Nursery vouchers to pay for private nursery school?

[MizZan]

Help! DS is registered to attend an independent school from September, which goes from ages 3-8. He will be 3 1/2 in September. We want to use the new "nursery vouchers" (the kind where you do salary sacrifice in exchange for receiving them) to pay some of the fees, however the school is unsure whether they can/will accept them. The company providing the vouchers (Accor) is also unable to give us any info on this. Does anyone else know if this is possible, or has successfully asked their own independent school to accept these vouchers for part-payment of tuition for a 3-4 year old for next year? I guess the school would only be able to accept them for the first year (age 3-4), if at all - but would have thought this would be ok...

any help or experiences you can share would be MUCH appreciated!

[TracyK]

I would have thought that they could take them - as long as they are registered in some way. I use www.childcare-vouchers.net for mine as their commission costs are much lower.

[binkie]

I agree with TracyK, it will I think depend on registration. It was a question that came up at my work's presentation and the answer was basically you cannot use them for private school fees but you can use them for OFSTED-registered things, eg after-school clubs, which incidentally may be offered by said private school.

The nursery bit of the private school my two go to is OFSTED-registered, so I think it would take them (on top of the government nursery grant, which you should also get). However I don't know for definite as I'm using the vouchers to pay a nanny.

[LunarSea]

You should be ok for the first year, up to the age where they would normally be in full time state provided education. Also if your school offers (and you use obviously) any kind of out of school care like breakfast/after school clubs or holiday schemes then you can use them for that.

[LunarSea]

The Inland Revenue definitions are here . As long as the nursery part of your school counts as a "registered nursery" - best test for that is probably whether they can take the government nursery grant, which they'll probably be able to tell you a definitive answer about.

[MizZan]

Thank you all, this is helpful. The school does get the government grant for 3-4 year-olds, and I also thought that automatically meant they could take the vouchers (though they can choose not to accept them, it seems). But they are still not sure if they can or not, and don't know who to check with - obviously they are not going to just take my word for it. Would it make sense for them to call Ofsted, or the Inland Revenue? They just keep on checking with other schools in the area, but since all of these start at age 5, that's not too helpful.