Sessional Pre School Fees

[Guest]

Hi all

Probably been asked many times before but just trying to remain viable and competitive in today's economic climate and wondered what settings in a similar situation to ours charged for fees - particularly interested in those of you based in Cheshire.

We are committee run sessional pre school

Open 2.5hrs per session term time only (7 sessions per week)

Pay rent (we are church hall based)

Employ 6 staff (all part time)

 

Our current rate of fees for children not entitled to NEG is £7.72 per session.

 

Hope you don't mind sharing with me what your current fees are please - just trying to get some ideas for passing onto committee.

Thanks in advance

[sunnyday]

Hi

 

Not Cheshire - but Kent!

 

For the first time ever I will be charging at the same rate as NEG - woohoo!

 

Hope this is useful

 

Sunnyday

[Guest]

Hi, we charge the same as NEG too. mrsW.

[Deb]

Dorset calling!

 

We have been working towards bringing our fees up in line with the NEG over the past few years which we will now achieve when the fees go up in September......my work is done!

[Inge]

Same.. in line with NEG

 

have been for a couple of years now...

 

took a lot of explaining to committee as to why at the time, but they eventually understood reasoning behind it...

 

Inge

[anju]

have spoken to committee about bringing up to same as EYFE from april 2010 , currently 7.50 per 2.5 hrs rising to 8 in september

[Guest]

I'm confused how can children not NEG eligible attend pre-school which (in my limited view) is for 3 -5 yr olds.

It might be that you run in a completely different way to us, we offer full day care to 7mth olds - 5 year olds. We also offer free pre-school sessions which are 'funded' by the NEG, therefore the parents don't pay or if they are fulltime they have the NEG reduced off their fees. We are a charity and try to offer affordable childcare, we are central london and our fees are £4 per hour with £1.50 per day for snack, lunch and tea. (It is the same price regardless of the age of your child, for under 3's we try to maintain a 1-3 ratio for all age groups.

[Inge]

I'm confused how can children not NEG eligible attend pre-school which (in my limited view) is for 3 -5 yr olds.

It might be that you run in a completely different way to us, we offer full day care to 7mth olds - 5 year olds. We also offer free pre-school sessions which are 'funded' by the NEG, therefore the parents don't pay or if they are fulltime they have the NEG reduced off their fees. We are a charity and try to offer affordable childcare, we are central london and our fees are £4 per hour with £1.50 per day for snack, lunch and tea. (It is the same price regardless of the age of your child, for under 3's we try to maintain a 1-3 ratio for all age groups.

 

 

If children can start from 3 years.. funding does not apply until term after 3rd birthday , so can be a full term without NEG.

 

which was how ours worked, plus the extra hours over and above the 2.5 a day were charged a same rate as NEG .. in our case it worked out at £3.50 per hour...

 

but some take children from a younger age, 2 yrs in some cases and they would be not yet eligible so fees apply.

 

Inge

[Guest]

We take children from 2.5 years, so quite a few parents pay rather than get NEG.

 

We charge £7.50 for 2.5 hour session, then £3 for optional lunch club. From September we'll be making lunch club part of session time as we can use NEG hourly rather than per session iyswim.

 

Now I'm wondering whether we should raise fees in line with NEG but I think this would probably put off some of our less well off parents.

 

In the average year we have to fund raise to stay afloat.

[Guest]

We are near Huddersfield and take children from 2.5 and charge £5 for a 2.5 hour session. We also charge 20p per session for snack.

 

There are 3 pre-schools, 2 full day care settings and a school nursery in our relatively small village so we have to stay competitive.

 

Prices will remain the same in September, I think they will stay at £5 until we move and can offer 3 hour sessions.

[Guest]

Thanks so far everyone for your responses, we too take children from 2.5yrs old, therefore need to charge fees for them until they are eligible to receive NEG. It is so interesting to hear that some of you will be matching the funding - this is something we have longed to do, but wondered whether we will outprice ourselves

[Guest]

Hi all

 

Our current rate of fees for children not entitled to NEG is £7.72 per session.

 

Leicestershire here: We currently charge £7.50 per 3 hour session, however, this is going up to £9 per 3 hour session in Sept.

 

Yours seems to be a very odd amount to charge , I'm sure it has been worked out at that price for a reason though!

[Cait]

we take from 2 years old, so have several fee paying

[Inge]

one way we used to check if fees are at a reasonable level was to work out how much we would have to charge per child if there was no NEG,

could we cover costs on what we charged? We used that as a basis to set our fees.. that was until we had to show NEG was not covering the non funded children or subsidising them .. hence our change in policy .. it was very little difference anyway by the time you total all the running costs remembering things like insurance and National Insurance employers contribution etc .

 

we were in area of deprivation and we usually just balanced books at tend of each year.. and occasionally running over costs even then.

 

Inge

[Guest]

We're just raising our non funded fees to £7.50 from £6.00 for 3 hours. If we charged in line with NEF we'd have no one attending who wasn't funded! We're already hearing that £7.50 is too much.

 

ppp

[Inge]

here we are looking after their most treasured possessions, and they complain at paying for it...

 

I often wonder how much they pay on other items during a week.. a drink in the pub= 1 hours childcare... and its less than a packet of cigarettes, and I can think of lots of other non essentials which cost more...

 

We had comments at first, its usually only from the ones who knew previous costs, hence we raised them annually and they were told this.

 

Inge

[Panders]

My fees are in line with the NEG in Kent, costed out at an hourly rate.

[sunnyday]

here we are looking after their most treasured possessions, and they complain at paying for it...

 

I often wonder how much they pay on other items during a week.. a drink in the pub= 1 hours childcare... and its less than a packet of cigarettes, and I can think of lots of other non essentials which cost more...

 

We had comments at first, its usually only from the ones who knew previous costs, hence we raised them annually and they were told this.

 

Inge

 

Absolutely Inge - couldn't agree more!

[Guest]

We will be charging £7.50 from September a rise of 50 pence. This is to peg it close to the sessional funded rate of £7.43 but make calculations easier! I've just been thinking though that maybe we ought to charge a higher rate for under 3s as a pilot funding arrangement for 2 year olds in our area is to be paying £4.00 something. This is to reflect the higher costs associated with ratios for that age group compared to 3 year olds. Mind you we probably wouldn't get anyone taking a place then until they were three.

[Guest]

We are in Stockport and charge £8.50 for a three hour session.

Linda

[lynned55]

We are just outside London and still havent quite managed to reach the NEG funding yet in or fees. We are given 8.68 for 2.5 hours but are open for 3 hours & from Sept will be charging non funded £10 for a session and funded an aditional charge for the extra 30 minutes.

[Smiles]

We charge £8.50 for a 2 1/2 session for children not entitled to funding , funding is £9.02 a session. We also charge £9.02 for children who are entitled to receive funding but choose not to use it with us. We have phased this in over the last wo years in line with several other groups in our areas.

 

smiles

[Guest]

We charge £8.50 for a 2 1/2 session for children not entitled to funding , funding is £9.02 a session. We also charge £9.02 for children who are entitled to receive funding but choose not to use it with us. We have phased this in over the last wo years in line with several other groups in our areas.

 

smiles

 

We also charge the full rate for children using their funding elsewhere and not the £5 we charge otherwise.

[Guest]

wow, we are cheap.... For each session (3 hours 45 mins) it's £6.50!

Although I have suggested we rise it to £7 from January.

 

We are in the Derbyshire Dale btw. xx

[Guest]

we to are in line with the funding which now works out to be £10.34

which is for 2 3/4 hours and a bargain when you consider the excellent service they are getting

[korkycat]

We are even cheaper! £3.75 for 2.5 hours for no-funded children. There are 2 other groups nearby and we all charge a similar rate altough they offer 3 hours. I've been talking about raising it but opinion seems to be that we will lose our non-funded children and that may affect viability. Funded children who use their funding elsewhere are charged at the funded rate.

korkycat

[Guest]

We are West Mids based and charge £9.50 for 2.5 hrs, which is £2 above our NEG. At first glance this may seem steep, however, I carried out a costing analysis to work out how much it actually costs us to run (we have our own building and although we only pay a peppercorn rent it's falling apart and costs a fortune to heat. Of course we have pay for everything else - including soap and never ending supplies of loo roll !!) and it came in at around the £8.50 mark per session, just to break even.

 

Also, we take children from 2yrs 6 months,so our staffing ratios are higher, and therefore those children cost more per head to provide for.

 

To be fair our nearest preschool charges £10 per session so we are competitive within our area. What we don't have to do is faff about with relying on parent helpers and fundraising for snacks, parties, treats (visits from the animal man etc) as we make enough from fees to pay for all our staffing and resourcing needs.

 

I'd say it's horses for courses - you know what your parents can afford to pay (not choose to pay - they'd all choose to have it for free ;0)) and what the market will stand in your area. What I'd advise (from bitter experience) anyone to do though is to have a policy of annual increases -it's far easier to increase by say 50p each year than to leave it a couple of years and suddenly have to put another £1 or £2 on in one go.

 

I'm going to be really interested in what effect the harmonisation of funding between the PVI and maintained settings will bring though!!!

 

Cheers

 

RR

[Guest MaryEMac]

From September we will be charging £3 an hour for non funded children which will be 72 pence lower than the hourly funding rate.

 

Mary

[narnia]

we charge £3 per hour, same as other setting in our town

[Guest]

err ... what harmonisation of funding between PVI and maintained!?

 

Great idea about the 50p a year annual increase.

 

And great to hear that you are making fees cover your costs. We have calculated that we would need 15 children all on NEG attending each day to cover current costs. As we only have 15 on one day a week, it's obviously tricky for us to break even.