Just rang my nursery to confirm the amount that I will have to pay next year when DD gets preschool vouchers. A few months ago I was weighing up the options with them and they quoted £212 per month for 4 sessions a week. This takes into account the fact that the sessions are 4.5 hours not the gov funded 3 hours, the sessions are year round, not term time and additions for food and suncream and whatever other crap they are trying to bill me for. Fine so I agreed she would do 4 sessions a week, 2 full days, whereas now she just does one, at £177 a month so only an extra £30 or so.
I rang today to confirm the price as they have put their fees up by one pound a session but now they are saying it is going to be £250 a month (or thereabouts, depends on the number of sessions, they won't average it out for me), I can't understand why it is so much more. The increase in prices accounts for about £16 a month, but the rest they say is because the government has reduced the money they are giving them. Now, how I understand it doesn't work like that. I'm looking at the gov website and it says Providers that normally charge fees should reduce the fees by the amount that they would normally charge for those sessions if the child was not accessing a free place. However the nursery are saying that the government gives them XXX amount (£3 something per session) and they just refund that to us. Does that seem right? It doesn't seem right according to the gov website. If they are supposed to refund the amount of the session, even if their session is 4.5, they are charging me £21.50 per session so they should refund me 3 hours worth, so about 2/3 of £21.50.
Am I making sense? What do your nurseries do?