Not to think that childminders are underpaid?

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Last childminder charged £4.50 per hour, she had three over eights full time, ie retainer for school hours, after and before school care, full hours in school holidays. Plus three pre schoolers at the same rate.
My average monthly term time bill was £400, holidays was ave three times that.
So as a self-employed person she was actually doing pretty well for herself.

Surely childminding is like any other profession? Its regulated and you have to pay for exams, just like say a gas fitter, you have to have the right equipment, just like a mobile mechanic say, you have to make sure you pitch for enough work to cover your financial needs, just like a mobile hairdresser?

So, am I being unreasonable to think that it is just the same as any other self employed profession in that if you have enough work you can do well, if you don't it leads to a lean time but the basic underlying wage is not the issue.

I am fully prepared for my first mums net flaming and have my new name ready if necessary. ;-)

Disclaimer; I have no issue with a childminder earning well, I am not posting to be inflammatory but I am interested to see if it's a point of view that anyone else has considered.

No, not unless you look after home educated children. We can only have 3 in the early years group.

And almost all cms will charge a holiday rate for school age children.

Want to do those sums again?

God our holiday rate is high. I think. It may not be compared to others

And expenses are a heck of a lot more than £1000 a year!!!!!

Last year my turnover was £8,056
Profit was £1138

SlightlyJaded - where are you, even here is NW London, its costs £8-£10 an hour for a nanny who will look after all your children in your house. Don't really understand why you'd want to pay that much for a childminder when you could have sometime looking after your child in your own home for similar.

I do £30 a day including food for school holidays. I have to in order to compete with holiday clubs - still much more expensive than them.

ours is £40 a day lunch only

The above sums were for a theoretical situation where someone was looking after 6 at once because some were home edders.

48 weeks a year because CM taking 4 weeks hols.

As I said, almost no one would actually be in a position to earn that much on £4.50 per hour, because most are restricted for various reasons to 3 kids per day.

So half that final net, for someone running a more realistic 'full' service, which is still a VERY hard job.

When my mum started childminding she charged 80p an hour. Back in the 80s!

can you home ed children which aren't your own and charge a CMing fee for it???

I've never heard that before.

MumNW, some parents want their children looked after outside their own home. Various reasons include (in no particular order):

-maintain tidy home
-expose children to another language/animals/equipment and materials/etc
-socialisation with other children
-proximity to workplace
-delivery of EYFS
-ongoing inspection and monitoring

Yes, you may 'home ed' children who are not your own.

STM that is just below normal rate for our area.

3.50 per hour, £30 per day.

My Cm provides morning and after school care for a few plus 2 under 3 full days.

Her overall earnings are well above min wage.

The home ed thing is ridiculous. Please remove it from the debate.

Oh right, didn't know that.
Still very rare though i'd imagine.

"My childminder claims that all off her business expenses".

Do you mean she claims tax relief on it? AFAIK that does not mean she 'gets it paid' - it mean she pays a little less tax on it, she still has the cost of it to find.

yes she does but she can claim expenses in the calculation of her tax. good accountant.

Dancing, you're right. My expenses first year were WAY above £1000. I did say +/- £1000 because it's hard to quantify. Once the bulk of materials, equipment, training etc have been paid for, one could theoretically 'maintain' the service for £1000 p/a but obviously that would not be a service investing in continuous improvement/professional development.

Took dh a while to understand 'expenses'. Thought the nice government gave it all back to me!

I'm not removing the home ed thing from the debate because I am a home educating childminder. Sorry! :)

Clearly, almost NO ONE is going to be making £48k p/a by childminding. My point was that even at it's theoretical maximum, it wouldn't be that much compared to other professions. In reality, almost everyone is making a few grand profit by saving on their own childcare expenses, as described above.

Why are most restricted to 3 a day?

My last childminder said there is no restriction on how many over eight, there is a limit on under 5 I think though?

The sums are wrong, my op was based on three preschoolers approx 9-4 five days a week plus three over eight for pre and after school care term tim 5 days a week.
School hours were charged at half full rate, so a school day was 4.50 an hour for pre and after school.
9-3.30 was charged at 2.25 per hour term time.

School holidays were 4.50 per hour.

If either the child or childminder was on holiday it was half pay, if the child was sick it was full pay, if the childminder was sick it was no pay for first 5 days, thereafter was half pay.

I think terms vary from childminder to childminder though. I have a friend who has different terms.

its, not it's.

Im quite interested that there are home ed childmiders...had no idea there were.

Law says no more than 3 in the early years group at one time. Early years group = 0 - 31st August after their 5th birthday (with some exceptions for those 4 year olds already in full-time education). Of these 3, only 1 can be under 1.

So, maximum is 3 under 5 + 3 under 8.