nursery vouchers for 3 year olds when part time.

[cascade]

my friends 3 yr old dd attends nursey for 3 sessions a week, 5 hours a day. Im wondering what is the norm for subsidised sessions. at the moment she gets only 2.5 hrs a day taken off during term time. So she still has to pay for 7.5 hrs a week. Is this right, as when my dd went to nursey for 2 full days, her nursery took off the whole 12.5hrs a week during term time. I said to her what if they claim all of the 12.5 hrs, but dont give her the benefit of that. So how do nurseries work it when a child is part-time and how can you find out if they are claiming all the voucher, if this is happening.

Yes that is the norm. It varies for each nursery. Some will only take off the actual gov amount leaving you to pay the excess and some will have deals going on in which once they are over three - they don't ask for top ups to make up the rest of the session.

Each child over the age of three gets five 2.5 hours paid for by gov funds. This can be equated into whole days(2 perday) or half days (1 session per day).

I'm thinking you were lucky to get the whole 12.5 hours as your dd was only going two days and should only have been getting four sessions!!!

The peolpe who know everything about it are the 'Children's Information Service' Look it up on the web - should be one for each county. (sorry can't put a link because I'm rubbish at it!!!!! )