ON-DEMAND WEBINAR
RS7 Submissions in Discover (with Todd Painter)
RS7 Video transcript
Candace: Welcome everyone to our
RS7 webinar. My name is Candace. I’m the trainer here at Discover. And with me today, I’ve got
Todd Painter of Advance ECE. I know that many of you will be familiar with Todd. He’s a
consultant and a trainer in all things Discover and ECE. First and foremost but also has an
amazing understanding of Discover and so today he is going to be taking us through all the
details, all the preparation, the finer nuances of getting your data ready and submitting your
RS7. We will be recording this session. It will be saved and posted later on today. You do have
that Q & A box at the top of the screen. If you’d like to ask any questions as we go along.
But there is a lot to get through today. So I will now pass over to you, Todd.
Todd: Thank you, Candace. We
actually, yeah, there’s always a bit to get through, but unlike previous funding periods,
there’s not a great deal of temporary funding changes.
There, there’s a couple of things to
just touch on, and then there will be a little bit of time on things that are coming up. I would
also like to spend a little bit of time towards the end there just to touch on the improvements
that have been made to the frequent absence report. And if we’ve got time.
Just to touch on a little bit around
documentation requirements, just to make sure that everyone’s getting those the basics, right?
Especially, if you were to get a financial audit, just on that quickly I should. Yeah, I’ll do a
little quick intro of myself here. Just give me a second.
I’m Todd Painter, Advance ECE is my
company. Like Candace said, I just primarily focus around the governance management
administration side of ECE. I’ve been doing quite a lot in the way of training with centres
using Discover and we’ve got the likes of Candace, of course and her team that I’m starting to,
the focus is really more around pre funding audits is something that I’ve been doing a lot more
of.
Especially with 50 percent of services
now have actually attested to full parity. Certainly, if you’re a service that hasn’t got there,
if you’re one of the 35 percent in the extended or one of the 11 percent that are in parity,
then certainly do some sums and relook and consider full. It seems to be the place to be now.
So I’m doing a lot of work around that,
so it’s viability. It’s the audit checks, checking documentation and that kind of thing. So if
you do if you are interested, jump on my website, you will see that I have got a list of
services that I do. And then, of course, events. Just know that I am going to be in Wellington
and Napier in October, and it looks like I’m going to be sneaking in a trip to Christchurch in
November.
So just if you are in those areas, just
reach out and we potentially could actually come and help you out, especially around that having
someone external come and look at your documentation and make sure that you’re actually okay. So
I just wanted to touch on that now. I’m going to go into my notes here and talk about this
particular funding period.
So this is the June to September. It’s
known as the November 2024 RS7 return. It is Yeah, that’s it. It’s for the June to September
period. The submission of the RS7, that will open on the 1st of October and will probably close
on the 8th of October. And the reason why I say probably is that Ministry would normally by now
have actually sent out a bulletin with the submission of the RS7.
Specific details about this current are
a seven period, but that hasn’t come out yet. We’re pretty confident that the 8th of October
will be when it closes, but just make sure that you keep an eye out for the next bulletin, which
could be any day. Just to make sure that, you do you do get your RS7 in on time.
The payment will be overnight on the
1st of November 2024. Now, it’s been winter, we’ve still there’s still COVID around, there’s
RSV, there’s been quite a bit of sickness. Just going to touch on emergency closure funding.
Emergency closure funding can be requested when services are not available.
Are unable to operate because they
cannot meet minimum staffing requirements due to being unwell with an infectious disease. If you
are facing operating issues, you contact your local MOE office. Services may need to provide
evidence before emergency funding closure is approved, and you would need to select the
emergency closure option. in the centre’s calendar for that particular day, so that your funding
is claimed as normal as a normal day of operation. So they’ve they we’ve had emergency closure
funding and it’s been quite loose in the past. So I think they’re just strengthening or tidy,
tidying that up a little bit that you do actually need to you will potentially have to provide
evidence before you actually get approved for funding, so just make sure that you reach out as
early as you can to your local MOE office if you’re finding that you can’t meet the minimum
staffing requirements and that you have to close.
The other thing that’s relevant to this
funding period, June to September, is the absence rule exemption. Again, this has been something
that’s been quite loose and has been used and been available for some time, but again, I think
they’re tightening up a little bit on that as well. As per the early learning bulletin, number
107, that was back on the 23rd of May, an absence rule exemption will apply to the three week
rule through the use of the EC 1213 forms. So what we’re saying by absence rule exemption, you
have your three week rule and you have your frequent absence patterns of absence where funding
may stop. So this is where you can apply an exemption and still claim funding when those rules
are broken.
And it’s just for this period, June to
September, is that there is an exemption to the normal rules. What that means is that this is
where the EC13 form, which is normally filled in by a medical practitioner, can be signed by a
parent. Okay, so under normal conditions, normal from October on, if you have a child that is
absent a lot and they’re going to potentially break the rules, then you can go down that track
of looking at an EC12, EC13 form but that will require a medical practitioner to actually sign
and agree to that.
For this current funding period, June
to September, the parent is able to sign on behalf of that medical practitioner. The parent can
sign it for the first six weeks of absence. And then for the exemption to apply up to 12 weeks,
then that would need to be done by a medical practitioner. Okay. So again, just for June, July,
August, September, the current funding period.
Now, in the, in that early learning
bulletin 107, it did say that you can only apply it to the three week rule. But at the
Administrator’s Big Day Out seminar series with Sue Kurtovich in August, there was a participant
there that had it in writing from the MOE that the absence exemption could be applied to all
absences including frequent absence, patterns of absence.
So just know that the bulletin says
that the absence exemption can apply to the three week rule only. And then we’ve got Ministry
saying that it’s okay for all. So you just have to decide, what you want to do there. Just know
that if you decide I’ll stick with the three week rule, then that’s fine. But if you do want to
do an absence exemption for patterns of absence when the Child is breaking the rule in the 4th
month, then just know that if you do an absence exemption at that time, that in an audit, it may
be money that gets claimed back, but it’s just, you just decide on, what you want to do there.
Discretionary hours services can use up
to 80 discretionary hours when a qualified certificated reliever is not available. Now, services
are still required to have evidence that they have looked for a certificated teacher before
using discretionary hours. So it’s still a case of for June, July, August, September, that we do
need to still keep evidence that we have looked for a certificate teacher and that none were
available.
Services are required to submit a
record of the number of discretionary hours they have used in a funding period to the Ministry.
This is done automatically by Discover. So just know that’s a requirement, but it happens so you
don’t need to worry about it. That is the, that’s the, that’s what’s relevant to this funding
period.
Quite small, nothing too major,
emergency closure, absence rule exemption and discretion, which is pretty standard now. But what
I want to talk about now just briefly is about some changes that are coming up. Okay, so don’t
get this confused with what we’re doing right now, which is June to September. These are changes
that come in October and next year.
So changes coming up. A change to pay
parity requirements for relief staff. So from the 1st of October, only permanently employed
teachers in your service, both full time or part time, have to be paid at pay parity rates. But
this does not override pay arrangements in existing employment agreements. So I won’t spend too
much time on that, but just you can look into that in 3b2 in the funding handbook, you’ll see
that it’s in there. If you do have relief certificated teachers that you employ, then you go and
have a look into that.
There’s a change to the discretionary
hour record keeping. So again, from the 1st of October, it won’t be necessary to keep evidence
of attempts to contact a certificated teacher when using discretionary hours. So that, so at the
moment, June, July, August, September, we do need to keep evidence. Tried for us if I’d really,
but I can’t find one. And then from October, you don’t need to worry about that part anymore.
Okay. But just keep in mind that the discretionary hour, all that is still around the fact that
you’ve got a certificated teacher that is away and then you can actually apply discretionary.
The other thing I want to touch on is new funding rates. There were new funding rates that were
announced in the budget 2024.
These are effective from the 1st of
January 2025, and the new rates are in appendix 1 of the funding handbook. It’s already loaded
there in Discover if you’re using the centre funding to project, or you’re using the centre
funding summary to predict your funding payment. In the future, then, those rates are actually
all in there. So we do have a new set of funding rates from the 1st of January, 2025.
FamilyBoost. Now, the invoice statement
that is currently in place meets the requirements for FamilyBoost. There is the ability for the
quarterly statement to be sent automatically to all bill payers that had their child enrolled In
that quarterly period, or there will be in time the option to manually send it just to those
that are requesting it.
So if you want to automate make sure
that this is turned on under your centre settings and it’s there as a tick box under the invoice
settings. So then that way your quarterly statement will go out automatically and the first one
will probably go out on the 1st of October, but if you choose to do it manually, you can just go
and send a statement to a particular bill payer by going to their transactions tab. You would
select the quarterly. date range and send. Or you can just wait for a future update for this
which will be a bulk action. That would mean that, if you’ve had five families come to you, five
bill payers come to you wanting a quality statement, then you can just select those five and
send.
Remember, FamilyBoost, it’s a new
thing. There’s been. I’ve had a lot of discussions. There’s been a lot of talk, a lot of focus
on this space. We just really need to relax a little. It’s just, going to need some time to
settle and become the norm. The automating of the quarterly statement, I think that can be quite
handy for those that do have a lot of families that will be accessing FamilyBoost, or it might
be that you’re a service where you don’t do the weekly invoice statement on, you don’t do send
out statements on a regular basis so then maybe you could get into this habit of actually
sending a statement on a just a quarterly base basis. So that’s where I see the automation
working. But I think for most of us, it’s a benefit to families that they actually go off to IAD
and support. So ultimately, I think the idea here is that when you have a family that comes to
you and says, “Hey, can I get a quality statement? “then you can actually just send one to them
and just let them sort it out.
So that’s that’s all the changes that
are coming up in the current sort of in the current period. Now, we’re really ready to go
straight into submitting an RS7 so that’s really yeah, it’s actually like we’re only sort of 15
minutes into it and we’re actually doing I’m quite all right, ready to submit.
So I like that. It means that we will
get to touch on frequent absence and the record keeping requirements and certainly make sure
that we answer any questions that you guys might have. So what I’m going to do now is submit an
RS7. Is that all right, Candace? You’re okay with that? I’ve got fireworks.
Candace: Oh, I love the special
effects.
Todd: I like that.
Yeah,
Candace: absolutely. No worries at
all.
Todd: So I’m going to
share where am I? Share my screen here. So now we’re going to submit an RS7. What happens here
is basically from once when you’ve logged in to Discover, you’re going to go down to Ministry,
and then you’re going to click on RS7. Now before we actually go and create, we have this lovely
blue box up the top, and what is this is the wizard that’s basically explaining to us the steps
that we need to take to submit an RS7.
Now, just stepping back a minute the
whole thing of submitting an RS7 is actually quite simple. It’s quite basic, but there is a lot
of there’s a lot of money involved in it. So this is why we do this to make sure that people
understand what they’re actually attesting to what they’re actually submitting and also the fact
is that we often have a good portion of people. Sitting in on this that have not actually done
this before. So so just bear with me. If you have come back another time and you’ve been through
this before, we just need to make sure that we go through it bit by bit for those that haven’t
actually submitted an RS7 prior.
Okay. So in the blue box there number
one, please ensure that all rosters and attendance data is complete. So what that is your
attendance make sure that, you’ve got no unknowns, all attendance data has been entered. And
then of course, under your staff roster as well, that all your actual staff hours have been
recorded. Okay, for the funding period, June, July, August and September. So that’ll be step
one.
Once when you’ve done that, you’d move
on to step two. If you have not done already, you must set up your public holidays for the next
funding period in the centre, in your centre calendar.
Okay part of submitting an RS7 is that
there will be what’s called days open. You have in the June, July, August, September, there’s
the next number of days open. What we need to tell Ministry is how many days we are going to be
open in the next, in the advanced period, so that the advanced funding can be calculated based
on that.
Okay, so to do that, we need to go into
the centre’s calendar. So from the main menu, go centre calendar. So it’ll default to September,
but the advance funding period is October, November, December and January. So we need to flick
over to October and make sure that all our public holidays are in. So you can see here, Labor
Day has been entered in.
If I flick over to November, nothing
there. December, nothing’s been done here. So we’re going to need to put in our Christmas. So
we’ll click in on the box there. We will make sure that we select a statutory holiday. Just a
quick point here. Something that I’ve been seeing a lot of lately is where when we’ve had other
situations, you’ve got emergency closure, you’ve got restricted open service open that was a bit
of A bit of a headache for services. Christmas last year. So just be careful and reach out, get
some help on that. But you just got to make sure that you’re actually picking the right the
right day type here, because this is telling Ministry why you were closed.
Okay, so statutory holiday, we’ll put
in there that it’s Christmas Day. Christmas Day. I can’t type Christmas. So we’re not open and
then of course down here we’re going to put in whether we charge fees for it or not and then we
save. Okay, so then, in a little while, that’ll pop up and be added to your calendar. So we’ll
need to do the 25th, we’ll need to do Boxing Day 26, in January you’ll need to do the 1st so
the, so New Year’s Day, and then the day after New Year’s Day, and what else is there in
January? I think there’s something else. I don’t know. Yeah, just make sure that you put in all
your public holidays for the October, November, December and January period.
So once when we’ve done that, we go
back to our RS7 submission. So Ministry RS7. We’ve done step one, which is the rosters and the
attendance data.
We’ve done two, which is the public
holidays. And then three is to review your centre funding by running a centre funding report.
Now, whenever you see like here, it’s actually a dark blue. Centre funding report is actually
like a dark blue colour. You can actually click on that and that’ll actually take you directly
to the centre funding report.
That was a shortcut. So then you put in
June. To September and then get that report. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to flick over
to my centre here so that the numbers actually make sense because what we were in there was just
a demo data.
OK, so June to September. This is the
centre funding report. Okay, what it’s going to do is initially tell us about our registered
staff percentage for the funding period. So what it’s saying here is for June, this service here
was open for 18 days. There are 18 days of roster in there, so that means there’s no data
missing on the highest day, we achieved a 93.94 percent staff hour count and on the worst day,
that’ll be with sicknesses, we did 65.88. For the month, we achieved an 82.15 staff hour count.
Under discretionary here, we hadn’t rostered any and Discover didn’t allocate any. Okay, so
that’s what that is telling us for the month of June. Then we’ve got July, August and September.
Now, the main thing for oh, actually
I’ll point that out. If you look here at September, you’ll see there is 21 days that we’re open.
There are 19 days of roster, so you can see there that there’s still obviously some days to go
before we can before we are ready to submit. But these percentages, none of these matter for
funding, it’s what you achieve for the funding period, so the average over the 4 month funding
period. So this service here is done 90.17 to date. Okay.
If you are a service that is actually
getting quite close, you’re quite close to the, to your target so your target might be 100%. 100
percent staff hour count is certainly something that a lot of services have been considering and
working towards nowadays, any way of increasing funding.
The majority of us are still in the 80
to 99. If you are needing to be over 80, and you’re quite close, then don’t be afraid to go back
and see how we’ve got 19 days of roster and there’s actually 21 days open to actually go back,
go in and put in a plan for those other two days to then see what potentially your staff hour
count is going to look like.
Okay, so you can put in future rosters
to kind of project. So I hope I haven’t lost you guys on that one. But the main thing here is
this is our registered staff percentage and the average is what our funding is going to be, our
funding rate is going to be based on. So what we need to do here in the centre funding report is
go through and check that our data is ready for submitting an RS7.
Okay, so you can see here, Monday the
3rd of June, King’s birthday, public holiday, closed no funding. No funding, nothing. And then
we just scroll through what we’re really looking for is any alerts. So when we get to here, the
4th of July, I can see that there is a red alert, and this is to do with attendance, that means
that there’s going to be some missing attendance data. So I really need to go to the attendance
screen for the 4th of July and see what’s going on. For the 5th of July, I’ve got a yellow mark
here in the staff hours. So that means that we have missed attendance potentially not met the
minimum teaching requirement at some part of that day okay, so it could be that someone’s
missing from the roster or something’s not right. So we need to go into the roster for the 5th
of July and look into that. Yeah.
So basically you need to get rid of
your alerts. You need to go through and clear these and make sure that your data is complete.
You can, from this report, again because the dates here, they’re all blue, so they’re a link,
you can actually click on that there and drill down to that specific day. I’m going to skip over
to demo data again because of privacy. I’m not going to want to drill down there, but this is an
example here. So once when you’ve clicked on that date and drilled down, then you can actually
see more specifically what is going on.
So here we can see that for children
under 2, we’ve got 1 child, we’ve got Jessica and her attendance is unknown. So that is what,
there was an alert on the main screen, so here we’ve clearly got to go to the attendance screen
and update Jessica’s record. Tim Taylor is the same and it’s his his data updated along with
Stella.
Now when we’re in here too, what we can
actually do is we can actually see whether there’s anything going on with our funding. So here
for under twos we’ve got one child, six hours of funding, and that’s the total. Over twos we’ve
got one child, six, so that’s what we’re claiming for that day.
But here with our three and over we’ve
got four children. And here I can see we’re getting 6 hours for Abby, we’re getting 6 hours for
Christopher, we’re getting 6 for Stella, that is 18 that we’re claiming. But I see for Junior
Smith here, unfunded, no funding. We need to make sure that we can use this to actually make
sure that we’re actually claiming correctly.
You want to go in and actually have a
look at Junior and see what’s going on and why. Why that has been set to being unfunded or, yeah
.So just know that you can actually drill down and see what’s going on with you or with your
data .
That the last part to it, here is your
staff hour count. So we can see here Bo Gertz she’s registered and worked a short shift at a
10.75 but based on attendance, there is 10 hours that is being claimed for the staff hour count.
Okay, so just know that you can drill down on the Centre Funding Report, click on the date and
actually make sense of these funded hours, the staff hours and the make up and see what’s going
on if you’ve got any alerts.
Okay, so once we’ve gone through and
we’ve fixed all that, we don’t have any more alerts. We’ve rerun the report to make sure it’s
all clear. And that means that then our data is complete. Then we can move on to the next part
of submitting an RS7.
Okay, so we’ll go back to Ministry
again. RS7. Yes, we’ve done step 1 with the rosters and attendance data. Yes, we’ve done 2 with
the calendar public holidays for the next funding period. Yes, we’ve done 3, which is review the
centre funding by running the centre funding report and we’ve fixed up anything that any errors
that need to be fixed. So now we’re ready to actually submit an RS7.
Okay, so then what we’re doing here is
we are in the current, we, the current funding period is the June to September 2024 funding
period. We go ahead and click create.
Okay, just again, double checking that
we are in the right funding period. 1st of June to the 30th of September. Yes, continue. Now,
this screen here, this is your four months, June, July, August, September, and all your funded
hours and your staff hour count that we’ve just reviewed prior in the centre funding report.
We can’t alter these. We can’t change
these. This is what is coming through from the data that has been entered. Okay. So then we
click continue.
Now this screen here, this is about the
advanced days. Again, because we had done the centre calendar and had put in our public
holidays, then the days open in here for November, December, January, and February should be
right. Okay, and then you can just click continue.
You will get this warning and that’s
just because we’ve actually got nothing in the session or because in this case, we’re in all day
service so that will be okay to skip past that. Okay.
Attestation of certificated teachers
salaries. So we’ll spend a little bit more time here because this is to do with pay parity.
Okay, so this is where, so just
remembering, when we were talking about staff, hour count, that really depends on how many
registered and unregistered teachers that you had to meet the minimum staffing requirement. So
that will just be calculated automatically based on your staff hour count.
But when it comes to pay parity and pay
parity rates, it’s up to you what you are attesting to. So it’s yeah, what you’re saying that
you have paid your certificated teachers for the June to September funding period.
Okay. So what’s happening here is
you’ve got No salary scale, you’ve got base, you’ve got parity, extended, and you’ve got full.
Okay, so we have to select one of those. So just touching on this one here, parity. So by
answering to and saying parity, that’s steps one to six, then you’re saying that you have met
the funding conditions related to the salary scale for this, sarlary range. I think the language
of this has changed.
So you are attesting to have paid all
certificated teachers as per the salary scale 1 to 6. So then you’ll be going and clicking
parity. Okay. By going extended, then you’re attesting to paying all certificated teachers as
per the minimum salary scale 1 to 11 plus the partial management step. So that’ll be your
manager your centre manager you’re being on step 11. And then so then you’re so just remember
that with the full scale, the full salary scale actually is different to the extended. Steps 1
to 6, the rates are the same, but from 7 to 11 at full the minimum that you have to pay is
actually higher. It actually changes. And then we have the full management step. So we’ve got
the for the centre manager, you’ve got your K2, your K3, and your K4, your management step.
Okay? I don’t think I need to spend much more time in that space. We’ve spent quite a bit of
time in previous webinars about Pay Parity, but just remember that this is about you are
attesting to what you have paid, what scale you have paid all certificated teachers for the
current funding period, June, July, August, September.
It’s not about what you plan to do in
the future or anything like that, it’s just what you have done. Okay, so We’re going to go full.
Yeah. Continue.
And then in the last screen here, this
is where you’ll put in your name, your contact phone number, and then your role in there, and
then you will submit.
But just know that by clicking yes and
submitting that you are completing this on behalf of the service provider. You are either the
service provider or on behalf of and that you are declaring that that you’ve made no false
statements or anything like that, and that you can actually be prosecuted.
So just just make sure that you are
absolutely happy with the data that you are submitting.
So yeah, that’s that is submitting an
RS7. So I think that is just trying to think if there’s anything I’ve missed on that. If not,
what I want to do is just quickly touch on frequent absence and record keeping requirements for
funding.
Is there anything, Candace, that you
think that I need to touch on here? You’re answering all the chat questions.
Candace: I’m on it. And this is
incredible timing, truly. I’ve just received the bulletin giving us the official dates. Yeah, so
it is submissions will open on the 1st of October and then they will close on the 9th of October
Todd: On the 9th.
Okay. All right. Wonderful. Okay, cool. Alright.
Please just make sure that you guys
have a look at that sub at that bulletin, there was a situation in the last funding period where
you were able to contact Ministry if you intended to move up a salary scale in parity and that
meant that if you contacted them, you potentially could have got your funding your advanced
funding at the new scale. So just, I just, I, yeah, just just make sure that you actually read
through that bulletin that’s just come out today and just make sure that you understand what it
is, what’s in it. God, I wish I could do that. But anyway, we’ll see if we’ve got time.
Okay, frequent absence. Let’s let’s
look at that. There has been a bit of a change to the frequent absence report. I think it’s
quite a good change. It’s definitely to me makes things a little bit clearer. So I just wanted
to touch on that. We are in demo data, so we have gone back to where is it July 2022, so it will
be a bit late for getting reconfirmations. We all understand that, don’t we? But what I want to
touch on here is what has changed.
So we have a little bit more of this
colour coding down the left with the names. So normally where it’s in a yellow colour, then
that’s a cue to say that there’s some form of action required. So we’ve got these three children
here, Alicia, Laura, Molly, that are yellow.
And then now we’ve got this new part
here where it says rule 1, rule 2, rule 3, and these numbers. What that is actually telling us
is that if you look at Alicia, the first child, she has a two under rule three there. So it
means that she has for two months broken rule three where Laura for one month has broken rule
one and for two months has broken rule two.
So for Laura We don’t need her to
reconfirm the enrolment for rule one, but we do need a reconfirmation because she has broken for
two months, rule two. Okay. When, what it used to be is that you’ll go along here and you’ll see
these absence and it would say a one and two. So that’s where it used to say rule one, rule two.
Now, many times over the years I used
to have people come and say that says A12, what’s A12? So it’s just what’s changed now is it’s
just a lot clearer what Laura has done. She’s broken rule one for one month and she’s broken
rule two for two months so we need her to reconfirm her enrolment.
Molly Walsh, the last child there has
broken two months rule two. Okay, so just just want to touch on that. Whenever I run this
report, what I like to do is at the top there select to show the actual hours attended, because
when we have children in rule three, like we’ve got Charles West here. Okay, we can actually see
when we go along the actual hours of attendance. So you can see that, potentially Charles has
got an enrolment for six hours, but on Monday the 4th attended for 4.93 hours. Tuesday the 5th
attended 5.2 and then Wednesday 5.03. So generally this child’s coming five hours as opposed to
six.
So then, if you’re having to have a
conversation with the family, you’re wanting to encourage Charles to attend more, then you’ve
got an idea of what they need to be doing, it might be that you say to them that they just need
to, not, they need to go pick up their other child 1st and then come and pick up Charles or it
might be that you want to stipulate that they can’t pick up until 3 o’clock because that’s when
your program runs to. Whatever it is however you approach it and and I just normally don’t
encourage you to say it’s because your funding will get cut because I find that parents
generally don’t care about that. But but at least you can see what’s happening there and you’ve
got an idea of what kind of conversation you can have with that family.
Especially when it comes to rule three,
I like to even though those first should those first three children, Alfie, Charles, and Louie,
even though they’ve only broken rule three for one month, because rule three has to do with
hours, I tend to like to have a conversation with those parents early, because, especially like
I can see with Charles that’s a pattern that’s obviously going to continue into the 2nd month
and into the 3rd month. So I’m not going to wait until the end of the 2nd month before I
actually have that conversation. I’m going to have it now.
So that’s what I wanted to touch on
with with the frequent absence just jump in, Candace, if there’s anything else that you want
raised there Otherwise, nothing.
Candace: Yeah, nothing for me. But
please do pop your questions in that Q&A box or in the chat. I’m just jumping between the 2
at the moment. Actually, good question here for you, Todd. Yeah. What are the different rules?
Just taken over as a centre manager. I’m very new to it all.
Todd: Okay. All right.
Okay.
So we’ll just quickly touch on that.
But rule 1 is to do with days. An easy way to look at it is rule one is days, rule two is weeks,
and rule three is hours. So rule one will be, if the child was away on say Mondays and the child
was away for three out of four Mondays in a calendar month, then more than half of the Mondays,
so then that would be that they’ve broken the rule for one month, rule one.
If it’s rule two, so it’s to do with
weeks, so then it might be that the child’s enrolled for five days and attends four, so then
that week will get flagged. And if there’s again, more than half, so if there’s two weeks where
the child was enrolled for five and attended four, then that’ll get flagged. So two out of four
months sorry, two out of four weeks, they didn’t attend their five, it will get flagged.
And you look confused. Is that right?
You’re just looking at, yeah.
Rule three is to do with hours. So
that’s to do with, Not every child will be enrolled for six, but generally you will have a child
that will be enrolled and we have funded for six hours so then if they don’t attend that six,
then that’s a day that will get flagged and again if for more than half of the days in the
month, they don’t do their six hours, then that will get flagged. And just remember that with
hours, with rule 3, there is a grace period, and that is 15 minutes. Just they don’t have to be
smack on full 6, and they don’t always have to do it, but they really need to be attending 6 for
more than half per calendar month.
Okay, so that’s rule 1, days, rule 2,
weeks, rule 3, hours.
Anything else there, Candace?
Candace: Talking with my
microphone muted. We’ve got a lot of questions, which is great. And there’s a few from earlier
in the session that we’ve got here.
Not including days allocated as stat
days, do we code a close down period over Christmas as a holiday?
Todd: Yeah, it’s that
HP, holiday period. If you so you’ll have your statutory days, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and
then if you’re closed after that, in that week, then you’re going to select I’m sure it was HP
holiday period.
What has been a bit of an issue last
year was and Ministry did put out in the bulletin about service open but with no attendance. So
what happened was you were open on the Friday between Christmas and New Years. You had staff
turn up but no children turned up. So Ministry encouraged services to use the SO code. So
service open with no children attending which you would still get funding for. But there was
someone at Ministry that was actually unfunding services. So there were there were quite a lot
of services that actually missed out on funding because I think 1 person within Ministry didn’t
actually understand the purpose of that code. So just that’s what I’m just saying is that, you
just got to make sure, be careful with those codes, make sure you select the right one.
Anything else there, Candace?
Candace: There is, we’ve got how
do you change the child out of the yellow status in the frequent absence report?
Todd: You can’t, but
they can by attending more than half. So yeah, you, you can’t the reconfirmation that buys you
another month of funding whether the child attends or not. So they will only go out of the
yellow or off the report if in one calendar month they’ve attended enough and they haven’t
broken, they haven’t continued to break that rule. Okay, so yeah, nothing you can do apart from
be having those conversations with the family and encouraging them to attend more.
Candace: Just checking to see if
there’s anything that I’ve missed.
The frequent absence exemption ends
30th of September where FANO can complete EC13 and claim RSV etc. This hasn’t changed.
Todd: No, that is
right. Definitely for this period tell me June, July, August, September. Absolutely. It’s just
it doesn’t continue after the 30th of September. And the last one there, I can see about
frequent absence report based on 30 minutes. So I, the auditors generally accept 15, 30 minutes
used to be okay back in the old APT days. But all your student management systems work on 15 and
all your auditors generally work with 15 minutes. So I wouldn’t go back and change anything. I
wouldn’t worry, but ultimately the best thing that you should do is is change your settings to
be 15 minutes. That’s my advice.
Anything else, Candance?
Candace: Not that I can see, if I
have missed you, please just let me know.
Todd: So what I’ll
just quickly do then everyone is just, with five minutes, I just want to quickly touch on some
record keeping requirements for funding, just that, I’ve been following Sue Kurtavich around
with her administrators big day out in August, and through my experience with clients and their
audits , there’s just a few things. I just want to quickly touch on. And also with ERO people
ERO been looking at enrolment forms as well, especially around the excursion. So I just want to
quickly touch on those. Just a reminder that enrolment forms and changes to the enrolment, so
when they change days and times that all needs to be signed with pen on paper, not electronic.
You might have the electronic online enrolment process, which is really awesome. Absolutely
encourage that, but that will need to be printed and the parent will need to sign a scanned copy
in your file is not enough.
Okay, so you must have a original pen
on paper enrolment form along with any changes to that enrolment. Check that your enrolment form
that you are using, whether it is self created or based on the Discover template there that it
meets the mandatory requirements. There’s been a bit around that where, with the diamonds or
wording being changed. So yeah, make sure that your enrolment form is actually compliant.
Now just note that the Ministry
enrolment form in the funding handbook meets the funding requirements, but may not meet the
licensing criteria. So check your wording, check the wording around excursions. So what I’m
saying there is that the Ministry template when it says in their excursions and says it’s just
what’s missing from that Ministry template is around the ratio for it for those excursions.
If you were to go to was it HS17 in the
licensing criteria? It actually says that the parent must sign to agree to what the ratio would
be for excursions, which is what we call, what we do is like local short walks. So just make
sure that the actual ratio for your short walks, your excursions is actually in your enrolment
form.
And 20-hour ECE attestations they need
to be on or before the child’s third birthday, but no more than a month prior. So what I’m
getting at there is if you have to say you had a child enrol it at two and the parent filled in
the 20-hour ECE attestation for when the child turns three, then that was done 12 months prior
to the child’s third birthday. You will need to do it again. You will need to get a new one.
So the, one of the benefits with
Discover is that you get the alert when a child’s turning three and it’s within the month. So
once when the alert pops up saying to need attestation for 20-hours ECE for Jack, go in, print
it off and get it signed. So there needs to be some currency around the 20-hour ECE
attestations.
And the last thing is around attendance
records, because there had been some confusion about this in the past. Centres need to keep an
attendance record and parents need to confirm or verify that record. In cases where a parent or
guardian has signed daily or used their private PIN each day, then a weekly confirmation or
verification may not be required, but it is best practice that you will have an attendance
record that might be a sheet or a tablet. That’s your attendance record. And then the parent
needs to confirm would be in writing or verify electronically that record. So hope I haven’t
lost you on that one. You’re on mute there, Candace.
Candace: I’m always I’m on mute
when I need to be speaking and and I’m off mute when I don’t need to be speaking. We’ve got a
couple of questions, a couple more questions in the chat there just one about funded hours and
attendance and another one about EC12. I’m just looking up the EC12 at the moment but so far,
I’m not able to find any kind of indication about when that EC12 needs to be signed in relation
to.
Todd: No there’s no
stipulation. So I did actually see that in a Facebook post recently. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be
dated. It doesn’t have to be signed and dated prior. It just, it’s just that there needs to be
an EC12, which is, the EC12 is what the centre fills in, and the EC13 for June, July, August,
September, the parent will fill in. Okay, so just as long as there is one, and it says, a child
was away because of chicken pox and they didn’t sign by the parent then you can use that absence
exemption, not date sensitive.
Candace: Perfect. And the other
question we had was just around the duration of a session being longer than 6 hours. And if the
frequent absence rule is going to be broken if the child attends more than 6 hours, but less
than their booked hours.
Todd: Yeah, I’ll keep
it simple. I won’t be a geek. But it’s you just need to be concerned about the six hours funded.
If they’re. Booked for what is that eight or nine hours? I think you’re suggesting nine there
and they attend eight then it’s not going to pop up on your frequent absence report. It’s not
going to affect your funding. There is there was, yeah, I’m going to be a geek. There was a
bulletin that came out from the Ministry some time ago last year suggested that that you would
still consider that one and reconfirm because they generally believe that the enrolment should
match attendance. But for your frequent absence reporting, you only need to do for the for your,
for six funded hours. There you go. I went there. I couldn’t help myself Candace.
Candace: Look I’m a big advocate,
advocate for going off on tangents. I think the more information, the better. But unfortunately,
that’s all that we have time for today.
Thank you very much, Todd. I know that
everyone really values these sessions. And thanks, everyone, for all your wonderful questions.
That was fantastic. It’s always good to have some interaction in the chat and I’ll have a look
through our records and just make sure that everyone’s got an answer for their questions.
But otherwise check your emails for the
bulletin. It should be there now. And if you get stuck with anything, you can always give the
support team a call. They’ll be able to help you. But otherwise happy submitting and we will see
you next time.
Thanks, everyone.
RS7 Video Details
What are RS7s, and how does funding work?
Join Discover training specialist, Candance Glover, and accredited Discover trainer, Todd Painter, as they take you through RS7 submissions in Discover in this informative webinar.
