Will increasing "free" childcare actually cost working parents?

So as a little background, in Wales, it is the intention that 3 year olds get a minimum 380 hours of free educational childcare a year.
But in reality, it doesn't quite work like this. Children are entitled to attend up to 5 sessions, which are between 2 and 2.5 hours a day, depending on the nursery. They must be taken on separate days.

The issue I am trying to raise, is that the funding for these sessions has not been put up for many years and now falls well below the actual nursery costs. When I first took issue over this, I used the Family Information Service database to work out the average nursery cost in Newport, and found that the there was not a single nursery that cost the same or less than the funding level.

While it could be argued that if you sent your child to nursery at a school, then the free places would genuinely be free - this is not possible for working parents, as school nurseries only provide the free sessions, and this would mean collecting your child at the end of that session, or paying for wrap around care to get them delivered to another childcare location.

Here is the maths...

Newport City Council Funding

£6.83

per session

£34.15

Per week for 38 weeks

If 10 hours is funded, the day rate would be

£34.15

In a year

£1,400.15

At Buzzy Bees, a session is 2 hours 15

£8.55

per session

£25.65

Per week for 38 weeks

The actual daily rate is

£38

To fund 10 hours at Buzzy Bees, the funding is £3.85 short per week

To fund the 2 hour 15 session would be

£8.60

short per week

If a child arrives at 12:30 and is picked up at 2:45, then the parents pay nothing at all, and the nursery is paid £6.83 for the session by NCC

If the child stays for the rest of the day, the parent gets £6.83 knocked off the bill, so the day costs £31.19

This means in reality, the child gets 9 hours of free childcare, below the 10 hour minimum

However, I believe that people who work, like myself had no choice but to use the nursery for the full day. There is very very little chance you could practically work in the 2 hours while you child is at nursery.

The sessions must be taken on separate days, so you can't have a whole day.

Therefore this free funding benefits non-working parents the most.

Additionally, I believe that this "free" funding is actually putting up the costs for paying parents. For each child that goes home immediately after their free session, there is a weekly shortfall of £8.60 at my nursery

This may not seem much, but let's say at our nursery there are 30 children and 20 go home after their sessions, the nursery is £172 short. That's like having 4.5 children at the nursery not paying their fees

Nurseries have costs, they must pay their teams, so let's say this cost is spread between the children who stay all day

So my child who started nursery at 9 months old, and will be eligible for rising 3 funding when he is 3 years 3 months old, will be subsidising other children for 2.5 years

and then in his final year, he will be eligible for funding, but will still stay all day, so will continue to subsidise other children, so

In his final year, Oscar will get

£1,400.15

in government funding

But over the 3.5 years he will have subsidised other children to a tune of

£2287.6

Therefore the government funding will cost me

-£887.45

over the 3.5 years he will be at nursery

Or, If the nursery is able to silently absorb the underfunding without going bust, at very best, my little boy will get

368.465

Hours of free childcare, when this should be a MINIMUM of 380

Free Childcare in England vs Wales (England wins again)

"All 3 and 4-year-olds in England are entitled to 570 hours of free early education or childcare a year. This is often taken as 15 hours each week for 38 weeks of the year." [gov.uk]


In Wales however, the Wales.gov.uk equivalent page reads:

Sorry, the page you are looking for cannot be found. [Wales.gov.uk - as linked from above .gov.uk website]

It cannot not be found by searching the website for Early Years, or Rising 3s.

This doesn't surprise me at all, as the early year/ rising 3 funding in Wales is a challenge to understand.

As I understand it, it must have an education element, it cannot simply be free childcare, so my daughter had to move nursery to qualify.

Each child is entitled to attend up to 5 morning or afternoon sessions per week. These must be taken on separate days.

Each session is between 2 and 2.5 hours per day.

This is term time only.

Ok, so that makes sense, yes it does.

In my case, Miss Megan attends nursery all day, but her pre school session runs from 12:30 to 2:45 each day - 2 hours 15 per day

Given we have 39 weeks of education per year, I would expect her to receive just short of 439 hours of free childcare per year.

Already this puts Wales 131 hours of freeness down on England (or to put it another way, parents in Wales are £485 worse off than those in England)

But then when you query your nursery bill, it turns out the situation is slightly different to what it advertised.

Hours don't come it to it at all in Wales - each child receives £6.83 per session attended.

So off a monthly bill of £801, you get £111

Now let's put that back into hours - it's £1332 per year, doesn't sound bad initially, but in reality it doesn't cover the cost of the FREE sessions

Nursery is open 8am to 6pm (10 hours) and costs £37 per day, so £3.70

£1332, divided by £3.70 is actually only 360, meaning instead of the 439 hours I was expecting to receive, we actually only get 360 hours free per year - losing me another 80 hours on if we'd stayed living and working in England.

In reality we are 210 hours worse off per year than if we lived across the border. This is also known as £777

Put simply the government gives us 67p less per hour than we pay for the FREE sessions.

Therefore it costs  parents £130 for their child to attend the free sessions.

You might argue that our nursery is more expensive than average - but this is not true, in fact the nursery we moved from was more expensive again, and there is definitely no nursery in the area that charges less.

Potentially of course your child doesn't have to attend all day, they could just come for the free session and leave at the end.

While I was on maternity leave with my second child, Megan did this 2 days a week. But practically, although it may benefit the child in terms of an introduction to education, it would not allow the parent to work. 2 hours 15 is not really enough to do anything much at all.