Nursery fees

[Smurf2019]

Good afternoon lovely people,

Looking for a bit of advice please

Our little boy has attended nursery for the past 2 and half years, However in recent months we have been having a few problems, our little man started to get the entitlement to the 30 hours free childcare in September and since then we have been charged a "premium" package fee for his attendance and being charged £1.80 per hour that he attends for 22 hours as his hours are split over 51 weeks of the year.

This premium package fee according the nursery is to cover all snacks, lunches and extra curricular activities.

My question is I believe this charge is meant to be voluntary and if we would like to supply our little one with lunch etc then we should be entitled to do that? However nursery state that no food or drink shall be brought in from home.

We already pay the nursery for the 8 hours he doesn't get funding which comes in at £224.70 per month.

this premium package for the food and drink etc comes in at £171.60 per month.

This makes our total invoice for the month with the 30 hours free childcare at £396.30.

Is this reasonable ? - I don't mind paying for food for him to attend as it does make our lives easier but paying nearly £40 a week for just snacks and lunches seems a stupidly high amount.

(I know nurseries are struggling but so are we and finding this amount every month is just really hard).

Where does she live? This sounds like an amazing nursery

£20 a day to look after your child is an excellent price - you must be delighted.

Struggling to understand why you think Breakfast costs less than £3 tho.. maybe I could give you an idea

Firstly you need to pay for the food, which I think you accept. Then, personally, I would want another person to cook and serve it rather than my child do it themselves. So I suppose we need to pay them rather than find a volunteer. Id also rather the bread be toasted, so I suppose they need a toaster and need to pay for electricity to do that. For any butter/jam etc put on his toast I’d prefer it was refridgerated before hand so I suppose there is a cost there. And I’d quite like him to have hot food for lunch, so an oven is required.

Id quite like them to use cutlery and plates rather than hands, so they’ll need those. And I’d like the cutlery and plates to be clean each time they’re used so I suppose a person/dishwasher is needed for that along hot water and soap.

£20 a day makes perfect sense. They charge what they need to keep the place open.

Some nurseries take the proper mickey, i moved from one nursery, (loved it there but we moved to a new area 45 mins away) to a new nursery and the bill for my funded child went from £500 to £890.
ultimately its their business and they can run it how they want, but you can vote with your feet, which is what I did and found a nursery thats not run by someone who takes the mick.

@nozoc oh wow, that’s a great price you must be over the moon 😃 stop making the ones with younger kids jealous!

I am paying a total of £750 for my preschool kid to go AFTER the 30 hours has been allocated. The £20 is for food! The nursery don’t loose out on the 30 hours I am not paying as the government pay that.

I also have a 10 month old whom I am paying full whack for.

keep you sarcastic comments to yourself and don’t be so ignorant

Oh no one cares.

Everyone who works in childcare are purely in it for the money. We get paid so well and the government subsidise it perfectly well but we know we can charge more and we are greedy so we do!

Food and rates and energy are heavily discounted for nurseries and childminders, our expenses are literally pennies. The rest is all pure profit and we love it! Hours are short and the job is easy so it makes a great career choice.

Why don't you work in childcare too and you can also enjoy this hefty wage with us?

The government then would get away with paying even less.

For example the EMA is still being paid to teens in Wales, Scotland and NI. It is having it's first increase in 20 years in Wales....

@nozoc my nursery charge £3.30 for dinner , snack and breakfast is free with no subsidies or extra cash to pay. Your nursery is being greedy because they can as nursery places are limited. I know 3 other people who use different nurseries to me and only one of them has to pay £15 per term for extras. No one else has extras to pay just if they require more hours than allocated or lunch. If these nurseries make it work with out parents paying on top of free hours why can’t others?

@Magentaa different areas receive different amounts from the government (and even less once the LA has taken their percent). It can be under £4 an hour.

And everyone has told you it's not just for food but government rules mean it has to be phrased in certain ways.....you don't like it, you don't want to pay it so change settings.

Are you privy to the individual costs of that specific nursery? Do you know what the business rates our in the ops location? How much rent must be paid? The number of staff needed? Obviously you don't pay extra because you opt out of lunch....often used as the way of recovering costs ...you're essentially opting out of voluntary contribution so others pay more.

You moved area rates and rents will be different. Hopefully the cheaper nursery will not collapse before you leave it.

It's a marketing gimmick to get them in and they stay ....the whole school finances pay for it.

We pay £3 for breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack. So that does seem a lot but maybe they are struggling on the funded hours.

I don't pay any additional costs on top of that just the extra hours/day we need. However the price has gone up twice in the last year it's about 20% higher than this time last year.

@jannier my son has lunch so I pay for it. They use a caterer for dinners and all the cost go to the caterer. We have also had a few increases in price but not huge. And as I have said before if they wanted extra I wouldn’t hesitate as they have been so good with us. I don’t get how others are justifying £20 per day tho!! After thinking about it, i find it quite discriminatory actually. it was set up as free hours to give underprivileged children a chance because the children deserve it regardless of their background and by charging ‘extras’ I can’t help but feel it will be those children the ones that need it the most who will end up missing out. Just my opinion I think that’s why the extras should be voluntary and not mandatory

It was not set up for underprivileged children all 3 year olds are entitled to 15 hours only the middle income families get 30. If you're in an area where the LA pays providers £3.80 with normal breakeven fees of £8 and rates, rent etc are high you need to recoup more money than an area where the LA pays £5.45 with normal break even fees of £6 it's not rocket science.

@nozoc you simply do not know what you’re talking about.

£20 a day for food is completely reasonable. That £20 goes towards the food, the staff member who prepares the food, the toaster, the oven, the fridge, the electricity and gas which heats/cools the food. The cutlery and crockery. The gas and water which cleans the cutlery and crockery. And washing up liquid.

Please do not insult us by telling us you’re over paying.

The 30 hours a month is for childCARE and NOT the above - you seem to know everything so I’m surprised you think the gas that warms the oven is childcare. Also, didn’t you say a snack Cody’s £1.50 - what are the snacks out of interest? This actually seems very reasonable to me.

it’s also worth teaching you to suck eggs and remind you that nurseries can charge what the hell they want for food anyway, to make up for the deficit caused - they do not need to be transparent when it comes to food.

Please do not insult your child or the nursery by saying that the nursery does not lose out because the government pay them - you know that is utter bull. Stop insulting your nursery and child. Your nursery will get about £4.80 an hour to look after your child. If you’re unhappy to contribute to your child’s care, can you explain to us readers why you’re happy for your child to be looked after for that little? You’re happy for them to be looked after by insured and trained staff, be looked after in a clean environment, be fed 3 meals and 2 lots of snacks a day, be provided with clean toys, be provided with arts and crafts. Does your nursery have an app to keep you updated? Do you pay for that seperately? If not you’re happy for that to come out of £4.80 an hour too? Your poor child should not expect to be looked after for £4.80.

Get a strong grip, for heavens sake

My granddaughter goes to a nursery at an independent school. She goes term time only, has if necessary breakfast, snacks and lunch. She gets two languages, art, drama and music, all taught by qualified staff. Also a morning at an outdoor site, all children transported by coach and a picnic lunch if warm or hot lunch if it is colder weather. For her last term she will also have swimming. Because of the free 30 hours it costs absolutely nothing.

She is not full days, her hours are 8-8.45 and we know how lucky we are.

Sorry should say 8- 1.45.

And in Scotland.

Couldn’t have put it better …. Until we are allowed to stop calling it free by our LEA ,s parents will have no transparency to costs . Dog walkers get more

It's about comparable - breakfast is £3 plus the cost of the hour at £7.50 and lunch is £3.50 plus the cost of the lunch hour £7.50

Our area is £4.30. Ratios for childminders are 1:3. £12.90 minus NI, tax, pension barely makes minimum wage - then account for food, overheads, resources...

@Nearlyamumoftwo I was agreeing with you, I'm not sure that tone reads right 🙈

State school funding isn’t used to run the preschool, it’s cheaper because they are not for profit.
and a school lunch costs less than £3, from a private company, it’s silly to suggest that a nursery spends £20 on food for a toddler- they really don’t!