Explain how nursery works (in London) to me...

[guardianofthedairymilk]

I need a Nursery For Dummies tutorial, please. I thought I understood it, but we are moving house / area and I can't seem to find an equivalent of our current set up.

DD is currently in a 30hr place at a Local Authority nursery which is not attached to a school. I pay £24 a month on top of her funding, to cover food. It's an area of very high depravation. The nursery is absolutely exceptional imo, I've always suspected we got lucky but it's just how it is around here, iyswim.

We're moving to London, and a change in my income will mean DD is entitled to a 15 hr nursery place from Sept. I can't find any 'independent-of-school' LA nurseries in the area - are these a rarity?

Schools have nursery classes as far as I can tell, but I'd prefer to avoid these if possible. Are these generally fully funded by the Universal Funding deal?

Am I right in thinking the only other option is a private nursery? The ones I've contacted would charge upwards of £2k per term on top of the Universal Funding for a 15hr place. It's a shock to the system for me, but is this pretty standard? I'd imagine it costs a lot more to run a nursery in London with salaries and property costs etc.

Am I missing something obvious? How do people on a middle income manage this?

You need to say where you are or will be in London. If your dd is 4 and you are looking for a place in September then you will not have much choice of affordable settings I am afraid.

All school nurseries near me are very in demand as funding mostly covers the hours. There are also couple of 15 or 30 hour pre-school settings run by charities that are more or less free for the 15/30 hours. There is a council supported offering but it is very popular and not especially subsidised. Most of the other children centre settings have now closed.

There are a few- for example there's one at Coin St in Waterloo (that has places) and a surestart nursery near us also. Most of the children's centre nurseries have closed as surestart funding is cut. It's worth having a look at London Early Years Foundation too who have a lot of nurseries.

Whatever you think of school nurseries (and I am not keen) they generally don't do wraparound care anyway so won't often be used by people who work FT unless they have a complicated expensive arrangement with a CM- and you'll have no cover in the school holidays. I don't think 3 and 4 year olds need to do phonics and international research bears that out. Other non school settings do all the social stuff without the school environment.

I think you probably want nurseries in children's centres (or schools) or community/charity preschools if you want to access just 15 hours term times for free.

It might help if you said which part of London you are going to.

Sutton has preschools attached to (fee and non fee paying) schools and children's centres. It has private nurseries of different types and forest schools.

You will have very limited choice so I would look at where you are moving and work out which settings have spaces and choose the best of those rather than worrying about which type of setting you would theoretically prefer.

If you have deferred your dds start in school, do you already have a school that has agreed to take her out of year? I mention this because in the county where I work, a deferred is only valid "for the life of education" if a child stays within the same Local Authority.

Both my DDs have been to a school nursery from age 4 (also both deferred) and it was lovely - around 20 kids, lots of free flow play plus activities like cooking, nature stuff outside, very gentle environment. So it's worth considering. I know a couple of childminders who pick up from the school and the nursery so some arrangement like that might work for you.