Confused about nursery fees

[BumpVee]

My daughter is due to start nursery in January as she has just turned 2 but I am so confused by the costs. She will get 15 hours free and will be attending 1 day a week 7.30am-6pm. The nursery states that they charge a consumables fee of £11 per day on funded hours and for my child to attend 1 day a week will cost £263.50 per month.
Its worked out like this:

Monthly fees are calculated as follows:
Daily rate x number of days attended x 51 weeks (this is how many weeks the nursery is open) divided by 12 months.

The Nursery has confirmed that with the 15 hours funding applied I will still be paying £263.50 and I don’t understand how with the 15 free hours.
My mum brain just cannot comprehend this can anyone shed any light on how this works out?

The funded hours are available in term time only which is something like 39 weeks of the year, so for the other 12 weeks of the year you'll be paying full price for the day which I guess is then being pro rated down?

It's 38 weeks of the year, so 15 x 38 = 570 hours a year / 12 = 47.5 funded hours a month

Then you pay £11 a day consumables on top = surely your bill should be £46.75 a month? (11 x 51 / 12)

The only thing I can think is that you've triggered some minimum fee within the contract - as the funded hours don't actually cover the nursery's costs. By only going in one day a week, you're probably costing them money, so they may have some weird minimum monthly charge in there or something?

Someone else will be along hopefully and shine a bit more light than I can!

It's term time only unless the nursery stretches the hours.

I'd ask them for an exact breakdown of the charges. They should be telling you exactly what they are charging for.

Some nurseries only apply the funded hours between 9-3 then charge normally for the morning and evening.

It's also worth knowing that the 15 funded hours is only term time which works out to about 10 hours split over 12 months.

I wouldn't be expecting that cost for 1 day a week with funding.

After seeing the fantastical maths nurseries do to make the "funded" hours disappear, I'd just not bother including them in any calculation.

The issue is they are paid so little for them, they really don't count at all, especially for a nursery that runs 7.30am-6pm 5 days a week.

What @Koalaslippers said.

Many Nurseries only apply the funding to some of the hours (usually linked to the original EEE funding, which was for education, and trying to ensure some children didn't start school so far behind developmentally as they previously had been.)

It’s likely you’ll only use 7.5 hours a week of funding for the one day as they’ll apply it during school hours only. It’ll also be stretched year round so may end up as less. So yes that does sound correct.

The nursery will also need to charge a consumables fee to top up the shortfall - the gov funding is nowhere near close to covering costs.

In short, 15 free hours is the way the politicians spun it. In practice, it’s not 15 free hours. For me it works out as being about 8 hours free. My child is 4 days a week at nursery.

Write to your MP, let him or her know that it’s over complicated and badly designed. I wrote to my MP. The policy needs to be torn up and re-written.

Every nursery calculates fees differently. You are very lucky to find one that will offer one day a week. I wonder if you pay more for this.

7:30am to 6pm is 10.5 hrs

for many nurseries only the "core" hours 9am-3pm can be used with the free hours so you may be paying for 7:30-9am and 3pm-6:30pm.

£263.50pm is £3,162 per year for 51 days childcare of 10.5 hrs

On 39 of those days you are getting 6hrs "free" albeit with an £11 consumables fee. On the other 12 days you have to pay for the whole lot.

£3,162-(£11x39)= £2,733 to cover 301.5 hours per year that are unfunded.

That works out as £9.06 per hour of non-free childcare. That's quite expensive but not unusual depending on your area.

You might possibly be only being allowed to use 3 hours free per day in which case the £2,733 is covering 418.5 hours of unfunded childcare which is £6.53 per hour which is more normal.

There are different ways of doing the maths, the nursery will have its own policy.

You can only generally get the 15 hours actually free if you find a nursery who wil let you do it as 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, term time only. This is normally only offered by Council-run nurseries.

The nurseries simply cannot afford to give you the childcare actually free. It costs them more to provide the service than the government gives them. They would go bankrupt without this mathematical hoopla.

Are you sure the funding is added in? If the nursery charged £60 per day full price that'd still only work out to £260 a month. I'm aware lots of nurseries charge more than that but you get the idea. You need to ask for a break down of charges.

Some nurseries work it out by the amount they are paid for the hours and take that off your bill. Are you doing all year or term time only? My two year old has four half days a week, three of them term time funded one of them all year. I just pay for the one session a week and nothing extra. I realise I may be lucky but this is how nurseries should be working it out.

Even with that though your bill does not sound right to me.

Thank you so much everyone! I understand that the funded hours are stretched over the year now. I wasn’t even planning for her to be in nursery outside of term time so it still doesn’t make sense but I’ll have to talk to the nursery and get a full breakdown

Also check your nursery allows term time only

Politicians call it free hours which is very misleading. They should call it subsidised hours so that people can predict costs accurately.

Are you only then using 10 funded hours a week??

you need to ask for the full break down
but it’s probably that they only offer full year round places and are not term time only so you need to spread the hours and get a smaller monthly discount

So at my children's nursery, the 15 funded hours can only be used between 09.30-14.30. Now if I send my child in one day per week for a full day, that 5 hour chunk is funded with a £10 consumables charge, then I have to pay for morning and afternoon wraparound to make up the full day which is another £48 which means a full day even with funded hours costs £58. Let's assume that amounts to 4 days in the month and it's all during term time, that's 58 x 4 = £232 per month, so the figure you've given sounds about right. A full day unfunded is £65, so the funding only saves you £7 per day, which is £28 per month for one day per week. If you want a full day, you're basically paying for the wraparound outside the core hours which costs almost as much as a full day, that'll be what you're paying for.

As other have said I don't know any settings which would allow you to use all 15 hours in one day

Most won't even allow a child to only attend 1 day per week and won't allow you to use funded hours unless you commit to 3 or 5 days per week

For most it's 3 hours per day 5 days per week

If it’s stretched it’s only 11hrs per week funding not the full 15.

Every nursery applies the funding differently so you are probably best to speak to the manager or admin team for a full break down on what they do at the one you attend.

Some nurseries have a limit on how many free hours can be used each day and a cut off time but it sounds like you're using a long day so some of those hours will be paid for

That sounds like what the fee would be if you were paying full price?