Preschool charging for lunchtime supervision

[MDDR]

I'm looking at moving my youngest daughter to a preschool attached to a primary school - Her older sister already attends there.
The hours are 8:45 - 3:15 and we'd receive the 30 government funded hours. I've just received some additional information stating a lunchtime supervision fee of £3 per day applies as the funded hours don't include a 30 minute lunchtime so supervision must be paid.

I know that this isn't allowed under the government guidance so I'm intrigued as to how other preschool settings are doing this to account for school weeks that are longer than 30 hours.

What do your preschool settings do?

My understanding is they can’t charge for the middle of the day. At our preschool for example, 9.30 - 3.30 is free, but it’s £7.50 if you want an 8.30 drop offf.

Our school preschool only run half day sessions. Are they providing more than they legally have to if it's a full day?

How many hours do you attend in the week op

sounds like it’s 2 sessions you’d attend

morning then afternoon - 30 min break in between

so you can pick and drop back or pay id imagine

My DS goes Mon-Thursday 9-3:30 (term time only). We don’t pay anything as it is all covered by the funded hours. We pay for lunch if he has it but he often prefers a packed lunch. They only offer all day, 9-12 or 12-30-15:30 options.

They are not allowed to have an enforced break in funding. It goes against the terms of their funding/provider agreement. The hours must be able to be taken in continuous blocks. They are absolutely fine to have an additional charge at either the beginning or end of the day which parents can either opt in or out of.

Speak to the Early Years funding team at your Local Authority and ask what they suggest you do.

Yes, the full school week is 32.5 hours.

As it stands they'd attend the full 32.5 hours - Going 8:45 until 3:15 five days a week.

The school isn't allowed to charge for lunchtime, even with the option to pick them up for the half hour lunch period.

Surely you'd be paying 2.5 hours anyway though, so its irrelevant whether it is 30 mins at lunch or at the beginning or end of the day?

So if they just changed it and said you pay for breakfast club it would be fine and cost the same?

so whats your issue? you cant have 32.5 hours when theres only 30 hours funding

It's the government that make the rules, not me...

The issue is that they can't allocate funded hours like this.

An alternative would be to offer 4.5 days fully funded, with the option to pay for an additional afternoon (presumably on a Friday) or to offer part time, but full days which they don't currently do.

I still don't get what your point is though - you are using 32.5 hours, so need to pay the difference?

Since you want 32.5 hours which means you are going to have to pay for 2.5 hours somewhere then I’d just pay it and not make their lives more difficult by involving the LEA or whatever - really who cares - if they are good just let it go and pay. I am sure they’ll be a pile on with they must follow the rules but god what a waste of everyone’s time,

We do 8.45 to 2.45 for our funded hours. Parents can then pay to pick up at 3.15, 3.30 or any of our normal tea club sessions

Similar system with my 4 yr old, also at a preschool attached to a primary.
Morning session 0845 - 1145
Afternoon session 1215 - 1515.
If you choose all day, then you can send in a packed lunch or have a hot meal but need to pay for the 30 mins between sessions. I have just paid my summer term bill and it was £84 for this, which I am happy to pay.

I can’t see where the rules state they can’t break up the sessions like this op - loads of nurseries offer half day blocks 🤷‍♀️

I agree.

Fair enough if you were only using 25 hrs and they were charging for 2.5 so you could only get 22.5 hrs funded.
But since you’re still getting the 30 hrs, I don’t know why it matters whether the extra 0.5hrs a day is arbitrarily written down as being charged at lunch or first thing in the morning.

It’s much easier to get alternative childcare or reduce/move your working hours for a half day every week or for pick up or drop off than it is to make arrangements to take them out for a half hour lunch break everyday so parents are essentially being forced to pay the fee.

It's in the guidance for providers.

My local preschool has the 30 hours 9-3 so the day is shorter than the school day.

Do you have a preference for how you'd like to take the hours instead @MDDR ? Drop off later/pick up earlier?

Depending on how they decide to structure their funding (when they realise they can't charge for lunchtime supervision) we could make 30 hours work, as it stands we'll obviously pay the 2.5 extra hours, as I have no intention of reporting them to the LA like someone said earlier 😂

My question was simply to find out how other preschools allocate them, so I know what to expect in the future - They can't be the only school who have 32.5 hour days. My preference would be to offer 4.5 days fully funded, rather than go to a 9-3 model as we'd have to wait at least half an hour either side of the school day for my older child and would likely need to come out of the school yard and back in again, as parents hanging around after drop off isn't ideal for anyone.

Thank you, that's helpful to know.

The issue is the setting is breaking the terms of their funding.

A late start or early finish can be optional. A thirty minute lunch break can't be.

My local pre school offered funded morning and afternoon sessions with a paid lunch break . This was accepted by the local authority as they offered the chance for parents to pick children up in between if they wished, and parents whose children stayed bought packed lunches. The staff ratio was only kept by the majority of staff having their half hour break at that time too .

Funding regulations say that enforced breaks ( with no option to opt out eg collect children) should not be used , not must not , which gave the pre school leeway.The local authority was happy with that.

A2.5 Ensure that children are able to take up their free hours in continuous blocks if they wish to, and there should be no artificial breaks in the entitlement hours. For example, over the lunch period, a provider should not offer 10am to 12pm and 1pm to 3pm as entitlement hours and offer only private paid hours in between.

Ours has 2 sessions AM & PM. If you want to stay all day, you pay for supervision at lunch to make a full day.

Preschools run on bare bones (ours is a charity) & if they’re not funded for lunch then they’re not funded.

The trouble is it's an unavoidable charge on working parents, so the lunch approach isn't really ethically justifiable.