Question from a complete newbie about nurseries/pre-school/Primary

[DuelingFanjo]

Apologies if these are really stupid questions but I am a bit confused about what is the norm.

I am in Wales and work full time - my son is 18 months old and in a private nursery near to my work 4 days a week (He is with my mum the other day), this works well for us as I can pick him up and drop him off really easily. I love the nursery and he is well settled.

I think here in Wales we are entitled to the 15 hours thing (free nursery whatsit?) but obviously that means the rest of the hours he is in Nursery would need to be funded by me (i.e take him out of the nursery he is in and put him into a school nursery full time) or he would need to go down to half days in the private nursery and DH and I would have to collect him half-way through the day, not to mention the wrao around care needed out of school term-time.

So... my instinct is to keep him in the private nursery until he has to go to school. Is this what people who work do? I am quite happy to do this but have wondered about him then making the transition to school at 5 where he won't know anyone at all and may feel left out. Chances are we may well move before then anyway so he will still be the 'new boy'.

Also will he lose out educationally by staying in a private nursery while other kids go to a school-attached one?

scuse me if this all sounds really thick.

I am also in Wales :
If their birthday is in the winter or spring term, the term after a child's 3rd birthday they are entitled to 10hrs free childcare. Called Early Entitlement.
Then the year before they start school they get 15hrs free childcare.

There are several alternatives.

1. Some schools have an attached nursery which provides early entitlement and then nursery. You would have to do dropping off and picking up. This is what I did for DS1 and 2 before I worked full time.

1. Some schools provide early entitlement and nursery, and also have a paid for school club (playgroup plus) that will look after them for the rest of a school day (or a nearby playgroup takes this on and does a school run to pick them up).

1. Some private nurseries are entitled to early entitlement funding but not nursery funding - this is the case with DS3s nursery so for the last 2 terms I have received money back off the bill. However from September he loses this fundind.

1. Some private nurseries do a school run. So DS3 from September is going to a private nursery in the morning, they will drop him school nursery in the afternoon, then he is going to the school's after school club.

Also, should have said, the nursery that DS3 currently goes to gets a specialist teacher in the afternoon for the 10hrs to provide the early entitlement early years foundation phase teaching.
The nursery we are moving him to, didn't provide 'early entitlement'.

thank you :) I just don't think I can face all the running around that it will involve, it sems to make more sense for me to check if the nursery I use do the foundation phase and just keep him there until he can go to school full time. Is that sensible do you think?

just checked and their literature says "Each of our nurseries in Wales implement the Foundation Learning for Wales framework" so that's good. :)