Nursery or pre-school in Sydney - HELP!

[Ouchywawa]

Hi all

It looks like I am headed to Sydney early next year (likely March/April) with my DH and DD who is 3. On the advice of good friends we are hoping to live around Balmain, which seems to tick all the boxes in terms of commuting to our jobs etc. However, one thing that I am really struggling with is what to do with my DD.

She will be 3.5 by the time we move so will possibly go to a public pre-school in Jan 2013. But in the meantime...are nurseries/preschools exceptionally difficult to get into? I keep reading about 2 year waiting lists! Am I going to need to look into getting a nanny? Or should I just forget about working for a while?!

At the moment DD goes to nursery really close to my work which is really convenient but I'm not sure how common nurseries are in the Sydney CBD. Ideally I would like to find a private preschool or something similar that will be more than a day nursery IYKWIM.

Any advice would be much appreciated...

Hi Ouchywawa,
You don't have an easy task ahead of you I'm afraid - preschools/daycare in Sydney are soooo oversubsrcibed people have their children's names down from birth. Anyway... Balmain / Rozelle is a really lovely area, great for families and a nice community feel, so that's a good start.

In terms of your options, you can either opt for long daycare centres, preschool centres (which offer full day care finishing at 3ish as opposed to the sessional UK format) or pre-schools attached to private schools.

There are a few long daycare centres in Sydney CBD - and they generally have more spaces than the ones in the local areas, so you might get lucky. Try www.jigsawchildcare.com.au/ to get you started. Otherwise for local Balmain options you'll just need to do a bit of digging - sorry, I don't live around there so not sure of details.

As for pre-schools, the KU centres always get good feedback - www.ku.com.au/ - and there are a few of them around.

And for private school options, again you'll need to have a look at what's available in Balmain.

Hope that helps in someway! Good luck with the move - it's a great place to live.

Hi Ouchywawa
There isn't public provision of pre-school services in NSW: You must pay for any prior-to-school-service. Long Day Care Centres take children for whole days (ie 7am to 6pm) from babies to school age. Pre Schools take children from age three to school age and run from 9am to 3pm. At this late date, you will be pushing to get a pre school place, but you may get lucky and find a place in a LDC.

Note that although Long Day Care Centres promote themselves as offering pre school programs, they are no substitute for a quality pre school program. Like the previous poster said, KU are a great 'brand'- not for profit and the closest you will get to 'public' preschool, with access to KU special ed consultants, good staff development programs, etc
You will really need to know which part of Balmain you will be living in- you won't believe Sydney traffic until you see it, don't stretch your morning commute any further by living too far away from your child care.

Thanks both! I have been doing my research...DD is now on one waiting list for a nursery with a preschool programme that has a corporate partnership with my work so if that comes off it would be ideal. I am going to put her down for a couple of private schools and then see how we go when we get there.

I'm sure we'll figure it out...maybe have to get Grandma to come and stay for a while!!

Good that you've got her name down somewhere already. Make sure you look in to the government childcare rebates that are offered or you might also find that because the centre is associated with your work, they may offer a salary sacrifice option for paying the fees. My DH does this for our DS and it works out quite well.

Also if you do end up needing a nanny this website www.findababysitter.com.au/?gclid=CKT8tf2J-6wCFcFKpgodAAngSQ is quite good. There is a joining fee but there are loads of nannies on there. They're not cheap though and for a good one you'd be looking at around $20-25 per hour, which you can't claim the rebate on.

Good luck with it all!

Balmain is possibly the MOST difficult area in which to find a daycare/preschool. People have their children's names down from pre-birth and often never get a spot!
Otherwise it's a fab area!!
Seriously look into nanny-share though or daycare near your work.
My DS has just finished up at a fab daycare in the city (only available for DH's company though). There are a few about, so worth looking into.