5.4 Fees and Nursery Education Grants
Policy Statement
It is our intention to make our setting accessible to children and families from all sections of the local community. We aim to ensure that all sections of our community have access to the setting through open, fair and clearly communicated procedures.
EYFS key themes and commitments
A Unique Child | Positive Relationships | Enabling Environments | Learning and Development |
1.2 Inclusive practice | 2.1 Respecting each other | 3.3 The learning environment 3.4 The wider environment | |
Procedures
The Nursery Manager has current details of rates.
Fees are not charged for Staff Training days or setting holidays
Fees are reviewed twice a year.
There are 3 terms; they fall roughly as indicated below.
September to December
January April
May to July
Notice of changes
Staff are employed on a termly basis and as such a full terms notice is required if your child is leaving nursery. If less notice is given, we still require payment for the notice period and/or nursery grants claimed.
Invoices
Fees will be invoiced via email at three periods in the year, September, January and April. These invoices will cover the child’s regular hours. Any extra hours will be invoiced at the end of a term.
Fees are charged a term in advance, to allow management to employ and Rota staff appropriately.
Nursery Grants
Parents can apply for Nursery education grants to give their child up to 15 free hours of nursery education a week at preschools.
The Nursery grant will be used to give children their entitled free hours. The Nursery will not take the amount off of your child’s invoice total, but will actually allocate the free hours and then charge at the fee rate for the rest of the hours not covered under the free entitlement.
Fees unpaid and arrears
Any fees unpaid after the invoice date will be charged at £1 a session/week.
We hope you will appreciate that we are unable to allow fees to slip into arrears. Failure to pay the fees on time will result in the loss of your child's place. If fees are outstanding, and if no payment is made within 7 days, the nursery will refuse the entry of that child to nursery and start debt collection procedures.
Any fees unpaid by the end of term will result in debt collection, and any expense this incurs will be added to fees.
Fees during Absence.
If your child is absent from the nursery during term time due to sickness or holiday the full fee must be paid for the place. Long term sickness over 2 weeks the full fee is payable for the term, but under exceptional circumstances arrangements will be made to reduce fees to a holding amount only.
Nursery Holidays and Closures.
We are open for 38 weeks per year. The holidays are fixed and fall within the local school holidays at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun and in the summer.
We will notify you each September. Each year we hold five staff training seminars. You will be given advance notice of these closures. Fees are not charged for staff training days. In extreme circumstances nurseries may be closed at short notice due to floods, staff shortages, failure of services, natural disasters, terrorist attacks etc. and fees will not be refunded in these circumstances.