15 hours 'free' confusion

[NigellaFlawsome]

I have been reading up about the 15 hours free education our children are entitled to after they turn 3. I understand there are often rules as to which hours in the day won't count or how many 'free' hours per day a child can use. I guess it often varies depending on the nursery and doesn't always actually work out as a true 15 hours free per child in term time.

My child currently attend nursery for 18.75 hours per week over 3 days (0800 - 1415). For this I pay £4.60 per hour / £28.75 per day / £86.25 per week.

I emailed the nursery manager to clarify what the charge will be when DD is eligible for EYE funding - the reply was £21.75 per day using 'stretched funding', so for 50 weeks of the year rather than term time only.

I knew it wouldn't be as straightforward as having 15 hours per week knocked off the bill for 38 weeks of the year, but this seems to be a much smaller reduction in cost than I was expecting.

Does this sound right or are they charging me a top up? I have asked them to clarify the hours that £21.75 per day will cover and which hours are 'free'.

It looks to me as if they have just discounted your fees by the amount they are being given by your LEA, which they are not allowed to do. They have to give you the hours free; its most likely they will offer them as 3 hours a day, so you should essentially be getting a discount of 4.69hours38 weeks spread over 50 weeks. Instead they have given you around 3938.

Dd was at private nursery 3 days a week for 6 hours a day and we decided to keep her there. They just charged us for the extra 12 hours per month. From what I read on here we were very lucky with this arrangement.

8-2.15 are very weird hours
Is that the actual session time or just what you use

The 15 free hours is always made out better than it is. It works out at 11.4 hours for a 50 week year. Yes it's a saving but it barely touches the sides if your paying for 50 hours.
Its worth knowing the free funding dosent always cover the hourly rate to the nursery.
I would ask for a clear breakdown to see how they arrive the cost. you might find the hourly rate on your remaining hours after the 11.4 hours have been removed have significantly increased.

& yes they can do that.

My dd had been entitled to the under 3 funding, although is 3 in a few weeks anyway, but we take 15hrs completely free for 38 wks. Our nursery is wonderful though and will give us extra days if we are poorly so miss a day.

Our nursery does that same and discounts throughout the year to keep a set fee per month. It's still a decent saving.

The alternative is for expensive attendance school holidays where you get no funding. And possibly aren't using the nursery at the same time!!

Every time the governemnt shouts about the brilliant 15 FREE hours. They need to be corrected, by parents & nursery providers who can't afford to just knock the hours off the bill.

I guess 570 Free hours dosent look so good.
Especially if you work on the calculation that a full days childcare of 10 hours would equate to 500 hours a year.

Nurseries are such money grabbers. I'm a CM and give the 15 hours as 2 full days of 7.5 hours.If you want extra hours I charge a fiver extra to take it from 8 - 5:30 rather than 8 - 3:30

Most of my parents just use the 2 funded days and pay £1.50 a day lunch

Money grabbers or running a business
They are not going to do it for no profits are they?
I manage a nursery and the fees have to pay the wages and the upkeep and maintenance of the building, the food, the toys, the food ,cleaning supplies, utilities, of five supplies, the hrcdepartment, the admin, the training department, subscriptions to associations ad insurances, the cleaning and the rubbish removal and the maintenance of the fire alarms and sprinklers.then there's advertising and marketing and staff uniforms and covering staff holidays andvsickness We even have to pay to have the 'lady bin' taken away
Anything left is profit, of course :)

Our 2 DCs get 15 hours free per week at a nursery aligned to a nearby school. Mon-fri 9-12.
If your children go to a full time nursery then you will see a lot loss benefit. The 15hrs is only term time and doesn't include the cost of lunch, trips etc.

The nursery manager has been less than helpful in clarifying!

After several emails claiming "the daily rate includes the free hours, there is no breakdown", they eventually confirmed that my 'free' hours are 0900 - 1200. Using stretched finding I get 9 'free' hours per week.

This is pretty much what I expected, but my weekly bill isn't being reduced by 9 * my hourly rate. They are either only reducing my bill by the amount of actual funding per hour they would receive, or are massively increasing my hourly rate for the hours I would pay for. They won't confirm which, just keep repeating "that's the cost, there is no breakdown".

My daughter won't actually be eligible for the funding until next year. I go on maternity leave soon so have given notice to this nursery and will enrol her in another when I return to work next year.

And I absolutely agree that nurseries are a business and cannot be expected to run at a loss, but they are not forced to offer the 15 hours. If they can't afford to offer it then they shouldn't participate.

In this case I can't help but wonder if the lack of transparency is in part due to them claiming more hours funding than they are offering parents.

My DD attends a nursery 2 full days a week. We get 15 hours funded so one day of 10 hours is free and one half day session is free. I then pay for a half day session and meals.
To be honest I don't drop her off at 8 so nursery look like they're winning but I could drop her off at 8 so they're still paying the staff.
when I got funding through the child minder she gave me 3 free hours a day and I paid for the remaining contracted hours.

Costing very clear in both cases and I was confident I was getting 15 hours free as well.

Makes a bit of help on 50 hours childcare a week but still a drop in the ocean.

You could always send an email to the council stating that the nursery has failed to provide you with a clear breakdown of the costs.