Is the nursery being a bit cheeky doing this?

[30freehoursquestions]

My DD 3 attends a nursery term time only for her 30 funded hours a week. We do pay a top up on this, like most.

The nursery is not attached to a school but do a pick up/drop off service from breakfast and after school club with the local infants school.

This school are having a teacher training day the Friday before half term and the nursery have therefore emailed to say they will not be open to term time only children on that day unless they book holiday club, and pay the full day's fee, of course.

Is this not a little bit cheeky as the teacher training day is not universal to all schools and presumably the nursery is still getting my DDs funding for that day?

TIA

Not necessarily. Nurseries are paid 38 weeks funding and that's the same amount of weeks schools are open, so they will need to balance that out somewhere.

You'd have to work it out over the school year to see if you're being short changed.

If they've just told you now though then that is very poor as it's such short notice for you to arrange something else.

Technically it's calculate over the financial year April- April. Most years this will be the same thing but occasionally it's different.

Most LAs set the amount of term weeks but leave settings to choose the actual dates.

Yes, so she'd need to look at it over the year to see if she's getting less than her 38 weeks. It's impossible to tell from one day.

So if your daughter goes to nursery every Friday as standard you’ll have to pay for the day on that Friday just because an unattached school is having an independent teacher training day? A day that’s unrelated to the nursery?

I think that’s quite a stretch on their behalf. It’s not a universal day off for all schools. Obviously if children that are normally in school and need to be facilitated in the nursery will have to be paid for. Non school going children that are there on a normal Friday shouldn’t be effected.

Perhaps that day is not funded as its local authority set inset? It’s 38 weeks funding so you would have to work out how many funded days the nursery is open in 'term time” and whether this day is in addition to that. It could well be, we take our 5 inset days throughout the year so as not to complicate the funded days for parents 🤷🏻

No this will be correct. You pay for five extra days or take an extra week off. The funding is a week short.

Thanks all for the insight, sounds as if they're fully entitled to do this and I'll be prewarned for future school inset days!