New local nursery not sure about

[mimmum]

Hi

I have a 10 month old baby who has been in a local daycare nursery since he was 5 months old. I am v happy with the nursery. The baby room is v small and quiet max 6 babies sometimes only 3. It is however v expensive, I think £65 per day. I'm not a high earner but don't want to give up my career as it does have potential.

I was v excited to see that a new nursery was opening up near to us, lovely setting custom built buildings and £50 a day. This would really make a difference to us financially. We went to look round the nursery and I was just a bit shocked. The 3-5 yr room was v large and airy, but the propose at full capacity to have dpaces for76 children. The baby room spaces for 26 children and cots for napping in the same room with no partitions. The other rooms to have about 40 children each. I was shocked and although I know adult to child ratios will be kept to. I can't imagine how it would work with do many children there. Other parents were looking round and I seemed to be the only one who was shocked and kept saying, "how many children did you say would be in this room?" Do you think this is important?

Personally I do think smaller is better for nursery, but I haven't done any research to see if that's actually the case.

If nothing else, a smaller setting minimises exposure to the vicious bugs that float around nurseries - I know one of my friends was advised to move her (preemie, so gets ill easily) DC to a smaller nursery by the GP for this reason.

I thought there was a cap on the number of babies allowed in one room

If the baby room has 26 spaces and the other rooms have 40, that would mean 106 spaces. Or is the 3-5 room 76 places on it's own?

Anyway, I'm a nursery nurse. Baby rooms over about 12 spaces are not very good. Toddlers rooms of more than 12-16 aren't very good. Work becomes more about processing numbers of children rather than caring for individuals. No good nursery nurses would want to work for a nursery with such high numbers meaning the staff will tend to be not very good. Probably training in house with no experience of other settings. The staff turnover is going to be high. Sickness will also be high due to low paid staff who can't afford to take days off sick so they come in when ill.

Avoid.

I think they sound very difficult numbers for there to ever be anything resembling "quiet" time which is important in a nursery.

The nursery my son goes to has 12 in the baby room which is chaotic enough when a few are crying or just screeching in play! They have a big open plan room with the 3-5s in (although they split down to 2 groups for some things) which has 40 children in over the 2 spaces which I think is just enough. Any more and it would be chaos!

The older children, usually 3-5s, cope well in big groups as they need the staff a lot less. I get the impression that most 4 year olds would rather have no staff at all in the room so they can do exactly what they want. If you provide a wide range of good quality interesting experiences that the children can access easily, pre-schoolers are happy getting on with it themselves.

I look for:
Babies - Under 2 - Max of 12. Ideally 6 or 9.
Toddlers - 2 to 3 - Max of 16. Ideally 12.
Pre-school - 3+ - Max of 40ish. Ideally 20-30ish.

Sorry I wasn't clear these are the numbers
3-5 room max capacity 76
2-3 " " 40
1-2 " " 40
Baby room 26
So a total maximum capacity of 182

They told me that the maximum capacity of a room was according to its square footage, and that the children would be in smaller groups on the same room. But they are still all in the same room a when you factor in the adults needed per the ratios that is a lot of people on the same room and, I think this would be chaotic. However as I already said noone else seemed shocked so I thought I was over reacting, that and the price difference is enormous,

I agree with Tiggy
I am a nursery nurse and no way would I even consider working in a nursery that big.
I actually think 12 is too many babies for a baby room. Unless there are 2 rooms and the babies are split into 2 groups.
I worked for a nursery recently that was registered for 9 babies but the manager would only have a maximum of 6 at a time. It was a lovely nursery, very homely and good continuity of care for the babies who thrived.
Herding babies together is not good.

Also, the maximum number of children does depend on a lot more factors than just the floorspace. Like how far the changing rooms/ toilets are away from the main room, the ages and qualifications of the staff, the layout of the building.
A nursery that just looks at floorspace above children's needs should be avoided.