Nursery fee advice for a month of absence

[sennix]

Hi wise mums,

My DS is becoming two in January, he has been at the nursery in full time since one. We are generally happy with it. But monthly fee is quite a chuck of our income.

I am visiting my family in Asia near his birthday, so will be away for 6 weeks.

Is it no-no to ask not to pay for a month (January) while he will be absence? The policy did say, the fee is inclusive holidays..

I approached the head teacher, and she said she usually say no for things like this for family holidays, but feels like she left a room to negotiate??

Does anyone have done this?

[OutandIntoday]

Their costs are the same albeit minus the food your dc would eat, so i wouldn't imagine you could stop paying the fees without giving notice and then registering and hoping there was a space and they hadn't filled your slot.

[LIZS]

Unless they can fill the hours you would normally pay the full amount as a retainer.

[Sirzy]

If you want them to keep the place open then I would think you will have to pay

[Dancinggoat]

You need to pay for the place. The business couldn’t survive on pay as you use it. I doubt they could fill a child’s place just for a month.

[Tottyandmarchpane1]

Yep you need to pay for the place. Unless they can fill it just for a month which is highly unlikely.

[thethoughtfox]

It will be in the contract that you still have to pay. The place is held for your child whether you use it or not.

[meditrina]

They can't afford to run with vacancies. No nursery can.

So you can quit the place completely, so they can re-fill it (and perhaps if you're on your uppers, refund you any payment in lieu of notice once they have a new family.

Otherwise, you might get a small reduction in respect of consumables your DC won't be consuming (maybe knocking off the cost of lunch ingredients) but don't expect much. I have known this happen when a child had a lengthy post-operative absence.

[ForgivenessIsDivine]

It does sound like she has left it open.. you can ask, she might say yes. If nurseries have lots of staff and they know well in advance, she may be able to tweak the rota of holidays, new starters etc to adjust her costs accordingly. I think it is worth broaching the subject.

[BikeRunSki]

It’ll be in your contact.
If you don’t want to pay, you could withdraw hi from Nursery and take a gamble on his place being available when you get back.
I don’t think she was leaving room for negotiation, I think she was being discrete.

[glow1984]

The point of paying is to keep your place. You would only be able to not pay by cancelling the contract, and then they would be free to give the hours to someone else.

I, personally, would suck it up and pay the money.

[horriblehistorieswench]

If you give enough notice that she can look at staff rotas to see if she can manage with less staff eg/ say the ratio is 1:5 and there are sessions where your child is the 6th child meaning another staff member on shift she might be able to accommodate time off in lieu/holidays/training. She might be prepared to offset this saving on the fees for those sessions but I’d say this is entirely on her goodwill and she may not want to start a precedent because if other parents get a whiff of this they’ll be beating a path to her door

[insancerre]

Of course you have to pay!
The nursery will still have to pay staff, even if they are on holiday
Are you going to ask your broadband supplier if you can have a month free as you won't be using it
Or your gym?

[jannier]

Are you contacting your Mortgage/rent provider, tv licence, internet supplier etc and saying Im not using you so don't want to pay? Im sure they will say yes......

How do you feel that the nursery have less out going to pay for other than a few pounds for food (probably negligible as most of the cost is in the cook and the fuel. A blob of paint and a few sheets of paper saved are not going to save them anything.
One child off doesn't even save staff as they need that member of staff for the other children under her ratio.
You choose to go on holiday its part of the cost of going cant afford it don't go.

[stepbystepdoula]

You will probably have to pay, as that is their policy, in my experience the negotiation usually comes in if you ask to have a few extra sessions when you are home, they may accommodate this as a goodwill gesture 🎃