"30 free hours"

[BlueRaincoat1]

My 3 year old DS attends pre-school, has done since he was one. He is entitled to the "30 free hours". He attends 3 days a week, from around 8.45 til 5.30, so taking that as being billed 8-6, it is literally 30 hours per week.

My bill this month was £389.70, reduced to £292.27 after the 25% tax free element which we use. We can afford it and our childcare bill is SO much less than it used to be when we had two in nursery/pre-school, with limited entitled to "free" hours.

But I really think the title of "30 free hours" is ridiculous, when my DS attends for 30 hours and the bill is still nearly £300 per month.

When DS was at nursery, it was the sessions 9-12 and 1-4 that were “free” and nursery charged a disproportionate amount for the hours outside of that. I remember the “bridge” for lunch was where they seemed to make their money.

In addition to that, soon after DS left nursery, there was a lot of chatter on message boards about nurseries and preschools being unable to meet their running costs and a number of preschools had to close.

If you’re unsure of how the fees are calculated and where these charges come from, speak to nursery and give them the opportunity to explain it to you.

It probably was a long time ago, when I was v tired with 2 small children. I paid most attention to the bottom line, as we needed the full day.

It's crazy, mine only uses 20 of the 30 free hours and we pay £200 a month!

Many nurseries don't give the option, it's 8-1 or 1-6 fixed price regardless how long you actually send them for.

With my husband in university our DD (age 3) is only eligible for 15 hrs. Her preschool will only allow us to use 3 hrs per day, from 12pm-3pm. We need her in 8am-4pm on two days (so 16hrs in total).

Their costs for the morning session and the extra afterwards are higher than it costs us to pay for the full day, so we're not using the funding, and it's costing us about £450 per month for 2 days - on one salary. Ho hum.

Ouch. This is the kind of thing I mean. The headline for you is you get 15 "free hours" . But you simply don't.

I think it will increasingly become the case that nurseries limit the use of funded hours until it becomes pretty unworkable - councils are getting savvier with their contracts and scrutiny though, since the case I mentioned earlier. The council has a duty to ensure sufficient childcare is available so always worth raising issues with them - they don’t necessarily provide ongoing monitoring the way they should.

Our childcare bill has approximately halved with the funded hours, still pay around £350-£400 a month and that's with a substantial subsidy from my husband's employer. It's a lovely setting, the staff turnover is extremely low and they have good pensions and T's & C's. I want anyone looking after my child to be well-paid and well-treated by their employer.

The problem is the government, not the childcare providers.

It entirely depends where you use it, I have the 30 hours for my DD and it is genuinely 30 hours for free term time - she attends an ofstead outstanding preschool at the primary school she will then be starting in September. She’s been there for the last 18 months since she turned 3, she does 3 full days of 8am-5.30pm (using the breakfast club and after school club at the school) and no bill at all other than I choose to pay £2.20 a day for a school lunch.

If I had kept her in the nursery she was at since a baby it would have been spread over 50 weeks and I would have been billed various other charges and would have been hundreds each month. I thought the term time only would be an issue (I have a very full on job) but it’s actually worked out completely fine and got us sorted for when she starts school too

Those saying the issue is the government not childcare providers - where else do you get the government offering to subsidise something where you can have a choice over using it in the public or private sector and wherever you like. The funding works 100% in the local authority operated preschools, private childcare providers can pick and choose how they structure it because they are private businesses

Yes, we absolutely should bow and scrape for some of the most expensive childcare in the developed world.

Childcare subsidies tend to be a net economic benefit by enabling more people to be in work and the paying tax, so the 'be grateful' argument doesn't really hold up; using your logic the rest of us should be grateful to those taking up the subsidy and continuing to work for contributing to the pot and reducing the pressure on the rest of us.

The policy naming is political dishonesty. It's called 30 free hours so that parents annoyed at still having to pay will direct their annoyance at the providers, not towards the government who intentionally and knowingly underfund it.

The government should be honest. Its a subsidised not free. Its ok in school preschools where the overheads are lower (property and utility

It is nice for it to be subsidised, as we've been paying full price up until 3. But I wish it was simpler and clearer.

Yep our nursery is the same - funded hours are 9-3. So if your child is in 3 days a week you only get 18 funded hours even if they are actually there 8-6. And that's before you spread the 38 funded weeks over the actual 50 or so that nursery is open.

Cut off half way through...

Utility bills) but a private nursery having to pay rent, tax, utilities etc has higher costs. And what they get doesn't genuinely cover what the childcare costs.

The idea that a childcare subsidy directly designed for working parents only operates for 38 weeks of the year shows that it's an issue with how the government structures it. The majority of working parents do not get 14 weeks leave each year, and therefore it's not a '30 hours a week' subsidy.

Our local state-funded preschool absolutely cannot offer the 30 free hours funded 100%, even for the reduced number of weeks. They have to take some creative approaches to how it's applied. It's also the only maintained pre-school/nursery school in the whole borough, so the concept of choice is a bit of an illusion...

But it's pitched as a benefit for all. And access to state funded pre-schools or nurseries may be very limited depending on where you live. If you are trying to juggle work commutes, school hours, and many pre-schools that don't even open til 8, few people may actually have an option of choosing a state funded one. Realistically you are limited by geography and availability - we certainly were.

As a registered childminder myself...people may not realise childminders offer funded childcare too.
And all the ones I know that do don't charge any extras at all - unlike nurseries.
We can "stretch" the funding to cover school holidays - so for example I have a child on the 30 hour funding whose mum needs two days childcare per week - 7.30am - 5pm - I stretch the funded hours so she gets two full days paid childcare per week year round. She doesn't pay ANY extras.
We also work to the EYFS exactly the same as nurseries x

But it's pitched as a benefit for all. And access to state funded pre-schools or nurseries may be very limited depending on where you live.

Yep, I've just checked - there are more than 33,000 children aged 0-15 in our borough. Assuming even distribution, that's more than 2000 children in each individual year of age.

There are 48 places in total for full day care at a council/state-run nursery. For 4000+ eligible children.

Childminders here can't afford to provide care for the government going rate, either. It's an expensive part of the country; they have bills to pay. **

Try a childminder. I provided nappies and wipes and paid the price gap between the government funding and the childminders hourly rate. 7:30-5:30pm.

I agree it's intentionally mislabelled.

Talking to my older relatives a few years ago they'd assume from the news that my children would automatically be getting free childcare thanks to the Tories when in reality we didn't get anything until they were 3.
Also it's not really financially viable from the nursery perspective either.
They were shocked when I explained the reality of what was available.

Providers aren’t allowed to charge a top-up.

We are in Scotland and get 30h from the term after the child is 3. Mine goes 3 days all year around and we only pay for holiday time. So, during term time we don't pay any extra ; it's fully funded. Feel so lucky after reading this thread!

My friends ds attends a nursery where they stretch the 30h term time over the year to 22h a week all year around. Apparently in Scotland, the council dictates to the private nurseries on how the funding can be used (term time only or all year around). Either way I'm not aware of any extra costs for anyone in Scotland unless they need more hours than which are funded

I understand the system but agree that it’s not great and definitely isn’t what it says on the tin!

My DC’s nursery charges £130 for a “premium service” whatever the hell that is.