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Hi does anyone know any info or have any advise about pay rises. I'm a chair of a pre-school and have to do apprazel and pay rise. has anyone else done this? Is there a precentage rise? confused

If you look back on this thread to around 15th - 20th Feb there's quite a bit of conversation on this subject.

The other thing that we found useful was that our local Sure Start office does an annual audit of staff salaries, and publishes all the statistics (anonymously, of course) to all preschools in the area. That way you can make sure that what you're offering is competitive / realistic. Might be worth enquiring with Sure Start if they do anything similar in your area.

I've got a completely different question now about Accident Books. Do you know if you have to have an Official one (like the one from the PLA) or can you make up your own and put it in a folder?

Reading through the PLA blurb at the front of their book makes me wonder as you aren't supposed to remove the pages and you could do that with a loose leaf folder for example. Has anyone else done this?

in one of our settings we have the official PLA one, in the other we have an exercise book.

Ofsted have been into both settings this term and seemed fine with it.

misshardbroom we are OK, thanks phew. We currently have 4 different session supervisors, one has resigned, 2 have declined extending their contracts to take over but final one has agreed so we are all happy and Lawcall have confirmed we don't even need to advertise

Helenn I've never really worked out the CAT system on here what hope is there for me?! Private Message me via www.slingmeet.co.uk and I shall give you my e-mail address. Happy to share our fees policy, we have just shared it with all our parents and did miff one or two...

Kylie1 Lawcall advised me that the purpose of the appraisal is to ensure that your Staff's pay is fair and reasonable, and commensurate with the local market rates. If you believe the staff deserve a rise and your setting can afford it, then award it! Last October minimum wage rose by 1.2% which might be useful to you.

PigeonPie - at our pre-school we use the official PLA book, but the key is in making sure pages can't be removed without it being very obvious that a page was missing.

Thanks to those that have offered to share your non-payment of fees policy with me, this thread was a great idea!

Fortunately our worst payer (a new committee member!) has now paid up in full after we spelled out at the last committee meeting how non-payment of fees was causing us difficulties. We still have one lady who is running up bills faster than she is paying them off, so we def need a policy. However, our chair has pointed out that it is often the kids whose parents are struggling to pay who need pre-schoool the most, so don't want to have to bar them from coming, so tricky.

We have our AGM in a few weeks so need to adopt the new policy, so I need to get on with it.

Helennn re this "our chair has pointed out that it is often the kids whose parents are struggling to pay who need pre-schoool the most, so don't want to have to bar them from coming"

Obviously all kids get 12.5 hours free, it's the bits on top that cost money. Our policy explains that if bills for additional hours are run up and not being paid off faster than they climb, then in the first instance we will discuss payment plans, and if that fails to achieve the bill reducing, then we will ask the family to not put their child in for the additional hours. This means that even the kids who need pre-school the most still get it, but we don't get mounting debts.

Whilst it is in place in our policy to ultimately complete exclude a child if bills remained unpaid (this is in the PLAs debt chasing example letters), it is made clear at every stage that this would never be our goal or desired outcome; and that we will do everything to keep a child a in pre-school (but only for their funded time)

We have already had cause to discuss additional hours with one family as their bill was climbing very rapidly; we asked for substantial payment of outstanding monies by a given date or we were going to have to ask them to stop using the additional hours. We stressed that we were doing this more for their sake than ours, as if they are already struggling to pay the outstanding bill it will only make matters worse if that bill increases. We got paid 2 days later.

Thanks Loopy, but what was our "worst offender" is not yet entitled to the funding, both parents work and he def benefits from coming. The other's mum is a single mother who has to work more than the 12.5 hours a week, so it is not easy to see how they could cut back.

It is tricky, I also think there are some people that run up additional bills with no intention of paying them off, their child leaves pre-school and we can't get the money at all. We've only had it once for a small amount of money but they have no intention of paying it back, and its too small an amount to bother with small claims court!

I have contacted you by your web-site, so look forward to receiving a copy of your policy.

thanks all

Hi

I am a secretary from a committee ran playschool which is charity registered.

We have 3 parents who's children have now left and owe us money, can I take them to a small claims court if we are a charity?

I just don't want to fill all the forms in and then not be able to claim anything.

Thanks

Wendy

I would contact your local business support team at your local council. Do you have a written policy to follow?

Hi there, I am looking to setup a website for my DD's preschool - can anyone recommend any low-cost software to use? Thanks

MrsBeaver, do you mean to write it and upload it or to host the site? I use KompoZer and FileZilla for the actual writing and uploading. Both are free. Hosting the site is something I haven't looked into. Sorry.

I am looking for software to write and upload the website content, I have a contact that can host it if the software providers don't provide a hosting service too.

I guess my concern with the free services is the possible lack of support and what happens if the software providers decide to discontinue its availability?

You wont get support with the free software but it doesn't matter if they discontinue the software - there is always something else you could use. I guess it depends how confident you are with html and ftp. Generally you get what you pay for!

Hey, I am glad I just found this. I am also looking to improve website for the charity Pre-School I am now Chair for. I am after a software that allows for editing without too much entering into html...Will follow this closely

I am using Moonfruit and think it is great.

I have been Chair/Treasurer and just about everything else at a community pre-school (registered charity) for 4 years.

When I took over we were in an awful financial situation and very low numbers (just 8 children registered). We were only open 5 mornings.

To increase numbers we improved the practice first and foremost as things were not particularly good, we held open days, did the usual flyers (we find asking local infant schools to put them in book bags useful). We also took a few risks to try and increase our popularity. We added additional afternoons, 1 at a time, we also started taking 2 year olds rather than 2 years 9 months, its a strain on staff resources but they are your future 3 year olds!! We are also very flexible with sessions and offer pretty much any variation including all day.

We are now open (and full) every day and have 75 children registered, 12 members of staff, a small committee still and I do the bulk of the committees work but now have a super-numery manager and administration manager to take the day to day running away from me.

Our biggest fundraisers are always the graduation & christmas concerts, we write to local businesses (soft play, co-op, anywhere really) requesting raffle prizes. We also held a ladies shopping/pamper night that raised over £500 and also a quiz night for adults only that was really successful. We also use yellow moon, spend and raise and school photos to get the commission.

I think it is really rewarding but wish that other parents would realise if more people helped out then it wouldn't be a HUGE job for just one or two people.

Hi i am on our local Pre-School commitee. We are struggling to attract children and since i started i have tons of advertising and sorted a website. Just started looking at redundency figures for staff if the worse happens as financially we are struggling and we don't have enough to cover it all just half. really worried as of course we are all personally liable! They want me to be chair next year but not sure if i can personally take on the risk of a struggling pre-school.

We are in rural area and open every day in term time from 9.15 to 2.30. We are based in a church hall. Anyone have any ideas/advice x

Hello everyone. I have just been reading your thread. I am a Mum of 2 and created a website last year to help Mum's and Dad's look for pre-schools and nurseries in their local area. At this stage it is a completely non-profit free of charge service. I give up lots of man hours to create it in the hope that one day it will make money from advertising! The idea is to have a comprehensive database of small village pre-schools and day nurseries alike so that parents can compare the facilities at both.
We already have 10,000 on our database - if anyone would like me to add their pre-school to our website please email me on: laura@kidzcarecompare.co.uk
Thank-you!
Kind Regards
Laura