To ask will 30 hours funding cover school nursery fees completely?

[Nurseryquestions86]

DD just turned 3 is currently in a private nursery and we receive the 15 hours funding. She is entitled to 30 hours from September.

We have secured a full time term time place for her in the local school nursery. Will the 30 hours fully cover this? Or will there be fees to pay?

Nursery have said they will answer any questions in the coming weeks but I'm just curious of others experience?

We had to pay £5 lunch cover and provide packed lunch. Two charges for optional day trips. No other costs.

Our school nursery is completely free. 8.45 until 3.30 daily, 39 weeks a year. School dinner prices for dinners eg £2.90 but I just sent packed lunches.

Where do you live?

No but I haven't used a nursery for a couple of years. They do add on extra costs though.

If it is term time only it will cover most of that as it is only allocated for 38 weeks. I think ours covered about 22 hrs per week for a 50 week year.

No, there will be top up fees because the govt funded price per hour doesn’t cover the cost for the nursery of having a child. For our 15 hours ‘free’ equates to 8 hours actually free. Please do write to your MP and highlight this issue. The more of us that do that the more likely it will hopefully improve for future working parents!

I know at DDs primary school the only regular costs are for wrap around care if required and for a school dinner if wanted.

Is that for term time only?

I should note the lunch cover made it 6.5 to 7 hours per day long drop/pick-up, so it was covering extra time, not the 30 hours.

If your child is only there for 30 hours per week during term time then you won't be charged anything more. If they are there for more than 30 hours then you will be charged for any additional hours.

The new statutory guidance states that any other charges are optional. £5 for lunch cover, for example is no longer allowed to be enforced. Any payment for trips, snacks, consumables etc is optional.

Almost certainly you will have to pay a top up. The only exceptions I know of are charity provision nurseries and a couple of schools. The top ups can be a small amount to hundreds a month.

Our school nursery is completely free. We send packed lunches as nursery can't have school dinners. They have probably 2 or 3 events during school time that we pay for e.g £5 for mobile farm visit, £3 for summer disco. I always thought most school nurseries didn't ask for top up fees but could be wrong!

We only charge for school dinners (£2 a day) but children can bring a packed lunch instead if they wish.

Most nurseries I’m aware of charge for the full day they are open. So if your nursery is open 9-5 (40hrs) you’ll probably be charged an additional 10 hrs plus any top up fees.

So it depends on what your nursery’s standard day is and what top up fees they have.

Our nursery is open all year from 7.30-6.30 so we pay £770 a month for 4 days a week, and that’s after the 30 hrs and the tax free subsidy is deducted.

I thought private nurseries charge but school nurseries are free???? Term time only obviously.

Ours charges £2.50 a day for lunch supervision- otherwise you have to pick them up between the morning and afternoon session for 30 minutes!
Otherwise all hours covered.

I guess depends.
My DS goes to private nursery/pre school and everything is included - care and food so if you use 30h a week term time only your bill each month is £0 .

As it's a school nursery only open term time school hours normally the 30 hours is entirely covered by the funding.

The school did it as "optional, you can pick up your child for lunch and bring them back for the pm session", so in practice nobody would do that.

It is very unlikely that the 30 hours funding will cover the fees completely. UNLESS the nursery is only open for 30 hours per week term time only and has a general policy that all parents provide nappies and a packed lunch & snacks.

For most private nurseries a full time place would cover 8 hours a day, 51 weeks per year. That's 2040 hours of childcare per year and the free hours funding only covers 1140 hours per year. Plus they will have fees for consumable resources and food, which aren't covered by the government funding which covers childcare only, so if you want your child to be given drinks and food and be kept clean and allowed to use drawing paper etc you will need to pay for that too.

A full-time term-time-only place will only be free if full-time means literally only 6 hours per day. What are the opening hours?

Our nursery isn’t term time and we send LO 2 days a week and with the 15 hours funding we only have to pay for 1 day a week. When he qualifies for 30 hours a week we will only need to pay a £10 a week top up for food costs, so we might send him an extra day with no cost to what we’re paying now.

People need to stop commenting about private nurseries when the question is about school nurseries, totally different for pricing.

Just to add to earlier comments the things I would check are :
Is there a charge for lunchtime supervision?
How much are school dinners? (If you don't want to do packed lunch)
Do you need a specific uniform? (We are lucky that our just go in supermarket unbranded gear)

The actual hours and resources though should be totally covered.

This has been explicitly banned now.

DD went to ‘pre school’ I.e school nursery when she was eligible for 30 hours free. I didn’t have to pay anything or even do any admin. They just took the code from me at the beginning that was all.

For a school nursery particularly it should be free, and any additional charges (eg lunches, snacks, trips, nappies) must be optional.