Can anyone help me understand 2 year funding?

[mothertrucker23]

Dd turned 2 at the beginning of May and we have been eagerly awaiting her two year funding. She goes to a private nursery for 16 hours a week so my understanding was that with the 15 hour funding, our nursery bill would basically disappear apart from the 4 hours a month not covered.

Our bills used to be £400 a month, sometimes more depending on how many days were in the month. Now they are around £200 which is obviously much less but still more than I expected to be paying with funding applied. Does this sound right or do I need to query it? Thanks

At a private nursery I'm afraid you'll get ancillaries added on for food and the like. The 15 hours is also 39 weeks of the year so your 15 hours becomes more like 11 hours a week.

The only way I've managed to get free childcare is using a school run pre school 9-3 term time. Means a juggling act with annual leave during school holidays. However going back full time would leave me worse off with nursery fees and school wrap around.

It’s 15 hours in term time

Many nurseries charge by the day rather than the hour - so even if you have them in for 8 hours, the day counts as 10 hours

It’s not affordable to offer them at the actual cost, so it’s a discount rather than the actual cost of the hours. 15 free hours at my nursery is £50 off the weekly bill, but it’s £100 a day for example (this sounds like what might be happening at your nursery).

They offered me an option for stretched funding which I took as it means she can still go in school holidays. Maybe that's it?

Basically it isn't 'free hours' - it is subsidised hours.

Nurseries can dictate when and how the 15 hours (term time) are used. Ie. They may spread out the subsidised hours at 3 hours a day, 5 days a week (term time). So therefore your bill wouldn't decrease as much as you think it would if your child goes to nursery full time.

Yes that'll be why. If she was term time only then you'd get the extra 4 hours per week. Just the difficulty of securing childcare during the holidays when you work FT

ask for an itemised invoice?

I get one but I can't make any sense of it 😂

I meant to say 'part time' in the final line, apologies.

They will charge for consumables – food, drink, paint, paper, glue etc. Very standard (and unfortunate).

It sounds right. The government funding doesn’t cover the real cost of a nursery place, so nurseries charge for all sorts of random things just so that they can afford to operate and attempt to keep within the funding rules.