Top up fees, has anyone challenged them??

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Just wondering what the best course of action is and if anyone here has navigated this situation before.

I'd like to send my 3 year old to preschool in September. The local one is connected to the school he will likely be attending and it all seems very nice.

This year however, they have decided to charge top up fees. The morning session is 3 hours and you have to pay £25 including lunch. You have to send your child for a minimum of three sessions, so it will be costing us £75 a week for 9 hours.

I have asked if I can send a packed lunch or take him home before the lunch period to reduce the charge. They say I cannot.

Obviously this isn't allowed according to their funding agreement with the local council, but they are doing it anyway.

I feel it's a really steep amount to access 3 hours of "free" education/care for my child.

I suppose I can go to the council and ask them to investigate this. I worry about the school taking the hump and withdrawing a place for my child, and then I have to find another placement or keep him home.

Is there realistically anything we can do as parents to challenge this amount? Does anyone have any experience with other settings that may be of help? Thanks in advance.

OMG!!! Not Cambridge!!!! That's it, i've changed my whole opinion on the matter. "Cos" Cambridge, and all. 🤣

I’d look elsewhere too. I wonder if they prefer / find it more profitable to have children in all day. By charging a flat day rate of £25 then more likely to put off part timers?

The extra fee is not just for lunch. The funding they get doesn't cover their expenses, and they can't officially charge additional fees, so they need to pretend it's for lunch.
What do you want to achieve by writing to the council? Do you want the nursery to close, or stop accepting the "free" hours?
If you wrote someone, I hope it was to your PM to demand better, more transparent funding for nurseries.

Where are you based. Mine goes 9-3 to preschool attached to school. We pay 3.20 for lunch and that’s it.
what you are paying is diabolical.

Our nursery never charged any top up fees - provided both lunch and nappies.
additional hours above the 30 was charged at £7. Now at pre school and just get charged 3.20 for lunch.
£25 for a morning is a heck of lot.

What makes you so certain they’re not profiteering through the faux-lunch fees? If funded hours were genuinely forcing them into losses, wouldn’t they just open up their books to shame the government and the skeptical parents? Do you think it’s a coincidence that they’re not doing that?

Years ago my child went to a non-profit preschool that politely asked for top up fees even though it’s against the rules. Later on when I ended up helping them with their finances I discovered there were holding 3x the recommended financial reserves and they didn’t need these top up fees at all to break even. The manager had zero financial acumen and it was highly shocking.

It depends whether you are up for the fight in terms of challenging them. Maybe you could look them up on companies house or the charity commission, depending on what type of company they are and have a look at their finances.

I am now highly sceptical of charity requests and school funding requests. It’s not like we don’t pay enough in tax.

I would add that my current bug bear is having to pay £90 a term for school swimming lessons. It’s the same sort of thing. It is supposed to be part of the national curriculum and schools are only allowed to ask for voluntary contributions towards transport. Currently I am being told unless they receive a certain number of payments towards the lessons and transport that the children aren’t going. Highly dubious ! I’m pretty sure there are things in the school budget less important than teaching a lifesaving skill. It wouldn’t surprise me if in 10 years time you have to pay for state education at the point of use in addition to your taxes. It’s a very worrying trend.

Paying for transport for swimming has been a thing for years - certainly when I taught it 10 years ago it was, and I’m fairly sure when I went to school in the 90s we had to pay for the coach.

i promise you schools are not trying to rip parents off. The vast majority of their budget goes on fixed costs like staff salaries, there isn’t much wiggle room. They do not have thousands of pounds in the bank for coaches to swimming. That said, £90 a term is quite high - is that for 1 child? About £9 a week? Is it a very small school with low numbers, or a long way from the nearest pool? I mean I’m sure the school have done their best to get the best price for parents but it does seem on the high side.

Yes they can - and many will. The ‘free’ hours rate is way below what it costs the private business to provide inclusive high quality childcare. Childcare has been hugely politicised. Food for thought - if the free hours were withdrawn by government as an unsustainable benefit there would be anarchy, if however, nurseries were forced to withdraw free hours from their setting as the rates offered meant the provision was unsustainable and top
up fees were not allowed - buck neatly passed! (Nursery owner)

It’s not free childcare and was never intended to be, it’s funded childcare which means the government only pay towards it but it’s not enough. We are currently struggling as the government subsidy is far short of what it costs us to run the setting. Wages, rent, insurance, statutory training and the regular updates are expensive, equipment needs replacing as it gets old and worn out, we’re expected to pay for all of that out of the ridiculously low funding rate from the government. Our rent and bills have increased, cost of resources has increased, the minimum wage has increased, but the funding rate has barely moved. I’m the deputy manager, I’ve dropped 1.5 days, our manager has dropped one day and the other staff have dropped half a day each, so we’ve all lost wages that we can’t realistically afford to do but it’s that or we will close altogether, unfortunately many parents don’t see that as a problem as long as it doesn’t affect their own finances !! We are in a fairly affluent area but we’ve had complaints from some when we’ve had fundraising events to help buy new equipment, pay for Christmas parties/presents etc., for the children. I’m know I’m very late to this thread but I think people need to be aware of the reality of the situation.

The government contribution is insufficient for the nurseries to run. They either charge a top up, close down or don’t offer funded places.

I do the funding at a nursery and we charge for food, consumables like wipes and sun screen etc and activities / external teachers

have had one family say no they don’t want to pay - we’ve had to accept that as it’s the rules - but their child is now going to be excluded from the meals and have ti eat their own packed lunch - we’ve never had this before so I to sure how it’s going to work - we probably will just let him eat the food if he wants because we’re not horrible and don’t really want to exclude anyone.

also with the external teachers is he going to have to sit out and miss out? Which seems mean 😪

the funding should just cover the fees not leave a short fall

This is an old thread and in this case the “nursery” is a pre school attached to a school therefore they likely have an intake of 20 plus kids therefore it’s taking the piss to charge a top Up - this isn’t a nursery with say 6-10 kids or a childminder with say 4 - this a large class. The funding is more than adequate….£25 per day top up! ….they are sharks taking advantage of parents pure and simple.
the funding in my area is around £5 per hour for age 3+ multiply by 20 kids that’s an hourly rate of £100 per hour ….on school grounds they likely use existing classrooms therefore no rent.
wisen up people - until parents stop challenging back nurseries will keep hiking costs!
not a single school attached pre school in my area charges a top up

Oh that’s different - my nursery is open all year so funding only paid38 weeks so we have to spread it so you only get 22 hours of funding not 30 per week and 3 meals and an external teacher every day for things like yoga, french, music, drama that are all optional extras.

This is quite poor because one of the things primary schools are actually fairly well funded for is PE. There is a PE grant that many schools use for coaches to sports events and swimming.

Because of the no top up rules as a childminder I’ve opted out of the 3 yr old funding I used to just charge an extra 25 a day but now can’t. Nurseries can only make money by having really high child to adult ratio. Obviously childminders can’t do this. Maybe your preschool wants to have smaller ratio and actually provide decent early years education.

We charge £10 a day for a fully funded 10 hour day. That compromises of 3 meals, snacks and consumables.

Most of our parents are stretched so it allows them two days fully funded aside from the meals and consumables and then three days they need to pay for (2 hours of funding are added to one of the days).