4 yr old lonely in private nursery as friends have all left to go to school

[northernline]

ds is 4 in oct and has been at his current nursery since the age of 2. i chose not to send him to the local school attached nursery as i have a younger ds who will be in the year below him. logistically it made sense to keep them together at the private nursery and then transfer them at the same time. now that the year has started all his friends have left the nursery and he is the only kid in his age group left. i'd really like to combine the state hours with his current nursery so that i can still go to work but the school nursery have said that i can't do this. is this true??? surely if i am paying for his other nursery it doesn't matter if he has two places. ds is looking very miserable as he has been talking about going to big school for months. i feel i have let him down and now can't change my hours to accommodate the possibility of him going to the local state nursery. what to do? advice please...

You an only get one lot of funding per child. It shouldn't matter so long as only one nursery is claiming funding. Would be worth checking with the LEA. Also does the state nursery have space - ours is hugely oversubcribed.

Also won't he be starting in reception in January or do you mean he would stay at one of the nurseries instead?

You can do it, if I'm understanding you correctly. My son goes to two nurseries now but we only claim his free hours at one. We have another autumn born son and his friends all upped to school also. He is now at school but is a bit out of sorts because his friendship group kept changing. Wish now I'd made more effort with play dates etc.

You can legally - you can only claim your allowance once, but you can for example have him do mornings at the pre-school and afternoons in the private setting. However, your problem will be that the private setting may not let you just have those hours -they would struggle to get someone who only wanted mornings, so would effectively lose half a day's fees if you did this.

You can split funding between two providers, I have done this in the past and it wasnt a problem.

wow. that was quick! thanks so much for the responses. the nursery said i stood a good chance of getting ds into the school nursery if i apply now and get onto the waiting list as i only live two streets away (literally 3 mins walk) from the school. the receptionist was a little stern when i told her that i knew other parents who did use two nurseries. she basically said that if they found out they would withdraw the place and kick the child out. obviously since my children will probably attend the school i don't fancy a run in before they have even started! however i now feel armed and ready to act especially as ds is looking very sad, and just recovering from the latest asthma attack but that's another story! thanks again will report back soon with an update.

As I understand it, school nurseries insist on attendance 5 days a week. You have every right to use another nursery for the rest of the time e.g. afternoons but can't split days. Your 15 hours funding can be split if both both placer allow lessthan 15 hours. DD1 goes to 2 dofferent preschools and claims funding at both but the total is less than 15 hours.
School nurseries are different though and I have a feeling they claim all your funding due to compulsion to attend 15 hours.

update:
so this is what happened. i phoned the funding department at the council who also said that i could do what i liked as long as i didn't claim twice. called the school and asked why i had been told otherwise and found out this was just the school's policy. (ridiculous i know - apparently it's in the best interests of the child as they won't be able to cope with two placements. this may be fair enough but surely discriminates against working parents who aren't around all day to pick up their child after two and a half hours! anyway i digress.) waited and waited then amazingly got a call last friday to ask if we wanted a place as a couple of kids hadn't shown. so there is my son - now in big school, (and little nursery in the afternoons but shhh we won't mention that as we are not claiming funding!) and as happy as can be. so thanks mumsnetters - another dilemma has be resolved!