To think you should be able to access 15 hours when attending nursery 2 days a week?

[CharlieD2020]

My little boy has been at his nursery for a year, he is turning 3 soon.

He attends nursery 2 days a week, whilst most other children attend 3 or more days a week. We agreed that he would attend 2 days a week, and this is confirmed in our written agreement. His nursery have now told us that we need to increase him to three days a week, or they will not be able to let us access any of the 'free 15 hours' of childcare that he should now be eligible for.

Sending him to nursery 3 days a week doesn't work for our family at all (I would be sending him to nursery on a day where I'm not working), and we wouldn't have signed up to the nursery if we had known we would have to increase his days to 3 days a week, or if we were unable to be able to get funding when he became eligible for it.

We have lots of friends who have a little one in nursery 2 days a week and their nursery is still giving them access to the funded hours.

Does anyone have any advice about what we can do? We really don't want to move him, but continuing to pay £600 a month for two days of childcare a week is really problematic too.

It seems so unfair that the nursery can pick and choose who is eligible, and that it can vary so much between childcare providers?!

TIA

Yes, you should be able to. The government have made it so that nurseries have to do these things to just break even.

If that's their policy then there isn't much you can do about it I'm afraid. Accept it or move him.

It’s to mimic school / preschool sessions of which there are 10 per week over 5 days and term time only so it’s not possible in 2 days.

Primarily they’re a business, not a charity.

They provide what works for them and if you don’t like it, you don’t use it. Same as any other business.

The government massively under fund the free childcare so they have to make it work for them .

The government want to look like the saviours but nurseries are going out of business .

They can do it, my DD goes 10 days per month and uses the 30 free hours. They don’t make much profit from the free hours so this is probably why they aren’t allowing it, unfortunately I think you’ll have to find a new nursery, continue paying or send him 3 days.

So in principle, yes you should just be able to use the 15 hours and nothing more.

But in practice… the nurseries can’t afford to do that, as the rate they are paid is poor.

The alternative is recouping that money via… charging those who don’t get free hours / use more hours EVEN MORE for those unfunded hours.

I wonder how this works for parents on very low incomes eligible for hours but not in work / doing many hours. Presumably this means they cannot access any hours, or is there a mechanism to avoid that?

YANBU but unfortunately this is the ridiculous way that the government has chosen to fund childcare. The nursery is free to set their own terms, some don’t even offer the free hours at all and those that do can set their own conditions for it. Our nursery has the same policy and I am also frustrated. We also have to pay for 3 days full hours (8-6pm) even though she doesn’t use them, and to pay across school holidays etc. it sucks. I wish there were just state funded nurseries where you could send the child for school hours for the number of funded days and that’s that.

As the others have said they have to do what they can to survive and they get a lot of freedom on how they apply it. If you up him to three days and take the hours does it lower your bill? I'd love a free morning once a week with no toddler to get stuff done and have a swim. Nothing to stop you picking up early or just not sending them that day?

Trying to run a nursery where people could just pay by the hours they used would be a nightmare to run though.

Imagine trying to do the rota for staff.

FYI there are a lot of term time nurseries, often attached to schools.

Are you better or worse off financially for the extra day + funding?

Can you pick up an extra day of work if he was at nursery an extra day?

A child free day can be amazing to get everything sorted/as straightened out, run errands that are otherwise difficult to do with kids in tow etc. Why are you against having a day for yourself?

Around me they (and SAHMs who get the 15 hours at 3) use either school nurseries or other not-for-profit preschools which do hours like 9.30-2, so are no use as childcare, but charge nothing on top of funding.

Can you have a look back over paperwork when you joined and subsequently to see if anything is mentioned about a minimum number of days in order to use funding in their setting? It's disruptive to move nurseries for the child so if there's nothing mentioned I would push hard on it not being in the T&C's you signed up to if that's the case.

It's been many years but I was involved in 3+ funding in a pre school, at the time our day was made up of 2 x 3hr sessions per day plus lunch club so if someone was doing less hours than the full funding they could still use their funding but for the appropriate number of sessions. In a nursery there will be more unfunded hours in a day. Maybe ask how the funding is applied to see if you can use 4 sessions across the 2 days, term time only - it would reduce your monthly cost but not by as much as you might think. If the average subsidy for a 2 year old from April is £5.88 ph then 4 sessions a week (12 hours funding) x 39 weeks, divided by 12 months is around a £230 per month reduction.