Pre school charging for lunchtime supervision?

[Moll172]

DD is currently at a private nursery, due to start a state run preschool, attached to a primary school, in sept.
After her first settling in session today within the welcome pack it states for the children eligible for the 30 free hours, which she is, this does not cover lunchtime and so there is a charge of £3.50 per day to cover her lunchtime supervision (not including her lunch)
The school hours are 8.50-3.15 (although DD will need to attend before and after school club)

I’m just a bit baffled. Myself, nor anyone I’ve spoke to have heard of anything like this before?
Anyone I know with a child in a school run preschool are not obliged to pay anything.

Just a way to claw back money from insufficient government/ local authority funding. An unreasonable charge but a reasonable concept.

So is it because she's there for more than 30 hours a week?
I think it's normal, I have a friend whose son went to a Pre school and paid for his lunch and supervision as it worked out to be 34 hours per week

It's pretty standard procedure. The government funding is much lower than nurseries usually charge, they aren't allowed to charge a top up but they can charge for extras such as lunch time supervision.

Yup. I suppose theoretically you could collect him at 11.45am and drop him back at 12.30 but that’s not compatible with reality for most people. Shitty, shitty system.

In south east london and the two closest school nurseries which offer full days also charge for lunchtime supervision. A third doesn’t charge but you have to collect after the morning session, feed the child lunch, then return them for the afternoon session.
As pp have said, it’s the governments fault. Big report out this week into deliberate chronic undergunding

*underfunding

When my DC attended school nursery children who were there all day had to be picked up 20 minutes early meaning they couldn't use the after school club. It's great they are offering an extra session tbh.

Pretty normal as far as I'm aware around here. We had the same and paid termly for the cover.

I was happy to have the 30 hours a week, that cover cost was a drop in the ocean in comparison to paying full time childcare.

The school nurseries I've had experience of generally offer sessions something like 8.30-11.30 and 12.30-3.30. If you want to do full days you have to pay for the hour in between.

So you will be paying £17.50 for 32hours and 5 mins of care and education at Nursery a week ?

I think there are a lot of families that would see that as excellent vfm

Surely that's right anyway as the school hours you've quoted are more than the funded 6 hours per day anyway. So you pay the £3.50 for the extra 35 mins and then buy her lunch. Makes sense to me. Plus it's a seriously underfunded scheme so the hourly rate the school will get from the council won't cover the amount they need for the hours so they defo need to charge for any hours over that

I don't think it is bad but you say that doesn't include lunch. How much is lunch or can children take their own?

DS2 is now 14yrs. His hours were funded as a morning or afternoon session but if l wanted him to stay for lunch, l had to pay as it was over the included hours

Agree with above. My DC now much older but when working full-time, I couldn't use local authority pre-schools or playgroups as they all ran two sessions. Each child was allocated either morning or afternoon sessions. If the setting had space, your child could do a double session, but you had to pick the child up for the hour in between (staff used this time for their lunchbreak and to set up next session). So if working right through, your pre-school has to pay more staffing costs to cover caring/supervision of children over the lunch hour.

Oh ok seems it’s the norm then, thanks everyone.
Was just a shock I was hoping to start saving a fortune switching from nursery to pre school but no, with lunch time charge, before and after school club and meals I’m still looking at over £300 a month
Oh the joys!

Yep normal.
I work in a school attached my nursery and the kids do 35 hours with the lunch hour the parents pay. We have to employ lunch cover.

Normal.

Do you use tax free childcare?

Really it’s because the reality of the govt funded hours is more like ‘we are going to pay the absolute minimum we can per hour and sell it as 30 hours paid childcare for each family’. The hours provided are at a stupidly low rate, and termtime only. Settings have to find creative ways to pass extra fees onto parents to balance their books, and parents who need year round childcare still have fairly hefty nursery bills.

Also completely normal here.

Normal here, our daily charge is £5 plus cost of lunch itself.

Mine goes to a private nursery 8.30 to 4 Tuesday to Friday for his 30 hours. We pay £9.50ish a day for lunch, snack & tea. His funding is term time only and we pay in full, £53 a day, in the holidays. The school pre-school do sessions with a break for lunch where both the time & food has to be paid for so and I'd still need holiday care. The private nursery worked out only slightly more expensive over a year because I'm not paying a holiday club rate for holidays but they can offer extra sessions or longer days with little notice, if needed to cover after school events for my older ones so the flexibility is definitely worth the extra amount.

It is rubbish you weren’t warned, though. I looked into switching my youngest and each nursery flagged the costs to me at the point of enquiry.

I worked out it would still be cheaper than private nursery, mind; but it is a lot if you weren’t expecting it.

So you will be paying £17.50 for 32hours and 5 mins of care and education at Nursery a week ?

I think there are a lot of families that would see that as excellent vfm

I’m in this position (worse/better, actually, since we’re not eligible for the 30h at all) and that’s fine, I’ll be paying c£350 a month for a great preschool - but it seems obvious to me that the current setup excludes families who don’t have a spare £17.50 a week.

@EssentialHummus Families are all entitled to 15 hours pre school care and this is usually a half day session for 5 days per week.

The 30 hours is for working parents. If you work, odds are you've had to pay for childcare while they're 0-3. Therefore £17.50 is a huge reduction.

I’m sure it covers most people name, but I can imagine some (working) families still falling through the cracks, especially as it’s publicised as “free childcare from three”. Or those who’ve been at home with little ones but now want to seek entry-level work. (I run a food bank and we do sadly have people we support who are in work, but still don’t have enough for their weekly shop.)