How many of you are paying, just to be able to get your free 15 hours?

[peachsmuggler]

DD is 2 and have been looking into whole nursery situation for when she is 3. I am a SAHM but would be happy for her to get the fre 15 hours when she is three, if she could go mornings or afternoons.

However when I spoke to our local children's centre they said they don't do half days. I would have to take a minimum of 2 full days and pay the extra.

Places are hard to come by round here and this is going to be the case for private nurseries too.

Am hoping the local pre-school playgroup will have spaces as they do mornings, but is it normal to have to pay for extra hours, just to get the free ones???

Our pre-school has 3 hour sessions so we do have to pay a bit more on top of the funded place. They were very careful to avoid using the term "free place" when they showed me around, so we pay around £5 or so per session.

Think you need to make a few phone calls and check the rules in your area. When my DTs were eligable for the vouchers, we had such a hard job getting our nursery to admit that they HAVE to offer "free" places. My DTs were already doing three half day sessions, and I didn't actually want to change that, but had a friend who wanted her DD to do a couple of sessions a week (not up to 15 hours) and wanted to know if she could have that for "free". After much questioning and pushing, phone calls to the relevent people at the council and searching for info on various websites, the nursery finally admitted...

They are allowed to cap the number of hours per session that they will accept vouchers for (in ours, the session is 4.5 hours but they will only accept government funding for 3 hours) and that parents are then expected to pay for the extra hour and a half plus "extras" (lunch included in morning session, tea in afternoon session) BUT they HAVE to offer the "free" places (as long as parents can ask the right questions...!) which would mean a DC attending for three hours within the 4.5 hour session, and only during school term time. All snacks and/or meals would have to be provided by parents. AFAIK, legally, any setting which takes government funding must offer this, you just have to dig to get to it.

So your children's centre is giving you incorrect info. Of course, the other side of it is that if they're oversubscribed, they can probably get away with it - if a parent pushes, then they might simply discover that they have no places.

OP, if you want a "free" place, then your best bet would probably be a playgroup, which runs in term times only, and does shorter sessions.

Incidentally, after finally getting to the bottom of it with our nursery, my friend decided that she wanted her DD to do the full session anyway - that having lunch with the other children was part of the experience and so on. Still, it was nice to finally uncover the truth of the situation

EvilTwins I think you are right about playgroup, it seems more what I am looking for. The "free" 15 hours I think works well if your child is already in nursery and therefore when they get to 3 you are getting a reduction in fees but when you are only looking for the 15 hours it is not so easy.

I have typed up below the West Sussex Definition of Free Entitlement Flexibility, I think that this is from Central Government Guidelines so should be the same in all areas.

A parent can use the 15 hour entitlement over a minimum of three & maximum of seven days per week between 8am & 6pm, over 38 weeks. The entitlement equates to 570 hours per year. Flexibility enables parents to choose to take the 15 hours in a different way from how they currently do. The minimum any child can access in one day is 2 hours and the maximum is 10 hours. Parents may choose to take entitlement over more than 38 weeks in which case the weekly entitlement is reduced.
Parents can request any combination of hours within a settings opening hours as long as it adheres to these guidelines but settings are not obliged to meet every individual request where this is impractical.

I am an Accredited Childminder & therefore can deliver the Free entitlement and would look at doing it as flexibly as possible. However you need to consider that as a childminder my fees are e.g. £4.50 per hour but the free entitlement refund (that we get half termly) has been set in West Sussex at £3.77 per hour. Therefore there is going to be some adjustment made to our Admissions Policies so that we can -recoup-adjust the shortfall in our income.

look into all the pre-school provision in your area, visit the pre-school playgroup, etc. Get you name on a waiting list if they have one - you can always decide you don't want it later.

my ds's have both gone to the local pre-school, this is a charity and just opens for the 2.5hr session - mornings 9.15-11.45. It has around 7-15 children at a time. Once they are funded there is no charge to the parents.

The one in the next, much larger, village does morning and afternoon sessions, has bigger groups (and purpose built facilities - ours is in the village hall), offers lunch time aswell. They charge extra's for the wrap-around, and seem to charge extra if you just do a session - which I don't understand.

I am totally confused by this. DD starts two afternoons a week after the Oct half term. She turns three in Jan so in April (next year) she is entitled to some funding, correct? So does that mean those two afternoons, just under three hours each, will be free from then?

The free entitlement is from the term after their 3rd birthday, although there are some Pathfinder areas where certain families are eligible for funding for 2 year olds, but certain criteria has to be met & your local authority has to be in the scheme.
At present the Free Entitlement is for 12.5 hours each week & will not increase to the 15 hours until September this year and that is when the extra flexibility comes in.

Rocking - Yes I think it should be but check with the playgroup/nursery. If she is getting a place anyway for 2 3 hour sessions then yes these shouls be free.

Problem seems to be that lots of places don't do 3 hour sessions.

Badger - what you have said doesn't seem to be adhered to by the children'#s centre I spoke to or maybe they are using the gt out clause at the end of your statement about not offering it where impractical!

Dd has 5 x 2.5hr sessions a week. It doesn't cost us a penny.

Can anyone tell me how much the sessions are worth? My nursery are telling me that the funding doesn't cover their hourly rate so I will have to pay extra. I'm looking at the directgov website but it doesn't say.

In our area the funding is £8ish a session. Our nursery sessions are £13ish so we have to make up the difference.

I'm not sure why a Children's Centre would stipulate this? I would advise you to contact your Early Years Team for further info ...

If it is a private business, they can and must do what it takes for them to remain a viable business. What they need to realise though, is that parents will vote with their feet and go elsewhere if the preschool of their choice can't accomodate them.

There are rules, however, that cannot be ignored if the setting is to continue accessing the Govt funding. The Free Early Education Entitlement place must be absolutely free at the point of delivery. Settings are not allowed to charge any extra's for the place. They can charge for snacks and hours accessed above the Free Entitlement, but they cannot make it a condition of the grant.

see here

plonker is quite right - when we started digging around, we discovered that settings are not allowed to "make up the difference" - the grant is supposed to cover time and not cost. Now, I'm quite sure that many places find ways round this, and as I said earlier, we pay extra for our nursery, which it explains away as extra hours plus things like snacks and meals, but it's worth checking out how things stand in your area - there doesn't seem to be one rule for all.

I agree settings are not allowed to cahrge a 'top up fee' but because the amount that they are funded is invariably a lot less that it costs to run they can charge additional charges for extras like: extra hours, snacks & meals, craft supplies, outings. BUT it has to be all clearly stated in their admissions policy as to what the extra charges are for.

With regards to the 'inflexibility' of your local children's centre, you might well find that their prer-school is a Maintained Nursery School as opposed to a private company running it. If that is the case then their funding comes from the Education funding rather than Early Years funding & they are probably less likely to be able to offer a highly flexible option.

Also LA's have a little bit of flexibility within Govt guidelines as to how much they set their funding level at & you will find that it varies across the country from one LA to another. Then again this alter again next year when the Single Funding Formula comes in so there will morer confusion then!

Got another application form for a nursery class attached to a primary school, which DOES offer 5 "free" afternoons or mornings (2 and a half hour sessions) but is so oversubscribed they they generally only accept siblings or people that live on the doorstep.

Think you are all right about perhaps digging a little deeper at the children's centre, and I will maybe ask the LA, though am sure they will tell me I have to ask the children's centre direct.

The LA will answer your questions peachsmuggler, they should be happy to

In our LA we have a number of private settings which are based within the Children's Centre, so although the Children's Centre is LA ran, the setting offering the Free Entitlement places is not, if that makes sense? Maybe this is the case here?

Either way, the LA cannot force a private business to offer funded places only as the setting must remain viable. Settings can lose out on valuable business if they offer sessional places rather than half/full day care.

Our area is supposed to be trialling the single funding formula next term (or in September) I hope this helps us childminders do EYE