Another nursery one - is this normal?

[itsfrompenzance]

I am looking for a 15 hours funded nursery place for my child, beginning in January.

There’s a local nursery that looks good and so I booked a visit. Places for children aged 3-4 who aren’t going to take up the extended offering (so would only be attending for 15 hours) are obviously subject to availability, which is fine.

On looking at their literature, it also says that any place they offered a child on the universal entitlement package would be subject to termly review, so in effect, they could withdraw the place in April, September or January. I called to check whether this was the case and they said yes, they could ask my child to leave on a termly basis if another (paying) customer wanted the place.

Is this normal? It seems very unsettling to the children and potentially discriminatory. I’m not about to make a big fuss, I just want to know whether this is standard?

Never heard that one before. They obviously don't want the funded hours only and I would avoid

Funded places are actually under funded. So the nursery makes a loss on each funded place which is why they prefer paying customers.

I get why they would want to do it, Cola. I’m more interested in whether this is common and, if not, whether it’s legal.

Ring the relevant department of the local authority and ask. They may put a stop to this practice.

Andsoitisjust99

I’ve emailed the local council childcare dept (without naming the nursery). I don’t want to get them into trouble but it seems like they’re likely to be wriggling out of keeping children who aren’t either full-time or full-time and paying full whack (especially low income families), and that can’t be right.

Sounds dodge as hell to me. I wouldn’t put my child in there. Business or not, they should care a bit more about the children’s welfare

We’re a private nursery with a limited number of funded places but we don’t review them termly.

Once they’re given, they’re given. I’ve never heard of this at any other setting either.

Sounding very dodgy to me, then! I won’t be sending her there because they clearly have it in mind not to have her taking up a place and that’s not good.

What Andsoitsjust99 said, I know for a fact that they aren't allowed to do this. It's not affordable to them to keep the 15hr kids, so they'll try to get away with this, but your local authority will be VERY interested in this piece of information, for everyone's good. You can always post it to them anonymously.