30 hours childcare - parent vs nursery!

Right, so the current issue is that it's a term of funding spread across April to September. Which means once you hit September it will get much cheaper again, I reckon you'll be paying something like 7.5 hours a week so maybe even less than £200 a month, before staff discount. Don't forget to use tax free childcare, that's another 20% off on top.

That’s right OP. My DD does slightly less than 30 hours a week and our bill is £400 a month.

Looks like your nursery is doing:-
Term time - 30 hours, of which 9am-3pm is funded, so you are using 18 funded hours and 12 unfunded hours per week. For 38 weeks of the year.
School holidays - 30 hours per week, of which none are funded, for the remaining 14 weeks of the year.

So over the course of a year, that's a total of hope my maths is right!!

684 funded hours (out of a potential 1140), and 876 unfunded hours.

Your total annual cost to the nursery is £5400, which if you are purely being billed for the unfunded hours (and no extras like meals), gives an hourly rate of £6.16. Which seems reasonable.

The funded hours are normally capped at 6 per day so if your DC goes 3 days a week that's a max of 18 funded hours per week (term time only) or less if annualised.across 50+ weeks.

It could easily be right. My son's nursery has a daily rate of £75, he does 4 days a week and after funded hours finding, we have £796 a month to pay.

Between 1st April and 1st September (5 months or 22 weeks) the free hours is 6 hours per day for 12 of those 22 weeks.

So you are getting 660 hours of childcare of which 216 are free.

£450 per month works out as barely more than £5 per hour for the 444 hours which aren't covered by the free hours.

Seems quite a lot!!

My 3 year old goes 3 full days a week even includes breakfast club I think her daily rate is £46/£47 and with the 30 free hours averaged out over the year I pay £147 - £160 a month.

Have you asked them for a break down? That really doesn't seem right

Apologies - its across 38 weeks of the year (aka term time) as per the Gov website.

Private nurseries seem to do their own thing ...my GDs have all been to council nurseries... 9 to 3.15 mon to fri term time only ...all free....if they attend in hols its 35£ 9 to 3.15 pm and £4 for each hour before or after

It does seem high though. We will be around £150 a month after the tax-free childcare discount for three days 7.30-5.30pm, once DD's funded hours kick in next month, across 48 weeks. It works out as two whole days and a half day a week funded.

It's £4.50 a day for a fully funded day (two sessions) to cover food (and an extra £3 if you want them to have breakfast there) and £30 for a half-funded day (one session) (assuming 48-week model). So £39 a week for three days.

We are in Scotland though so perhaps it works differently. Nursery should be able to give you a breakdown. The whole thing is quite hard to wrap your head around - I'm generally quite good at grasping stuff like this, but I needed our lovely nursery manager to explain it to me!

Ask your nursery to clarify how they bill each hour. Some private day nurseries bill the 30 hours:-

• term time only (so apply this rate 39 weeks of the year)
• 9am to 3pm daily across all five weekdays

So if this is how your dds nursery does it, then you are "only" accessing 9-3pm, 3 days a week, for 39 weeks of the year, and being billed full rates for all other hours.

This is bonkers 😆

Our bill is about the same (DD turned 3 in Feb so received the 30 hours funding now too).
I'm trying not to think about next year when we have to add two babies in the baby (most expensive) room too We're going to be so skint!

Funded hours not free hours unfortunately.

How many hours above the 30 is the child going to be doing? And what is the normal hourly/ or session rate?

It’s 30 funded hours for 38 weeks of the year. The government doesn’t give enough to nurseries to cover the cost of looking after the child so they have to charge parents. Food and other extras are also charged for.

I couldn't get my head around this either, we asked for a breakdown of costs and the nursery manager to go through it. They were happy to explain.

Think of it you get 1140 funded hours per year.

For us we have DS in nursery 3 days. Our nursery operate a 10 hour day and a 50 week year. So we get 114 days fully covered. So we cover (50*3)-114 days a year.... Then pay 80% of that cost due to the tax free childcare

Also something to bear in mind is that the hours on,y cover 38 weeks a year and 9-12 and 12-3 so if they're in 50 weeks a year 7.30-5 even if the hours a week add up to 30 (yes I know the maths here doesn't) but you'll have to pay full whack for 7.30-9 and then 3-5 and full for the other weeks a year for the holidays.
It shouldn't be called free childcare, it should be called subsidized.
It also doesn't come close to the actual costs of running a nursery.

Mine goes 3 days a week and we pay approx £200 per month because our hours are split across the full term and this also includes wrap around areas. We are given a breakdown which helps. You are also still entitled to the tax free 20% which makes a difference.

But that isn't the fault of the nursery - it's the govt and DfE specifically you should be angry with.

Funded hours are primarily designed to support child development rather than for childcare and as many parents use pre-schools attached to primary schools, which are term time only, that's how they designed the system.

I do understand the frustration though. Childcare costs are too high.

Do you use Tax Free Childcare?