I'd like some thoughts on moving my DS from his private nursery setting into the nursery school class of the primary school he is likely to attend in 2016.
As far as I can see, the main points in favour are:
- Hours are better. He currently does 5 morning sessions (7.30-1) at nursery, but we often don't get to nursery until 8.30, sometimes later. At school nursery, he will go from 8.55-1.30 as standard with an afternoon club that can be booked ad-hoc until 3pm for £5 per day.
- Cheaper (?). I am unclear about whether it would actually be cheaper in the long-run. At nursery we pay for every single session that he does as standard every week of the year except for shut-down at Christmas. So for holidays etc, we pay whilst away. At nursery, it is school terms only & afternoon club is payg anyway. I suspect that the free 15hrs won't go very far at our current nursery, especially as it would cover less than 3 sessions leaving us with approx 2.4 sessions to cover at £27 per session and it would be for 51 weeks of the year & we'd have to cover the other 2.6 sessions as well for 13 weeks of the year. My hunch is that paying for some weeks/days of holiday club as needed will be cheaper in the long run.
- Most important: school readiness. Our current nursery has lovely staff, but there is a fair bit of turnover. It's quite small, so when they have staff issues, they seem to manage by merging pre-school with the 2-3 class. Recently, this has been good; my tall 2.9 has enjoyed mixing with the older kids. He isn't physically intimidated as he is taller than some of the younger 3yo and his language has come on leaps & bounds. It does concern me that when he is about to go into reception, he will most likely have spent the summer with kids as young as 24 months on a daily basis.
So, I'd be really interested to hear the thoughts of the more experienced amongst you, or who are considering similar options yourselves.
Thanks!