Flexible Nursery Offer

We are delighted to offer a more flexible way for families to access their child’s nursery entitlement from April 2023. Please see below for possible options, you may also wish to refer to the All Day Nursery Provision page.

How can families access nursery provision?

All families of children in the nursery age bracket are entitled to 15 hours of free universal nursery provision.
Some families will also be eligible for an additional 15 hours of free nursery provision through the government’s childcare choices scheme (meaning you can access 30 hours of funded provision per week). We can only offer these hours to families who provide us with an eligibility code.
Families are also able to pay the school directly for additional nursery sessions.

New Options Available from April 2023

Our new flexible offer will give families a range of options for accessing nursery provision at Hillcross.

Option 1: using your 15 hours of free universal entitlement, 5 x 3 hour nursery sessions e.g. Monday to Friday 8.30-11.30am or Monday to Friday 12.15-3.15pm.
Option 2: using your 15 hours of free universal entitlement, 5 x 3 hour nursery sessions Monday to Friday accessing a mixture of morning (8.30-11.30am) and afternoon (12.15-3.15pm) sessions, e.g. Monday AM session, Tuesday AM session, Wednesday PM session, Thursday PM session, Friday AM session.
Option 3: using your 15 hours free universal entitlement to access two full days and one AM or PM session per week. This option incurs an additional charge of £15 per week to account for the additional time your child would attend, e.g. Monday all day, Wednesday all day and Thursday AM session.
Option 4: using your child’s 15 hours of free universal entitlement and combining this with the additional 15 free hours available via the government's Childcare Choices scheme, to access 5 full days of nursery provision Monday to Friday (8.30am - 3.00pm). Please note there will be an additional charge of £30 per week to account for the additional hours (over 30 hours) your child attends our nursery.
Option 5: using your 15 hours of free universal entitlement and paying for any further hours up to full five days of nursery provision (8.30am - 3.00pm). The additional charge will be at the rate of £12 per hour but please note children must attend whole sessions, 8.30-11.30am or 12.15-3.00pm.

For options 2, 3 and 5, families will need to indicate which sessions they would like their child to attend each day.

If a family has a request which falls outside of the above options, they should contact the school directly with their request via info@hillcross.merton.sch.uk with Nursery Session Request as the subject line and we will liaise with you directly.

Payments to account for additional hours must be made in advance on a half termly or monthly basis and refunds are not available for any sessions missed. We do accept childcare vouchers.

Once your child’s nursery session attendance has been agreed, this will remain in place for the duration of child’s time in nursery unless a change is requested by the family (and for families making use of the Childcare Choices scheme, eligibility codes being presented as required). Requests for changes for the following term, must be made no later than the end of the half term prior to when the change is due to start e.g. by the end of February half term for a change in usage in the summer term.

We cannot guarantee that we will be able to agree to everyone’s requests straight away, if we are able to accommodate a family's preferred option they will be notified in writing via email. We will liaise with any families whose first preference we cannot meet to see if we can find an alternative pattern that suits them. We anticipate that we will have less flexibility when we first change to this system so please bear with us.

Unplanned sessions

Once this system is in place, any family whose child already attends our nursery, may request for their child to attend additional nursery sessions on a week by week basis (you will only be able to request an unplanned session in the week prior to the date you require) and these will be agreed based upon spaces being available and on receipt of payment (which must be made at the time of booking). The charge will be at the rate of £12 per hour, all children must attend a whole session.