How much does it cost, REALLY? Nursery over 3years of age

[Zizikester]

I know it’s a topic of money, so please only share numbers if you’re comfortable.
I pay £1.7k a month for nursery RN in London.
DD is 2,5 so she will enter that 30 free hour (or whatever that is) situation and she’ll inly go term time.
NOBODY can tell me how much will I need to pay starting next term 😂
Can I see some numbers please? How much do you pay for your 3-4 year old term only DC?
Thanks! (a very confused foreign mum)

You need to know how much they charge for extras and what hours can be used for the 30 free hours. Some don't allow early drop off etc.

You need to ask your current nursery how they apply the 30 funded hours

Its nursery specific. They need to give you the fee sheet, and remember funded hours only kick in the term after the turn 3, not instantly

It totally depends. We spread our 30 hours over the whole year so it’s not 30 hours a week. 30 hours a week is term time only. We then have to pay an extra £10 per day for food and outings

As the others said check with the nursery - but for me we changed from £1150pcm to £476pcm

We pay around 5 pound a day for food but could send a packed lunch instead if we wished. Our nursery allows us to use the 30 hours as we wish so 3 full days 8-6.

@HAF1119 wow, big difference! I know people complain about having to pay extras, but I think if they're paying what you were and then get that drop, it's pretty good!

I'm currently pregnant and looking for nurseries for May 2024 (thanks, Greater London waiting lists...) Our current favourite gave us a fantastic breakdown sheet of their fees - what you pay if you get the 15 free hours at 2 / 30 or 15 free hours at 3 / if you get a sibling discount. It also priced everything monthly, which is great as their basic fees are quoted daily. You need to speak to your nursery as they can charge for 'extras'

DS2 is in term time only and does 30 hours over three days. We pay nothing now, was paying £722.50 a month

As other have said it’s nursery specific.
For example some nurseries give the hours 9-12 and 1-4. Then you pay a ‘top up hour’ between 12 and 1, for which they can charge a higher rate than they normally would, plus charge for lunch on top.
But also if you need to put her in to allow for a full working day you’re looking at 8:30 until 5:30, or maybe 8 until 6 to allow for a commute, then you’d be paying 4 top up hours plus lunch.

Its confusing because what the nursery gets from the government doesn’t cover their costs so they have to try to increase income where they can.

If you can screenshot their costs (should be on their website) and tell us what hours your DD will be in we can probably work it out.

We pay £65 a month now, before it was over a grand! We only take 30 hours a week, so nursery is effectively free. The money we pay is for snacks and lunches. At the beginning of a term it’s £120 which includes activities like dancing, football and cooking for the term.
We have to pay ourselves if she goes outside of term time - e.g for holiday club

It depends on how much your child goes, also how much you earn. If your household earns over a certain amount you only get 15 free hours. We were JUST under the threshold so got all 30.

My own 3 year old went to a 9-3, TTO preschool and paid nothing on top.

As a childminder, I only offer funding between 9-3 TTO, so if someone does 30 hours as 3x10 hour days all year round they only get 18 hours funded, 38 weeks of the year.

Free hours at mine are 9-3 term time so I pay for an hour a day in term time and all the hours during the holidays.

About £4000 per term (so 12k per year) for the nursery class of a private school, including the free 15 hours discount (not eligible for 30).

Yes we fell foul of that one with out Sept born, his free hours didn't kick in till January.

We're lucky that our term time only nursery doesn't charge any extras, but it does do a lot of fundraising and is a registered charity. Our last nursery was thd same in that it didn't charge any extra, but he went all year round so we topped it up for him to go 3 full days. Its very dependent on area. We're in Scotland btw, so have different rules on free school meals.

Our 30 hours are spread across the year.
Our son is in nursery 3 days a week.
A full nursery day is from 7.30am - 6.30pm.
Currently we pay £480 a month for that, after the tax free element.

Our fees will sadly increase by 9% in April. This is also when my youngest will start nursery following my maternity leave. Both will then be on 4 days a week.It will be an expensive time for us having both in nursery!

It's been fantastic, and it came in one month before our mortgage renewal and energy bills went up. (Plus the other general COL stuff) We had been looking forward to having money we hadn't had before, unfortunately that didn't happen, but if we hadn't got the 30 at that exact time we would have been in a massively dire situation and unlikely to have been able to keep our house. So it really is excellent :)

So I’m in the East of England.
I provide packed lunch, all nappies/wipes etc, and pay the £2 a month snack contribution.
I use 9 hours on top of my 30 funded hours, which works out at an extra £194 a month. Which I don’t think is obscene compared to other areas of the country!

If she's 2.5 now does that mean she turns 3 after April? You won't get funded hours til September in that case.

It will almost certainly drop. Maybe by not as much as you hope for. Talk to nursery.

More than you think sadly. We get 15 free hours and not 30. My last bill for 4 days per week (19 sessions) was £1200. But if we’d been eligible we’d have been able to get a max of 24 hours for 4 days anyway and the difference doesn’t seem that big. You don’t get the subsidy during school holidays so august always a big month. Without the subsidy it would have been around £1600 so still a fair saving but not free hours by any means.