To not understand nurseries that offer mornings only/ 6 hours a week/ 3 afternoons a week/

[Napqueen1234]

Hello,

Not meant to be in any way goady just genuinely interested. Our nursery only offers full day (can do half days as ‘extras’ if staff available) and all the children seem to do 3+ days a week 9-5 or just before and after matching working hours.

I’m always seeing on mumsnet ‘DC does 3 mornings a week’ ‘DC does 6 hours a week’. Where/what are these nurseries? Do you work or is it SAHP only who would do this? We want to move DD from the private nursery to one attached to primary school for 3-4s next year but even that explicitly states ‘we rarely offer less than full time places and only in exceptional circumstances’. Obviously that could be difficult for those only entitled to 15 free hours childcare as they would have quite a lot of ‘top up’ hours to pay for if forced to send a child full time so may put people off. If we asked her private nursery for her to do x hours eg 6 a day they’d look at us like we were mad and we would have to pay a full days fees £58 regardless if she was there full 11 hours or only 6.

So I just wonder what’s the set up with these nurseries? do you sort of share a place with another child eg your DC does 3 morning and another child 3 afternoons? Going on mat leave soon and I want to keep DD in nursery and would have loved to drop to half days but after extensive research locally (Manchester!) nowhere offers this?!

Thanks!

We offer a variety of sessions both all year round and term time
We can do it by having part time staff and filling the term time places with holiday club children in the holidays
We also don’t provide any food for 3 hour sessions and parents provide lunch for longer days once children are 2
Our flexibility makes a very good selling point and ensures we are always pretty full

Round here you have the option of school nursery (free but only term time and 2.5 hours a day so totally unhelpful for working parents) or private nursery where you usually have to commit to at least 2 full days but most do more.

This here too (SE London), from age 3. But for younger kids it is difficult to find half-day care - little demand for afternoons only (because naps!) so a half-day morning place would likely lose the nursery potential revenue, plus there's enough demand for FT kids that they don't need to bother imo. I SAH/work around 2yo DD and was able to find just one nursery in the area to offer mornings only. I don't think it's a co-incidence that it's run as a charity and works generally with a low-income client base. She now does two mornings a week.

I worked 18 hours over 2 days so my son went to a private nursery the days I was working and the school nursery 3 mornings a week.

We were very lucky the school nursery agreed to this.

My nursery charges by the hour and for as many hours as you want while it is open. My DD will be doing two mornings a week from 8-1. Her dad only works mornings so he can pick her after work.

My son currently attends playgroup 4 mornings a week 9:20-11:15 which we pay for and parents don't stay. He is two, he will be three in a few weeks. It's term time only.

In January, he will start attending pre school nursery which is a nursery attached to the local primary school and you don't pay for it, just snack charges. He will be going 5 afternoons a week, 12:15-3:15, term time only. The choice the nursery offer is 5x AM sessions or 5x PM sessions a week, 3 hours each session. Of course some parents can request only 2 or 3 sessions at first and build up but since my son has been in playgroup for some time, after the initial settling in, he will be going for his 5 afternoon sessions

I think people worrying about the name is irrelevant, some pre schools run full days, some half and some offer the choice of both the same with nursery, a private nursery will often longer hours but not always, a school attached to a school may or may not offer half days and may or may not allow children to attend the extended school services, for example our local school nurseries attached to schools... 1. Offered only 9-3:30 (no half day option but also no option to attend after school or pre school sessions) 2. Offers 15 or 30hrs but not option to attend pre or after school sessions. 3. Offers mornings only, afternoons only or full days and allows for after school and pre school sessions. The local pre school offers half days only. The other pre school is just two hours twice a week. We have a couple of private nursery schools that offer 7am-7pm but minimum of 3 full days.
Round here (south east London) Parents are being pushed to put children in from 2 years and the 2 year funding is pushed at all health visitor sessions. Personally I think it's crazy, younger and younger kids in what is essentially very formal education from 3 and it's far too young.

Every nursery we looked at offered this - minimum two sessions a week (so a full day or two mornings / afternoons). Our twins started with two mornings a week and now do 3.

Totally normal in my experience! Mine do 4 mornings and we stretch their funded hours over the year. I work part time and family look after them the rest of the time

My mom did this when I was a kid. She worked from home and it wasn't necessary for me to in nursery from 9-5.

My best friend was on maternity leave and her older daughter went to nursery a few mornings so she would have play time with kids similar age. Also if the friend takes the child out it will lose the place and when she needs full-time care after maternity leave they would have to re-apply.

My neighbour (middle east) is a sahm and her kids go im a few mornings so they can learn the is gauge before going to school.

Here (Yorkshire) private nurseries tend to be 730-6 or 8-6 from 3 months to 4 years. That’s a full session or an AM is till 1pm and PM is from 1pm.
They have “ funded only” spaces which for 15 hours are 3 hours a day or for the 30
Hours 6 hours a day but term time only (age 3 onwards).
there is one stand alone preschool locally which is 9-12 term time only from 2.5yrs. This tends to be used by SAHMs or grandparents doing childcare.

We use a private nursery and then do pretty much whatever you want as long as they have the space. We do full days 8:45-4:45 but they can do mornings or afternoon or you can pay by the hour and do 9-3 if you want.

I think it depends very much on who the clients are. In our area, most children are not in full days as they have a SAHP or one who works part time. We are in the minority doing full days. But in other places where most people work and there is a lot of demand for places, there would be no reason to offer more flexibility because it’s more cost effective to fill all your spaces.

DS’s nursery caters for shift workers (near the hospital) and charges buy the hour. It’s one of only two in a large city that does so though. I found it by asking on a local parent group. It’s handy as I require 10:30 till 3:30 so pay £30 rather than a full day rate of £55

Pre-schools are often far cheaper than nurseries and offer full or half days (9-12, 12-3 or 9-3) but nurseries are open for longer hours lax

Preschool is for education, nurseries are for childcare. My DS goes 2 half days and one full day 9-3), we have a nanny for the rest of the week.

We offer full days, mornings and afternoons. The way that works is that we have, for example, 20 full day spaces, 10 morning spaces and 10 afternoon spaces. So yes, the morning / afternoon spaces are a shared full day. I thought it was a legal requirement to offer some sessions that are funded only??

The nursery DS will be going to offers morning 9-12 or afternoon 12.30-3.30. None of the kids do both sessions. It’s term time only and they take older kids during the holidays for full days.

@Nodancingshoes not a legal requirement. at least no nurseries around here do. there were some, but they all went out of business

@DearTeddyRobinson preschools, nurseries and childminders all follow the exactly same curriculum. differences are due to the quality rather than the name of the setting

@myself2020 yes you are quite right. I should have written that preschool is not for the purpose of childcare, whereas nursery is, even though they both follow the EYFS.