To ask if someone help me with the nursery fees 30 hours conundrum? Please

[NurseryFeesWhaaa]

Shamelessly posting for traffic, my brain hurts.

My daughter currently attends nursery, but her sessions will be changing slightly soon.

She is due to start going 3 days a week (full days as they have removed the 9-4 option without telling anyone but hey ho), using the 30 hours free funding stretched to 7.45 hours a day.

But the wrap around fees are in my view, bloody extortionate!

So I have worked it out like this...

Nonfunded a full day 7.30 to 6.30 is £62 (hourly rate £5.64)
Funded hours will be 7.45 (rounded to 7.5 for ease) a day
Shortfall is therefore 3.5 x £5.64 = £19.74

They want to charge £31.20 for wrap around!

Now I know the first thing people will say is - oh but the government don't give them enough money to cover their running costs.

So I delve further

It costs £5.64 per hour for a nonfunded child
If a full day is £62, and parents are being asked to pay £31.20, then it would be fair to expect that they are receiving £4.10 per hour for funded hours from the council.

Except I know that they receive £5.25 per hour from our local council.

So the nursery will receive £62 for a nonfunded child to attend for a full day, and about £70 for a child using 30 hours free funding to attend for a day.

I know nurseries aren't allowed to charge top up fees, but does this count as that, can I challenge it? I mean i'd be happy to actually pay top up fees as it would be bloody cheaper.

So AIBU to think they are being CFs? Or are my maths off - entirely possible, i'm not very good at maths.

dons hard hat
hides behind a wall of wine

It’s all a con... we’ve not been able to access any funding at all ...

No it is not top up fees. Top up fees would be if they charged you extra for the funded hours.

Cheaper to use funded hours for 2 days and pay private place fees for he third day

Be thankful the nursery I wanted to send y dd it was £12 an extra for additional hours to the 30.

Sort of defeats the point...

Oops realised i deleted some key info during preview post - apologies for the drip feed.

So a non funded child doing a full day pays £62, a non funded child doing a short day (9-4 which they are now removing as an option steathily) is £51, so in this case those extra 4 hours costs £11, as opposed to an extra £31.20 for an extra 3.55 hours

So @gingerbreadbiscuits but couldn't you argue that technically, they are?

Does she go term-time only or the full year? As that makes a difference to when the 30 hours are funded.

She goes full year - it is stretch funded hence the 7.45 hours

Nurseries have fixed costs per child per day that are the same regardless of whether a child is there for one hour or ten - almost everything except staffing.

I think it’s entirely reasonable of the cost of provision for all children to reflect those fixed costs. The costs for unfunded hours have those spread across the whole day, the costs for funded kids have the costs above the funded level concentrated into a few hours.

YABU. The system isn’t the most user friendly but it makes a huge difference to parents. We had 15 hours for DS1 and it made a huge difference every month. DS2 gets his 30 hours in January and it’s goit to make such a massive difference to our lives. I don’t want the nursery to be out of pocket/making a loss when the funding is such a huge benefit to us anyway, so I’m happy for differential fees.

You need to look at how much subsidy you are getting compared to unfunded kids per year.

@JassyRadlett i get that i really do, but they are charging more money for funded children to attend then nonfunded.

They aren't out of pocket with the 30 hours, on the contrary they are in profit.

Oh and i do appreciate that the funding makes a massive difference to us, i'm thankful to the government for that but cross the nursery are using it as an excuse to increase their profits.

We are looking at the 30 hrs funding at the moment, our Nursery stretch the hours to 22 hours a week. To accept the funding there, they state we will need to book a minimum of 3 days with 2 days fully funded and the 3rd day the std rate which is £38. At the moment DS only goes 1 day and DSis looks after him the other two. We won't be any better off, actually it will cost us more because the on 2 funded days there is a charge of £4.50 for food. We are only considering it because DS starts school next year and we think it would be beneficial to him. The way your Nursery runs it sounds very confusing.

Just realised my NC makes it sound like i'm whining (which i guess I am a bit). I'm not whining about having to pay anything for nursery at all, the whaaa bit was more 'whaaa my head hurts from maths'

Are you sure they are getting £5.25? Our council only pay our nursery £4.20.......

Except I know that they receive £5.25 per hour from our local council.

How do you know this? The DfE offers £4.94 and local authorities pass this on minus an admin fee. Which council is topping up by 20p per hour?

It's estimated that most councils are actually allowing £4.27 per hour, which is closer to your estimate.

And don't forget that they're allowed to exclude extras such as food, tissues, wipes, etc from the funded hours, so the extra could be justified as being part of that cost (a nursery day will include however much for food and kitchen staff whether a child eats the food or not, and that's not part of the EYFS offering).

I think £30-odd is an extortionate top-up, but it could well be legal.

I think I would allow them a little 'profit', from what I've been told the admin is a mare. Schools have an office to deal with it but nurseries I imagine find it quite time-consuming.

I'm pretty good at maths but my head hurts just reading that.

If it helps, DC attends nursery 3 days per week at £52 per day non-funded. Even with the 30 hours per week we pay around £200pm on top of the "free" childcare, which includes all non term time provision.

Nursery did put their fees up at the time the free hours came in, they said they weren't viable otherwise.

Another one here questioning the £5.25 per hour? That sounds more like the 2 year old rate than 3 or 4 year old. £4.10 sounds about right for funding for a 3 or 4 year old.

Is that just for care or does it include food? Our DS goes three days a week as well and the nursery charges £17 per day extra fee including food.

Ah you got me there let me go reread my email 're the funding it is entirely possible I've got my early entitlement and 30 hours mixed up. Will check once dc in bed

They don’t usually make the funding amount visible to parents? Anyway £5.25 is a lot but is similar to our 2 year old fee and the 3/4 year old is £4.37. Are you sure they get that much? Local authorities do vary but not by that much x

Have no issues with my childminder even letting me use myexsess in the holidays is I work 20 hours a week

The funding for Funded 2-year-olds is more - the funding for the 15 and 30 hours is unlikely to be anywhere near 5.25 per hour. Our works out at about 4.10 an hour for 3 and 4-year-olds.

How do you know they get £5.25? That seems very high - my nursery gets a base rate of £3.99!

Did they put their prices up when the 30 hours funding came in to place, or has it always been £62 per day? If it’s always been that (or near enough that) then they obviously aren’t “using it as an excuse to increase profits” as their profits will remain the same either way. And at the end of the day, they are a business not a charity - why shouldn’t they make a profit? What is the point of owning a business if you don’t make a profit?!

The 30 hours funding legally has to be available for absolutely no charge to parents if they wish to take it. This is part of heir contract with the council, but it’s up to the nursery to decide how the totally free sessions are offered. For example, hey could say “you can have 30 hours for no change, but you can only take those hours between 1.30 and 6.30 pm”. If you want the privilege of deciding on what days and times you want then it will probably come with a charge.

Have you asked the nursery how they have worked out the wrap-around charges? They may well be charging additional for meals and snack etc. After all, not all hours are equal -9 til 10 May cost £5 odd but 10 til 11 costs £7 odd because snack is provided