How does your private nursery work the 30 hours funding?

[Boobahs]

Just that really.

My 2 year old currently does 7.30am-1.30pm three mornings a week at a private day nursery. We will be eligible for 30 funded hours in Sept and I'm wondering how they will work it out. I have emailed to ask, but am still awaiting a reply. They don't offer term time only contracts, even though I only need the hours over term time as I work in a school myself.

I have heard that some nurseries only class "core hours" as the funded ones and then you have to top up for over lunchtime, etc... so I'm just curious how others work theirs out.

Mine either take 30 off the bill each funded week or they spread it over the whole year.
They don’t have a concept or core hours.
Also they don’t charge for any extras. We’re really lucky in that respect

We pay £4.50 top-up fees for a full funded day to cover food I think. Or possibly just for the later pick-up time and earlier drop-off. Not sure!

I've spread my sons 30 hours out over the year.
So works out about 21/22 hours a week.
A morning session 8-1
Afternoon session 1-6
Longer day 9-3
Full day which ranges between 7:30/8:30 start 17:00/1800 finish.

If it was just in term time then he could go everyday doing his 7:30-13:30 still.

My childcare used to use all thirty house but changed £1 an hour "consumables charge". Still saved us an absolute fortune though.

They all have different price structures, but you have to be realistic that it costs a lot more per hour per child to run a good quality nursery than the amount of funding that the government give to nurseries. They have to find a way to make the books balance somehow - if they don't find a way to charge the difference between their costs and the government income plus a little bit of profit to justify the effort, then they lose money and go bankrupt. Don't begrudge them their bill.

Best case scenario would be that the bill goes down by max £90 per week, but it depends on so many factors that it really doesn't help to know what other nurseries do.

The nursery my kids attend is open 50wks a year. We get the 30hrs term time split over the full 50wks. It works out about 22.8hrs a week.

They will only let you do full days or half days. My little girl goes 2 1/2 days. I have to pay for the extra hours to top up the 1/2 day. I also pay £3 for lunch on her full days but actually it covers breakfast, lunch and snack. Think it works out I pay about £74 a month for her time there. Usual day rate is £53 or £54.

We get 25 hours per week and 6 weeks throughput the year are unfunded.
Two of these are when the nursery is closed at xmas and new year.
So if you want your child to attend all term you need to pay for those 4 unfunded weeks at the usual day rate but they’ll spread it out over the 12 months.
The funded hours are 7:30 to 5:30. But the actual nursery hours are 7:00 am till 6pm so if you need the extra 30 minutes at the start or end of the day it’s an extra £3/4 a day.

Ours just takes the 22.5 hours (30hours stretched over the year) off our bill every month and then we pay for the other hours Dd does each week and for meals which works out at £6.50 a day. Means we’ve gone from paying around £500 a month to £50 👍 as we can still use tax free childcare as well.

My old nursery used to spread the hours across the year, but the. Parents would put their notice in and do some cunning maths and say they were owed money back because they were leaving and therefore hadn’t had their full entitlement and it got very difficult and confusing.
So here’s how my old nursery did it:

Nursery open 8-6, optional 7:30 additional start. All year round minus Christmas week.
Funded Hours could be used between 9-12 and 1-4 term time only.
These sessions would be free, no top up.
However, you had to pay for anything you wanted around it. And from 3 you could be fully flexible with this, so the slots were
7:30 - 8 £X
8-9 £X
9 - 12 free (in term time, fee in holidays)
12 - 1 £X
1- 4 free (in term time, fee in holidays)
4 - 6 £X
We only allowed term time only once you qualified for funding. So basically babies and toddlers covered the cost of the funded hours. If you came all year, your bill would vary each month, depending on how many weeks were term time and how many were holidays, so August you would pay the whole lot.

So if your son was at this nursery you could book him in term time only, pay for the first hour and a half and pay for his lunch hour. If you needed to book him in past one, you would have to book for the whole 1-4 session but if you qualify for 30 that wouldn’t be a problem anyway.

But like I say every nursery does it differently. As long as you don’t expect it to be totally free which sadly some parents still do and receive a very big shock, you’ll be fine.

I'm in Wales so not sure if ours works differently. We can only use 17.5 hours a week for childcare as the rest needs to be in a school (of which my DC attends 2.5 hours x 5 days)

The nursery my DC goes to counts a full day as 10 hours, so the two days mine goes is 2.5 hours over the free. I pay the difference which usually works out about £30 a month. It doesn't matter whether your child is there for 1 hour or 10 hours on those days, you book the full day

Still don't get the school holiday entitlement though. The nursery phones me up the week before each one and asks me which day in the school holidays I'd like to use my extra free day. I seem to get one per week of holidays (I'm guessing none in summer, we've not done that bit yet)