Update to Department Eligibility Calculations

Making things simpler, faster and easier to understand.

Why we’re making this change

In the past, we used fields called 'Current/Upcoming Fee Subsidy Applies' to check whether families met certain Department of Education (DE) criteria and could receive a fee subsidy.

Now that Kindergarten is free, that old label no longer makes sense. However, we still need a way to check if the DE’s “Priority of Access” (POA) rules apply so the calculation itself is still important, just not in the same way.

The old setup had a few challenges:

• It was hard to update when the Department changed its policy.

• Some data was getting overwritten (e.g. when updating one concession type like a Health Care Card, others could be lost).

• The field name was confusing and no longer relevant.

• Some cards and exemptions weren’t included in the calculations (like Immicards and Department exemptions).

• There was no consistency for children with additional needs.

• The system relied on multiple complex workflows, which made maintenance difficult and time-consuming.
  
  

What’s changing

To make things simpler and more reliable, we’ve added new fields that directly capture eligibility information for different types of cards and situations.

These new fields can all be included on your forms and will update the individual fields accordingly:

• Health Care Card?

• Pensioner Concession Card?

• Multiple Birth?

• DVA Card?

You will also notice that you now have a field called 'Visa Type' as the Concessions now have their own fields. This field will solely capture any Visas relevant to that child.

This means eligibility information will be clearer, easier to maintain and more accurate.

Introducing the new 'Whiz Bang' Function

We have developed a new, centralised Eligibility Function to handle all DE eligibility calculations.

This function will be used across all CRMs and includes calculations for both This Year (TY) and Next Year (NY) for:

• Priority of Access

• ESK/ESE (Early Start Kindy / Early Start Extension)

• Pre-Prep

These fields are all housed under a new section called 'DE Eligibility (auto calculated).

What this means for you

• No more manual updates to multiple workflows, as everything is now managed in one place.

• Fewer errors when family or concession details are updated.

• Consistent, accurate calculations across all services.

• Faster updates when the Department changes eligibility criteria, since the logic only needs to be updated once.
  
  

How it works behind the scenes

All the eligibility logic (for Fee Subsidy, ESK/ESE and Pre-Prep) still follows the Department of Education’s official criteria. We’re just using a smarter, centralised way to calculate it. By moving these calculations into one managed function, we can ensure updates are applied quickly and consistently across all systems.