Starting school nursery in August - 1140 hours - what have you been offered?

[AnotherGrandIdea]

My DS starts school nursery in August. When I applied for his place we were asked to choose morning or afternoon, as we were for his older brother when they started school nursery several years ago. I have now had his offer through and we have been offered 8am - 6pm Monday and Tuesday and 8am - 1pm Wednesday. That’s it.

I thought there was some mistake to start with but apparently this is due to covid and rolling out the 1140 hour entitlement. The more I think about it, the more this is bothering me. My older boys went to this school nursery and loved it, but it very much a school nursery. It did a great job of preparing them for school. I do not want to put him to a school nursery for such long hours, if I needed to do that I would use one of our local private nurseries which are a more homey environment.

I have been told I can accept the hours but then send him for mornings only. Fine. But that will only be three days a week. That will be ok while he’s three, but it won’t adequately prepare him for school when he’s four.

I think what’s bothering me most of all is that he has missed out on so much due to covid. He wasn’t even walking when covid started and he has missed out on so much of the classes, playgroups, trips to grandparents, soft play, holidays and weekends away that his brothers enjoyed. And now this is another way he is being disadvantaged.

I’m curious if this is what everyone in Scotland is now being offered? And if there’s anything I can do?

DS2 would have been due to start nursery last November just after turning 3 but we opted not to send him due to covid. He's starting in August for his preschool year at 3 years 10 months and doing 5 x mornings. That was all we wanted but if we had wanted the full 1140 allocation I assume it would have been fine as I heard nothing to the contrary.

Our nursery reallocates sessions between ante preschool and preschool years, so if you only do the three mornings a week while he's 3, maybe it could still be increased for his preschool year when he's 4? That's basically what we did for DS1 - he only ever did 3 mornings while he was 3 and moved up to 4 mornings a week aged 4.

The four year olds are currently only being offered these weird long hours across half the week too at our nursery too though. No chance of anyone doing half days every day no matter how old they are. Maybe it will change for the 2022/23 session, but I suspect not.

Thanks for your reply, it confirms my suspicion that this is something only our school or local authority is doing (we’re Aberdeenshire) and not a national thing.

Each school is different in what they offer.
My dd is 3 and does Monday - Friday 9-3 so the full 1140 hours.
You might not agree with such long hours but such is life for me when working and it saves us massively from when we were paying private nursery.

My sister in the same LA has her 3 year old in the nursery 5 minutes away and only has 5 morning sessions.

My friend has her 3 year old in another nursery 10 minutes away on a similar pattern to yours.

The schools all seem to be offering different hours depending possibly on their size/ staffing/ availability.?

I’d love it if we had been offered your hours Addison would be a better preparation for school. I don’t disagree with people putting their children t nursery for long hours, but I think school nursery should be serving a different purpose. Partner providers can provide childcare in a homely environment while using the full funded hours. I don’t see why school nursery needs to do the same.

The school has told us it’s due to covid, not size, staffing or availability.

I wonder if it's maybe that they have 2 or 4 pods and have them spilt in to days then. So for example my dd nursery has 3 pods but have 3 separate rooms. Does your maybe have 2 rooms and have a pod in each for the 2.5 days, do a big clean then have the others on the other 2.5 days?
Covid has made a mess of everything hasn't it, if it weren't for COVID the 1140 hours would have been in place from August last year & most places would be settled in to it.

I do agree that 8-6 is a long day in a school nursery. We are lucky dd had dropped her nap before she started school nursery so I don't know how they would deal with that.

Hi @AnotherGrandIdea you are entitled to 1140 funded hours and you don't have to use them as the settings suggest. Your nursery is just offering those hours in case you want to use them all with them. But you could send your wee one to the nursery in a pattern that suits you eg 3 mornings from the days they have offered and then do two more mornings in another setting. In December you will be entitled to fully flexible childcare at a place and setting you choose as long as it's registered. So you could have year round mornings, or you might choose to use a childminder.

Thank you @visitingagain but we have been specifically told by the school that if we want a place, then we accept all of the hours offered (i.e. Monday and Tuesday 8am - 6pm and Wed 8am - 1pm) and even if we don’t use all those hours that is our funded place gone. Therefore we won’t be entitled to anymore funded hours to use at another provider.

The school used to offer split funded places but that seems to be over. Hopefully school has got this wrong and they’re not allowed to do this!

Both of mine are 9-3 Monday to Friday, we are in the south West.

Hi @AnotherGrandIdea if you have a look at this
www.gov.scot/policies/early-education-and-care/early-learning-and-childcare/
You will see what you will be entitled to. By January you will be entitled to fully flexible hours.

I work in a setting which offers 9-3 and I would say at least 30% of our kids can't cope with the long hours. Especially this last year all I deal with is emotional, over-tired, grumpy kids who just want to be at home. Just because it's available doesn't make it right and it just feels now it's about quantity not quality. 8-6 is very long for a council nursery as they are just not made for children having naps, quiet time. I'm in one room with 40 kids, good luck having a nap in that!!

No half days here either-two long days then a third v long day every second week

Nursery also on during school hols which is not that helpful to me with an older kid but hey ho

I'm Edinburgh.

We offer 8.30-3pm M-Th then 8.30-12.30 on a Friday.

Because of the bubble situation last year a lot of bigger nurseries offer the 2 long days thing from speaking to friends who work elsewhere.

My friend only gets a Wed/Th 8-4pm which is hopeless when she works M/T.

I was under the impression that they were meant to be offering 1140hours from August. So maybe this hasn't filtered down yet.

My old workplace is waiting on forest kindergarten opening as the children will do a mix of forest and nursery.

Has anyone not heard back yet? I’m Glasgow and haven’t heard a thing.

East Lothian are also offering 2 days a week 8-6 and alternative Friday 8-6, you can't even choose your days and no split funded spaces. I'm really cross about it, in no way prepares them for School! In our case it's because they have huge schools but no space at nursery.

Where I am, Some settings are 9-3 term time, some 8-6 2 days and one half day 46 weeks a year and others are half days 49 weeks of the year. You don’t have to take them all but if for example you only intend to use non-wed they would like to know that. We do mornings as I didn’t think littlies would cope with those big long days in a school nursery. The bonus being no needing to find holiday cover as it’s 49 weeks.

The school nursery we wanted is doing 8:45-3:15 M-T and 8:45-12:45 Friday to fulfill the 1140 hours. Correspondingly their number of spaces has halved and they can take 40 children instead of 80, and we didn't get a space. It sounds like your school is trying to accommodate the same number of children by doing 2.5 long days, rather than cut capacity? Obviously either approach is not ideal, and not sure why nobody saw this coming. I totally agree though that those days would be too long for my son.

Our council initially offered your kinds of hours last year but this year were able to be more flexible and offer different patterns. Possibly just does depend on council although seems unnecessarily strict! Genuine question - what do you mean by "very much a school nursery"? Our council nurseries seem more homely than the private ones so wonder what the distinction is in your area?

Salted Our school nursery is in a port-a-cabin classroom. There are no carpeted areas and no grass outside, it’s just a concrete playground. The staff do lovely, creative things but to be honest if my 3 year spent such long days there, I’d like a comfortable space for relaxing and being quiet, maybe even a quiet room, and some grass to play on outside. The cooking facilities are also inadequate in terms of letting the children prepare food. (Meals are not an issue, they will come from the school kitchen I believe.)

My DD gets her funded hours at a private nursery and does 5 mornings 8am-12.30pm. Its for 50 weeks a year rather than just term time though. We were given 4 different options to choose from rather than just told what to do.

I'm assuming its due to separating children into 'bubbles' and lack of multiple rooms that your nursery are limited with one option.

If it helps, my eldest who is in P1 only did 2 full days of nursery when she was there (8-6, although I would pick her up about 4.30-5ish) and she has settled into school well.