15 Hour Entitlement

[AnonyMouse_32697]

Nightmare!!

I need help. We recently introduced the 15 hour entitlement to our school Nursery (instead of 12.5). We are really struggling with the routine and the logistics as everything has a knock on effect and we feel that it is not working in the best interests of the children.

 

Currently the first nursery session begins at 9.00am until 12.00pm. We then have a 15 minute turn around time until the afternoon nursery session starts 12.15pm until 3.15pm. We have 3 members of staff and we start going on our half hour lunch breaks at 11.00 (break 1 and break 2) and they finally finish around 2.00pm. During these 3 hours another member of staff is employed to cover.

 

Has anyone introduced these hours to their nursery session and if so how do you work it. Or just any general advice would be much appreciated.

[AnonyMouse_2157]

oh trasong- I do sympathise with you! We are a school nursery and have chosen to do the 2.5 days (one group of children) and 2.5 days (another group of children), for the very reasons you are stating. Being in a school with these new hours is extremely challenging, although I think it is great to be able to offer the parents and children more hours, the scheme has been ill thought out for schools, not least regarding the budget that is non-exixtent to pay for cover, lunch-time supervisors etc. I pity the member os staff who has to take their lunch at 11am!

I don't have any suggestions just bags of sympathy which really is not much good to you.

Our new sessions are being trialled so that we are not tying ourselves how we deliver the hours if this way doesn't work.

I only hope you have an understanding head who will listen to your concerns.

best of luck

[AnonyMouse_32697]

oh trasong- I do sympathise with you! We are a school nursery and have chosen to do the 2.5 days (one group of children) and 2.5 days (another group of children), for the very reasons you are stating. Being in a school with these new hours is extremely challenging, although I think it is great to be able to offer the parents and children more hours, the scheme has been ill thought out for schools, not least regarding the budget that is non-exixtent to pay for cover, lunch-time supervisors etc. I pity the member os staff who has to take their lunch at 11am!

I don't have any suggestions just bags of sympathy which really is not much good to you.

Our new sessions are being trialled so that we are not tying ourselves how we deliver the hours if this way doesn't work.

I only hope you have an understanding head who will listen to your concerns.

best of luck

Thanks apple, its good to hear about how other settings are approaching this situation. The head is understanding and wants to know our concerns but nonetheless we're committed for the year. I can cope the half hour breaks but it breaks my heart to have to say no i'm sorry I can't play with you because i'm going on my break now!

[Guest]

We are a school nursery and have been offering 15hrs for a long time now.

The morning session starts at 8-30am and runs until 11-30am. We have 15mins to prepare for the afternoon session followed by 30mins lunch break. The afternoon session runs from 12-15pm till 3-15pm.

We tried to stick as closely as possible to the normal school day so that parents did not have to make two trips if they had older children in school. Organising the sessions this way means we do not have the problem of lunches or covering the dinner time period.

It works really well for us and the parents.

The nursery teacher only works her normal teaching hours, the first and last 15mins are covered by nursery support staff ie. nursery nurse and TA's.

 

Forgot to say the children attend either a morning or afternoon session as they have always done, it just means they stay for an extra half a hour each session.

Edited September 28, 2010 by Guest

[Guest]

Hi this is my second year of the 15 hour entitlement as we trialed it last year

 

We start at 8.50 till 11.50 a.m. session go home

11.50 till 2.50 p.m. session

some of the children do just mornings

some do just afternoons

and some stay all day

 

if a child comes in for an afternoon sessiton they have to bring in lunch this time is included in their 3 hour session.

 

Lunch starts at around 12 noon there are three members of staff and we each have 20 mins so there is always 2 members of staff with the children the staff are able to eat lunch with the children if they want to.

 

Hope this helps I'm not good with explanations

[Guest]

Hi we are a voluntary preschool but within a school and working as a foundation stage unit so we needed to keep our hours in line with the school hours.

 

Our morning session is 9-12 and the afternoon one is 12.15 to 3.15. Children can only attend morning or afternoon not currently all day, as we did not feel we had the space or facilities to have 3 year olds in all day. Children coming in the afternoon bring packed lunch with them, and this is a lovely time at the moment for PSED. Staff only have half an hour for lunch and it is either 12.15-12.45 or 12.45-1.15 and a member of staff stays until 1.15 lunches are over to cover.

 

We have some spaces in our afternoon sessions until January, so are about to begin offering a lunch club to morning parents, whose children can stay from 9-12.45, marketing it for this term only as a chance to go Christmas shopping etc. We have enough staff to cover this, and it will helps us to see how it works with overlapping sessions for if and when we decide to change our 15 hour provision next year.

 

HTH

[Guest]

In my setting we introduced the 15 hours last year and adjusted hours to suit offering four options

1) morning s 8.45 - 11.45

2) afternoons 12.30 - 3.30

3) full days mon, tue, wed am

4) full days wed pm, thur, fri

 

There are 3 members of staff with another LSA/lunchtime supervisor employed from 11 -1 to cover staff and pupils lunch and assist with cleaning and general tisy up for next session.

It took a while to get our head round things but we seem to be getting there. It is really exhausting at the beginning with lots more contact hours with the children per week.

 

Good Luck.

[AnonyMouse_32697]

Thanks to everyone that has commented it has certainly given me something to think about.

[Guest]

Hi

We tried to keep our sessions to within the school day but as staff we hated have lunch in shifts on our own in the staff room, never having any time together as a team and also the impact it had on the children with staff coming and going especially when we were trying to settle new children in so we now do 8-30 till 11-30 and 12-30 to 3-30 starting and finishing before the rest of school. In general this works well although we have problems with Key stage 2 children especially running round the nursery yard when our parents are coming and going. One of the nursery staff has to go out about 3-20 to police the yard. As the teacher I now work a longer day than any other member of staff teaching 6 hours a day against the rest of the staff who teach a max of 5.5 hours and within that time they have a coffee break and assembly time. Would love to see a break down of my directed hours against theirs!.

[Guest]

Could you start a little earlier/ finish the day a little later to allow a say 40 minute gap, then employ someone to turn the room around while you all have lunch together? Maybe a TA who already does a half day would like an extra hour?