Closure of School Nursery, advice please.

[Luse]

Hi, the local school nurse has advised me that as of September 2018 the Nusery will close. My children have attended this nursery and I feel very strongly that the school is making a mistake and needs to give the nursery another years chance. Has anyone been through this and has any advice on how I can approach the school, head or Govenors so they will listen.
This year the nursery is only offering the 15 hours of childcare, however most parents are entitled to 30 hours so the uptake has only been 12 children, one of which is mine. I would like the school to just try one year offering 30 hours. please help I'm a bit lost with where to start.
Thanks xxx

Have you run the numbers and worked out it is financially viable? Who is going to pay any shortfall? Loads of nurseries are failing as the amount they receive for the funded hours is so low and now that the number of funded hours is so high, there is little opportunity for paid for hours at an increased rate.
Nurseries naturally have a problem as customer turnover is so high. No one child is ever going to be there for more than two years and, with average families having 2 children, no one family is going to be guaranteed business for long.

The minutes of the full governing body meetings should be on their website (but some things may have been discussed under section 2 which means they are not public) If you look at the full governing body minutes you may get a feel for what the decision making process was - then you can focus your appeal on challenging the key points of the decision. Its unlikely the finance committee minutes are available though, and the decision was probably based around the fact that it would cost more to keep open than the funding it would attract.

I'm sure they haven't taken the decision lightly... Trying for another year, if they know they can't afford to, would just put them into debt!! They will have good reasons for the closure. A lot of nurserys round here are not offering the 30 hours and have obviously seen a decline in numbers. My DS's nursery aren't offering it. A few of his friends have left but it is a very well regarded nursery with a waiting list so they can 'afford' not to offer the extra hours (so far anyway!!).

The government are to blame here as the 'free' hours are not funded adequately. I don't think you will get anywhere with persuading your school nursery to remain open and offer the 30 hours.

If you have a significant number of evidence of other parents who would feel the same as you, by all means appeal to the Governors - but realistically the decision would have been made almost certainly on financial grounds and modelling will have taken place and the governors obviously don't believe the setting is viable.

If you want to complain to anyone, I would complain to the government. They are not paying enough for many nurseries to even do the basics like paying their staff.

This might help you understand

Although of course it is possible that they just couldn't recruit staff or something else, so worth asking

As others have said, the 30 hours is underfunded in many parts of the country so it may not be financially viable even if it was full. Some school nurseries are also struggling with the 30 hours as the standard 9-3 doesn't fit with many parents' working hours so they're better using a different nursery or childminder who can be more flexible.

We've had something similar locally. Families up in arms, but the school nursery was losing a lot of money and there were deemed to be enough private nursery places available locally to take up the children.

Sadly councils have lost so much money since 2010 they can no longer afford to subsidise services, even when they are well supported and loved. We've lost more than half our budget and of what is left, the vast majority is ring fenced for statutory services. This is entirely the fault of central government who have shown a tendency to run down local govt, and offer vote pleasing pledges without adequately funding them.