Uk ladies
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Are you sure your thinking of the same scheme? As there's the tax free childcare which the govt pay 20% of your bill but there is also the 'funded' hours for certain eligible parents. Not free, but funded. We get 15 hrs funded which is term time only, which means we just pay £1.50 for those 15 hrs and then full price for the remaining hours
@Anne this is more than what I pay a month for 2 funded days and 2/3 extra days
It's funded hours, not free. However we don't pay anything at my daughters charity run pre school other than lunch club which is £2 a day to cover the staff
It’s just half terms you have to pay. My LB gets 15 hours free and that’s all he does. So I will be paying half terms for him x
For fee with funded alone, ours is £64 per week for 2 days. Then consumables on top.
@Vicky I think we pay both? She goes for 4 hours and gets 3 of those funded for the terms and then we pay for the last hour and her consumables. We clearly saw free meaning totally free though haha
I used funded hours and tax free childcare when my daughter was in nursery I still had to pay 130 quid a month on top for her 2.5 days x unfortunately the government funding for the hours very rarely covers the full hourly amount nurseries charge.
Our nursery stretches the total amount of hours over the 51 weeks so we get 1 day 'free' but pay £15 for meals and then pay for a full day (my little girl does 2 days). When we get the monthly bill we then get a further 20% off the total from the tax free childcare through the government.
My daughter (at 4 yo) only went 2 days a week 9am-3pm and still had to pay nearly £100 every month 🤷♀️
As others have said it's not free, it's funded.
It is area dependent. When my daughter was in private nursery, I was still paying £7-800 per month after the “free” 30 hours were taken into consideration. This is because they stretch the hours over 51 weeks. When she went to a local authority term time preschool, the 30 hours funding was for 5 full days a week as in 6 hours per day (9am-3pm). We weren’t required to pay for any consumables or top-ups. The only difference was you needed to find childcare for the 15 weeks of school holidays annually.
I mean, fair for everyone sharing the details and specifics but yes the way they bang on about it you’d think you were getting something for free rather than a small amount knocked off the total bill - got a long way to go in this country to actually support parents and early years x
Yes it was very misleading. Our nursery stretches the funding over the year
My son gets 15hrs free. He goes for 2 full days a week as we can’t afford to pay for the other days ourselves. We have to provide a packed lunch which I’m happy with. I believe you have to provide your own nappies but my son was potty trained before he started so not 100% on that. And we provide suncream. They provide snack which is basically a meal some days. (Who does beans on toast for a snack?) then an hour later expect them to eat lunch 🙄😠 Depending on what your needs are and the school/nursery to what you get as free
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Lol I remember thinking this years ago before I knew anyone with kids/ had nieces/ nephews. Everyone does say free, so I think it’s understandable! (It still confuses me how some nurseries are £50 a day and others £100 a day - do the £100 ones just have massive subsidies along with their ‘free’ hours? 😅🤷🏽♀️ this sort of thing would’ve been more helpful than algebra!)
It depends what nursery you go to as they all have different top up fees and costings. At my daughter’s nursery the ‘free’ hours did cover her hours entirely so I only paid for food which was £3.90 per day, that was it. Whereas I visited another that wanted £32.00 per day ‘top up’.
They should’ve worded it differently- for 3 days nursery with 30 ‘free’ hours I’ll still be paying £350
Okay I'm really confused now
@Cass agree completely!!
It also confuses me because the other 15 hr free for 2’s scheme for the low income families is free, which ok fair enough. But I’d love to know the difference in amount in which the government are giving vs the new 15 hours.
My son goes to preschool for 15 hours a week (entitled to 30) and we don't pay anything but we send in all his food. When my daughter goes next year she'll be doing 2 days a week at nursery and we'll have to pay up to £17 depending what meals we choose to send in or provide
Where I live it used to be free... they've recently bought in a sustainability charge for those who get funded hours
I knew it didn't mean that cos I used to work in nurseries. The reason a lot charge extra is because the amount they get funding wise barely covers costs.
No its not free its funded The media calling it free caused a lot of confusion
The care is free the consumables and food/snacks drinks etc isn't The government knew it would cause confusion but didn't listen to the various groups and they then changed to funded but the media etc continued to use free and the confusion continued. I was childminding when it was first Introduced and didn't offer funded care as the payment was well below my hourly fee and we can't charge a "top up" only consumables and my rates were low enough as it was I was still always full as all my parents worked and didn't qualify
My daughter goes 2.5 days a week and even with the funding and tax free childcare I still pay £520 😐
I think the 15 hours can only be used during preschool hours so if you did one day it wouldn't cover it even though you haven't used all the hours.
There are two schemes. The tax free childcare is an account you pay 80% into and the gov top the rest up to 100% then there is the 15hrs / 30hrs free childcare if you qualify and you get a code which you give to nursery and they get the money. You then only pay for anything above your free hours and can use the tax free account to do this
We pay £10 a day top up for our son he goes 3 full days a week using the funding. X