence exemption can be logged in the Health tab. Once this is done, the absence exemption will be visible in the Frequent Absences report immediately, indicated by a pale blue absence status (see key here).
When Discover compiles attendance data for the Frequent Absence report, the absence exemption will exclude this date/s from the rule checks.
Continuous Absences or the Three Week Rule (TWR)
Continuous Absence is the detection of three weeks of continuous absence, after which funding stops. There are some exceptions, for example, if the Centre is closed for two weeks or more, the period is extended by that closure.
The three week rule can only apply in situations in which the child could attend the centre (due to the service operating as normal).
An Absence Exception can also extend up to twelve weeks.
Please note: When stopping funding, Discover takes into account days were funding has already been stopped.
First Week Funding
The MOE will fund the first week of a new enrolment if a child does not attend, but after this time, funding will be suspended until the child attends. This applies to Normal funded child hours only.
An enrolment gap of three weeks without an enrolment is considered a new enrolment.
The Required Teacher Ratio
The ratio between children attending and required staff is indicated by the MOE here (ratios vary by centre/service type).
Discover checks the ratios as below:
All booked child hours are broken up into 15 minute segments, with each segment containing the number of children booked for those 15 minutes. The system will further assess the number of children in each age bracket per segment and the number of teachers required to meet the regulations for ratios.
Using this information, Discover will check the child places of the centre license (both overall and under 2), counting funded children. If the number of children exceeds the licence, then funding is stopped for the excess enrolments.
It's important to note that this mechanism turns off funding for a child on the day exceeding the license. The system calculates which children to "turn off" to ensure the best claim possible for the Centre.
Please note: Even if a child has not attended, but their hours are claimed, this constitutes a child place.
How does this look in Discover?
Required ratios can viewed primarily through the Roster screen.
Hovering over the time segments on the left of the roster sheet will provide further detail about the number of staff required at any time throughout the day.
Ministry Ratio: Refers to the adult-to-child ratio.
ECE Qualified: Refers to the number of ECE qualified Teachers required/rostered (will not change if discretionary hours are applied)
Staff Hour Count
The hours taught by Registered and Unregistered teachers are together known as the Staff Hour Count. Information compiled from your Staff profiles and the roster will determine the ratio and funding rate for your centre.
As noted above, the roster is divided in to 15 minute segments. Discover then calculates the sum equivalent hours delivered by Registered, Unregistered, Required, and Shortfall staff and rounds them to the nearest whole number.
Discretionary hours can be used when the roster contains a segment/s in which there are not enough registered teachers in contact. This will elevate those segments to a registered status when delivered by unregistered staff.
Discover will automatically adjust discretionary hours to optimise funding; removing segments where they are not needed, or 'topping up' when required, with the goal of reaching 80% registered hours per day. The system will also round these segments to the closest whole hour on a day-by-day basis.
The number of discretionary hours assigned can be viewed on the dashboard, in the Registered Staff Percentage widget, and in the Centre Funding Report.
Two columns will be displayed; Rostered and Allocated.
Rostered: The number of discretionary hours that have been manually entered in to the Roster
Allocated: The number of discretionary hours that Discover has assigned to optimise funding and reduce waste.
Please note: It is not unusual to see the number of allocated hours fluctuate throughout the funding period as more hours are rostered and the system adjusts accordingly. The final distribution will be visible after all rostering and attendance has been completed at the end of a funding period.
Registered Staff Percentage Dashboard Widget
Centre Funding Report with 'Show Discretionary Hours' ticked
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