Nursery additional fees - Dancing activity

[Crazylou]

the private nursery my little one attends is currently already expensive, for a months fees, we provide our own lunch as they look for extra money per day to provide a hot lunch, which I refuse to pay as we already pay enough, just recently my 2 year old has went into the big room, and has just been informed that he's been participating in dancing, fair enough I thought good he's doing dancing. They have now informed parents that this is something that needs to be paid for block sessions!!! so we owe money apparently, as its apparently a dance company that comes in to teach kids. for 1 myself and some other parents have not been informed of this prior to this, as we believe if that's the case we should have been informed before our child participated in the activity. has anyone had to pay for your child to take part in such activities ? I would thought the monthly cost would cover this sort of thing

Paying for additional activities is normal in my experience although they should have asked permission first.

Suggest you pay for the sessions he's had and request he take part in no further sessions if it is a problem.

The private nursery my 3yr old goes to has football skills as an extra activity, with a coach who comes in.

It's a few £ per week, the first (trial) session is free. We were asked to sign a consent form for DC to do football, part of the form was us agreeing to pay the £ per week.

They do the football during normal session times, but they split the children into groups - so half do football from 9:30-10:30, and half do football from 10:30-11:30. I guess kids who's parents haven't given consent will just have to stay with whichever group isn't doing the football at that time.

I wouldn't expect the monthly cost to cover this, but I would 100% expect it to be an optional activity that you sign up to if you are willing to pay.
Unless you are only using the free funding I would expect food to be provided though as part of the standard cost. I guess every nursery deals with food/nappies differently. It should be transparent though

Paying for additional activities is not unusual (and will probably be more common when the 30 hour underfunding comes in) but they should tell you about it before the activity happens, there is no way you should be expected to pay afterwards when you didn't know about the charge before.

Well we must be lucky then, we've not had to pay for any extras (or food!). My son's nursery have people in twice a week doing dance/music/drama and they've also taken him swimming a few times and into the city centre for Chinese New Year!

Surprised about paying for meals too!

I agree it's not unusual to have to pay extra for activities but this was one of the things I looked into as part of picking our DDs nursery. Whilst their headline price looked a lot more expensive in comparison to other well regarded nurseries in the area, their price was all inclusive. Swimming, forest school, Zumba/dancing, all meals and snacks, milk and nappies were all included in the monthly fee. Other nurseries, you had a mix and match and top up approach which I just had zero time for and probably worked out lot more expensive. We may have been lucky as we had a choice though.

Some Nurseries do this, but they have to make provision for those dc whose parents don't want to, or can't afford to pay for extras on top of the already expensive fees.
They can't charge you for something you didn't agree to pay for.
IMVHO, Nursery staff should be able to provide all the dc need during the day, and they shouldn't be putting you in that position, but I know it does happen.

How much are you paying for basic package?

Our private nursery has just asked for £30 per month for football and £20 per month for music . Both on a Tuesday, as my do works shifts, dc doesn't even attend each Tuesday and only half days in any case, sometimes morning sometimes afternoon. So we'll need to pay for sessions he won't even get to participate in. We just can't afford £50 extra per month and it wasn't explained when we joined the nursery.

My other ds previous nursery Jo Jingles, Enjoyaball, baby ballet were all included as part of the monthly fee.

Meals are extra too (80p breakfast and £3 for lunch) but there is option to send your own food.

We're in Scotland (but not big city) fees are £50 per day.

I think it depends on the cost of the day at the setting. And also, to some extent if they're 3 or not.

Some nurseries charge for meals for preschool children because whilst they used to be inclusive in the price, the funding that they get from the government isn't as high and they can't afford the hit.

The dance class though - I'd've expected it to be optional and that would really annoy me.

Waggamamma £50 per day plus £50 per month sounds really harsh!
I'm in the south east where things are generally more expensive and mine is £60 per day but all inclusive.

I'm glad someone agrees, and interesting to see other nurseries are doing similar.

I feel guilty that my ds will be left out of football and music but we can't justify £50 per month when he'll likely only do 3 sessions a month. He's 2.5yrs and private nurseries here don't accept the council funding anyway.

Because we work shifts our overall bill is only £200-£250per month so an extra £50 on that seems extortionate!

When I was in the brownies we used to get charged for the materials for craft activities on top of our monthly fees. The fees were paid by check but the craft activities they wanted cash. It would be a fiver for some beads or something, definitely much more than cost. My mum questioned it once and the woman said they were fundraising to send her granddaughter travelling but thisnwas the first we'd heard of it

Soon changed to scouts and that was much better

Id not put up with it if it's non-optional.

we pay just under £800 a month, no funding, we pay it all ourselves, we stay in Scotland. regarding the lunches - additional money required per day if we want them to provide lunch, if not we need to provide our own, (within the monthly cost nappies/wipes, cows milk, am snack and pm snack are provided) my son couldn't have cows milk for a while and I had to provide my own soya milk as the nursery said it wasn't feasible for them to provide, regarding dancing - they confirmed its an optional activity but the thing that I don't agree with is they hadn't officially informed anyone regarding having to pay for this before letting the kids participate in the activity, its a lack of communication from them.

Is that for 5 days a week?

Joff that's terrible! Certainly not how Brownies should be done! Sorry you had crappy leaders and I'm glad you found Scouts better run. My Brownies and Guides don't pay anything extra for anything we do on their normal meeting night, including things like meals out, swimming, trampolining. We just balance the expensive weeks with free or cheap weeks like going to the park to build dens or playing board games in the hall. Certainly we wouldn't charge extra for craft materials! That's what regular subs are for. Any fundraising we do is explicit and optional (e.g. Fill a tube of smarties with coins of any value for x charity, sponsored thing for y charity that the girls chose).

OP certainly any extra cost activities should be optional and you should be told the cost before they happen

Just pay for the lessons he has had and tell the nursery you don't want him to have any more lessons
Its as easy as that