How many nurseries would accomodate different days every other week?

[moulesfrites]

I am a teacher and my school is considering moving to a two week timetable. So far it has not really addressed the implications of this for part time staff and it seems likely that their days one week would not be the same as their days in the second week. In your experience, how willing would nurseries be to accommodate this? From speaking to people I have got very mixed response, some say it wouldn't be a problem, while others say the nurseries would not accommodate it and you would end up paying for full time childcare, which sort of defeats the purpose of working part time. This is not an issue for me at present, but maybe in the future, and I am a little concerened, as are many of my colleagues with children.

My DC's school went onto a 2 week timetable years ago. It doesn't make a huge amount of difference. Only a few periods are different so in the main if you have English, French and maths on Monday you still do whether it's week A or B. I suppose it depends what you teach.

Nursery you would have to cover any days you were likely to work in either week. You couldn't expect them to keep a place free when you weren't using it, unless you paid. Have you a colleague who is on the opposite days you could share a place with?

Thanks catweazle, the school already has the type of two week timetable you describe where there are occasionally rota lessons so the weeks are slightly different, but it is thinking of going for a radically different model so week A would be completely different from week B.

My son is due to start nursery in January when I go back to work full time. My partner will be looking after him most of the time however he works shifts of different days each week so we needed childcare for this. Having contacted a number of nurseries I managed to find one to accommodate this. As long as my son attends for 2 full days it does not matter which days these are. All I have to do is let them know which 2 days I need as soon as poss, which in our case will only be about a week in advance. I guess you just have to look around as this type of care can clearly be offered from some places.

A friend of mine used to teach Weds Thurs, Fri, Mon Tues and then have the next Weds Thurs, Fri, Mon Tues off.

She used a childminder and it seemed to work ok.

The difficulty will be that unless they can find someone to take the exact opposite of your days, then they will not be able to fill their spaces.

All you can do is phone around and see what they say. You might find that a childminder is able to be more flexible.

I use a very flexible childminder who, at the moment, has only the children of shiftworkers so she has different children on different days. Only DS is the constant Wednesday am mindee! It seems to work well for her and her flexibility is one of her strongest points. The nurseries I spoke to were not prepared to discuss any flexibility at all.

At DS's nursery you have to pay for the same sessions each week to guarantee the place. However, they do have "flexible" sessions that you can book on an ad hoc basis. They charge slightly more for these and aren't guaranteed - they obviously give priority to the regular children and will allow ad hoc bookings only if there are places.

In your position I would argue that even if your timetable is different in both weeks you should still only work the same days in each week.

Our nursery are flexible - we have to book one day a week and provide the dates we need on a monthly basis. ( We use between 1 - 3 days a week). DH works away from home on a rota basis, so the nursery's flexible approach allows him time with DC when he is home. I think we were very lucky to find a nursery with this flexible approach as a childminder I intended to use decided last minute to charge us a retainer.

I have a friend who works part-time as a nurse.

She has had nightmares finding childcare but eventually persuaded a nursery to take her DS just on the days she needs chld care.

The nursery has agreed to do this at the moment (as they are not full) but have explained that they may need her to commit to set days in the future if their numbers go up.

I work in a very flexible nursery, we have a fair few children who do different days each week, and we offer a term time contract for those who are teachers. Works well.