Paid nursery inset days

[Zombiefluff]

So yesterday our private nursery announced 6 inset days in their calendar from 1st of September. This is a paid, private full time nursery, not linked to a school.

I currently pay about 2k for a 1 year old with 15 hours and 1k for a 3 year old with 30.
Bank holidays are obviously paid for and now 6 additional inset days out of nowhere.
AIBU it is this nuts?
If I wanted to deal with inset days and random time off I would do a school nursery!!

But quite obviously most nurseries are managing it somehow because I don’t know any other nursery that has inset days and they’re still clean with trained staff.

Not sure how you think they manage!

Mostly they do it by exploiting the staff as much as they can get away with!
Proper inset days will be very attractive to staff - most nurseries are massively struggling with staff recruitment and retention at the moment, especially level 3 qualified staff.

@Zombiefluff realistically do you have any other childcare options locally?

Also isn’t basic training required for the job just the bare minimum? Isn’t it weird to expect the customer to directly pay for the required qualifications?
Ive never encountered another sector where the view seems to be “pay for my basic training requirements and then pay me for my service”.

I have never heard of a private nursery doing this!

Everyone at my DDs nursery is training for some level of early childcare certification and it mostly seems to be based on practical thingns they can show they’ve done with the children - my DD’s key worker asked permission to use examples of things she’s done with my DD for her portfolio for example.

So it seems to me a lot of the “training” is hands on practical training done with the children when they’re in!

There is NO business that won't train staff. There is no business that will be able to train staff with no money. Businesses who don't charge for training sessions will charge more for other things. Maybe they should just charge a few pounds more each day...

I own a private nursery. We don't charge bank holidays or Christmas closure and we certainly wouldn't charge for training days. If we're not available, parents don't pay. Full stop.

so how are staff holidays and other planned staff absences covered? They have a rota and have enough hours planned in to cover it. I don’t see how and why staff training shouldn’t be the same? And if it’s important to do it altogether could they all have an extra half a day off during the week and do an evening training, for example. I’m not saying people shouldn’t be paid for their time, far from it, but there must be a way to manage it that works for the staff, business AND parents. Given that not all nurseries use inset days, it must be possible. Other businesses in other sectors don’t just stop because they need to do training.

the thing with the inset days is that you feel like you’re paying twice - once for a service you can’t use and once to cover the gap, whether that’s by taking annual leave, unpaid leave or finding other arrangements. I get that having staff to cover the training will result in higher costs but honestly given how much we pay anyway I’d rather just pay a bit more on top and not have the inconvenience of trying to sort it out.

And yes maybe it was in the t&c’s for OP and anyone else in the same boat, but that doesn’t mean it was crystal clear exactly what was involved, and so many parents have a difficult time finding a childcare place in the first place they feel like even if they had objections then it’s just tough.

sooooooo where is your nursery and do you have any places, please??! Sounds amazing, lucky parents near you!

That would mean children of poor parents being denied nursery.