ECCE funding

The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme provides free pre-school places. In Meadow you set up your programme year and its sessions, enrol eligible children, and the funding then flows through to each child's booking plan. Managing ECCE needs the programmes.manage permission (owners and managers).

Setting up a programme year

From the ECCE area you set up a programme year — for example 2024–2025 — with:

• A service model — Standard (38 weeks) or Legacy (41 weeks).
• The programme's start and end dates.
• The capitation rate (you can override it if needed).
• The sessions the programme runs (AM, PM), with their days and times.

Enrolling children

Choose Enrol children and select eligible children — they need a date of birth and a PPSN on file. For each child you set:

• The ECCE year — year 1 or 2 (a child can do up to two ECCE years).
• A start date, which must be a Monday, and an optional end date, which must be a Friday (the ECCE/HIVE rules).

How ECCE funding reaches the plan

ECCE funding is derived rather than attached by hand. When a child is enrolled in an active ECCE year and their booking plan includes a session marked as an ECCE session (see Session types), those hours count as ECCE in the plan's funding allocation — labelled "From the ECCE session on this plan".

If a child has ECCE-tagged hours booked but no ECCE year is set up yet, Meadow flags it: those hours won't be funded until you add the programme year.