Form 7: the quarterly attendance return

Registration gets you approved. Form 7 is how you stay paid. It is the return that turns your attendance register into a subsidy claim, and it is the one most centres discover only when the money stops.

What it actually is

Form 7 is the quarterly attendance return. For each month of the quarter it reports how many subsidised children attended, on how many days the centre was open, measured against the funded places your district approved.

It is not a new record. Every number on it already exists in your daily attendance register. Form 7 is that register, added up, in the shape the department wants to read it.

When it is due

Provincial guidance sets the deadline at five days after quarter end. In practice:

Five days is short, and two of those windows land in a school holiday. That is the whole reason centres miss it: the deadline arrives while the centre is closed and the person who compiles it is away.

The two rules that cut your money

These are the ones worth writing on the office wall.

1. Two consecutive quarters with no submission pauses the subsidy. Not reduced — paused. Getting it restarted is a separate piece of work with its own queue.
2. Attendance below 80% of funded places for two consecutive quarters triggers a reduction letter. The department concludes you do not need the places you hold and funds fewer of them next time.

Why the 80% test catches good centres

Because attendance is not the same thing as enrolment, and the gap is bigger than most owners think. Winter illness, taxi fare, a caregiver between jobs, a funeral week — a centre that is genuinely full can still run at 70% attendance in a bad quarter without anything being wrong.

The centres that survive the test are the ones that see the number before the quarter ends, not after. If you are at 74% in month two you can still act. If you find out in April, the quarter is closed.

What goes on the form

• The centre's registration and EMIS details
• The number of funded places approved for the period
• Days the centre was open in each month — which is not the same as calendar days, and public holidays and closures come out
• Attendance per subsidised child, per month
• The totals, and the resulting percentage against funded places
• A signature from the centre manager

The days-open figure is where hand-compiled returns go wrong most often. Counting weekdays and forgetting the public holidays inflates your denominator and pushes your percentage down for no reason. The register format guide covers how the days are counted.

A note on provincial variation

Be careful with anyone — including us — who tells you this works identically in all nine provinces. The form numbers and the five-day deadline come from provincial guidance, and not every province uses the same names or the same paperwork. Some administer the same obligation under a different form number entirely.

Ask your own district office for their current quarterly reporting pack in writing. The obligation is real everywhere. The paperwork is local, and it changes.

Why this matters more in 2026 than it did

The 2026 budget cut planned ECD subsidy spend by R800 million, from R5.1 billion to R4.3 billion, while the Bana Pele drive keeps adding registered centres to the queue. A shrinking pool with more claimants means the returns get read more carefully, not less. Correct and on time stops being administrative tidiness and starts being the thing that keeps you in the pool.