livvybugs
Sat 17-Nov-12 08:04:34
I am wondering if anyone can shed any light on this subject.
DD1 attends a private day nursery for 3 mornings a week equating to 15 hours per week.
DD1 qualifies for the "15 hours free term time childcare" in January. However I have just opened a letter from the nursery advising that the "15 free hours" are not free and the government only puts £4.50 toward the hourly rate. So we need to make up the difference to their half day rate of £23.77. So it's not exactly free more like discounted?
Is this a common occurrence to request a top up fee from parents and can they do this?
Many thanks for your help on shedding any light on this confusing matter.
Where I live all the nurseries (high demand for places) say the 15 hours can only be used from 9-12 but that they only have full day 8-6 placements available.
So if you did 2 full days you'd only get 6 hours. Plus they up front told me that they had to put up their hourly fees outside of the free hours to cover them.
Nursery staff get paid crap wages but I've never seen a nursery manager/owner in anything but a brand new car.
