What's the difference between pre school and nursery?

[fizzbuzz]

Did pre school used to be called play group? Can they go to both?

[2point4kids]

I think the nursery class attached to a school and that is free from 3 years old is called pre-school
You usually call the private ones nursery and you can send your Dcs to them from about 3 months upwards
HTH

[hana]

dd2 goes to a montessori nursery . I call it a playgroup though. Kids there range in age from 2.5 up to 4 year olds. people use different names for the same thing.

[fizzbuzz]

It's not free, nursery grant has to be used for it.

It is attachd to the school, but is run by playworkers (I think..I don't really know. Don't they have some teachers in a nursery school?

[pootleflump]

I thought a pre-school had to have 1 qualified teacher.

[vesela]

I've always thought of nursery as being the general term for group childcare/US daycare, and preschool as being an institution that is thought of as part of the educational system, even if the source of funding is different. Preschool in the US, école maternelle in France and ?kolka (lit. 'little school') in the Czech Republic, where I live.

Kindergarten is the really confusing one - I just looked it up on wikipedia, and it seems to mean different things all over the place. Within Australia even, in some states it means preschool (inc. Victoria, where I have a nephew in kinder) whereas in others, inc. NSW, it's the first year of primary.