Advice on nursery hours please!

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I am currently looking for a nursery for my son who is 19 months old. At present he's with a childminder so we pay for the hours he's there. As I'm a teacher who is happy to bring work home to do once he's in bed, I pick him up at half four.

Looking at nurseries, they obviously have set session times - the ones round here have 9-3 or 8-6. In your experience, is there any flexibility on this - ie could I expect to pay for 8-4.30 or would I pay the full session fee regardless of when I pick him up? I realise that I can ask the nurseries concerned, but just wondered what the norm was. Many thanks.

My nursery runs 2 sessions, 8 - 1.15 and 1.15 - 6.30, some children are booked in just in the am or just in the pm but most children do at least a full day, meaning that the parent books both sessions, however most parents do not use the full hours an average parent will drop off at 9.00 pick up at 5 to 5.30. They would be charged the full day.

Most parents are fine with this as we would be running at a loss if we discounted them for the hours they didn't use.

Most nurseries will run similar to ours however it is worth asking around, you may be able to find a nursery that will offer adhoc hours. Or allow you to book in for a morning sessions then add on a few hours extra, we have done this on the odd occasion.

Historically I've always paid for full sessions and written off the cost of any un-used hours. Though the cost was minimal when the weekly full time discounted cost was compared to the full price flexible hourly rate.
I currently pay my childminder a set day rate fir term time even if I don't use all the hours and pay hourly for school holidays.

The nursery we used had sessions and hourly rates but the hourly rate worked out higher than the sessions so to finish at 4.30 on an hourly rate would cost you more than a whole day.

I have never heard of any flexibility with this on hours, the cost has been for for the session being available for the child.

I've heard of flexibility re term time only for a nursery that also runs a holiday club. Otherwise you pay a full day or session whether you use it or not.

I think if you want an hourly rate you'll need a childminder or a very new nursery (they tend to do more flexibility to fill places). From a nursery point of view, allowing you to pay for a place up to 4.30 means they lose out, as nobody will fill a place from 4.30-6.

Our nursery has set time sessions and am hourly rate. You can tag one hour onto either end of a session by paying for the session plus the hourly rate, but if you want to add more than an hour you have p go to the next session.

I think this is uncommonly flexible, but the nursery worker work shifts to cover the sesssions and are then asked to stay an hour late or start an hour earlier to cover the requests.

Yes our nursery has set hours either
8am- 6pm
Or
8.45 - 5.15pm without breakfast and evening meal
Or
8.45 - 1pm
Or
2pm - 5.15pm
They are all slightly different soni would check. You can collect early by you would still get charged as they have to staff the nursery assuming your child will be there for the full time

In my experience, nursery fees are simply based on a daily rate (private, independent nurseries).

At mine you can do a session plus the number if extra hours you want. You can then state how many weeks per year you want it for too. So you can do 7.30-12.30 then 12.30-3.30 as extra hours....
Hope that helps! Just ask your local nursery, they may be able to help.

Thank you everyone - I thought that would be the case and it's absolutely fine. I am really chuffed as the one I've fallen in love with have said they'll do a term-time only contract, which is fantastic.