Guidance

Parental declaration form: guidance

Updated 21 February 2025

Applies to England

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/free-early-years-provision-and-childcare-model-agreement/parental-declaration-form-guidance

Parental declaration form

A parental declaration form is an agreement between parents and their chosen provider or providers.

The declaration should set out the hours and patterns of access to the free entitlement that the parent and provider have agreed to.

Local authorities should:

  • support providers to establish parental declarations with parents
  • ensure that parental declaration forms are up to date and only include current terminology and relevant information

A parental declaration template is available.

Information to include

Early years pupil premium and the disability access fund

Local authorities should include information about early years pupil premium (EYPP) and the disability access fund (DAF) in their parental declaration forms to support parents to access this additional support.

Local authorities can also include information collected during the census such as:

  • EYPP eligibility
  • child’s ethnicity
  • special educational needs (SEN) information

Local authorities should also include the information they need to:

  • validate working parent entitlement codes
  • check eligibility for the 2-year-old disadvantage entitlement and EYPP

Information on charges

It would be useful to include information on provider charges for:

  • consumables
  • additional hours or services

Parents can then clearly see what they are asked to pay alongside their funded hours. 

It would also be useful to include the number of:

  • funded hours per day
  • weeks over the year that the child is taking up their funded place

Parents who stretch their hours across the year, can then see that they have received their child’s full entitlement.

Information not to include

The form should only include information necessary for the delivery of the early years’ entitlements. Do not include:

  • information more suited to the local authority provider agreement
  • provider deadlines such as headcounts

Re-signing the parental declaration

Parents should only be asked to re-sign their parental declaration if the information on the current form changes. For example, if:

  • they want to reduce the number of hours they take up
  • change the days their child attends
  • change which settings their child attends
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