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Enrolling in pre-school to save on daycare fees


Noodlez

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So in NSW it appears that 2 days of preschool a week are free. It has crossed my mind that I could potentially enrol DD in pre-school 2 days a week now I’m able to work from home a couple a days a week and keep her in long day-care the other 3 days. Is this crazy? Is there any benefit to this? Is it even doable?


I love her daycare they are really good but I don’t believe any children will be attending the primary school I’m sending her to. The preschool potentially will have kids she can transition to school with as it’s closer to home.


I’m also wondering if there is any benefit in attending pre-school vs daycare for school readiness?


Would really love to hear thoughts and experiences please.

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WaitForMe

I think its a great idea if you can do it. Not sure what its like in NSW but where I am, the better educators are in the preschools. I managed it with my eldest but my youngest has only experienced childcare.

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AFAIK most daycares cover the preschool program in the year before school anyway.


For us preschool meant hugely reduced hours (it went from 9-2.30pm) so made it impossible to work that day. It would have been fine for a parent that wasn't working that day or just needed a few hours from home.

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I did this and I really regretted it. There were so many school holidays and then the staff took off first Monday off in every term which was additional days I had to pay a babysitter for. Plus the council run kindergarten had one day where the teacher was sick at the last minute so no time to get agency staff. Plus they expected someone to volunteer as parent helper. Also if you are held up at work the child needs to be collected at exactly the knock off time, so not the flexibility of being able to pick up at 5.00pm instead of the 4.30 kinder finish. The biggest pain in the but and all the extra babysitting cost more than i saved.


However it was in Victoria and the child is now ten so may not be the situation for you.

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I did this and I really regretted it. There were so many school holidays and then the staff took off first Monday off in every term which was additional days I had to pay a babysitter for. Plus the council run kindergarten had one day where the teacher was sick at the last minute so no time to get agency staff. Plus they expected someone to volunteer as parent helper. Also if you are held up at work the child needs to be collected at exactly the knock off time, so not the flexibility of being able to pick up at 5.00pm instead of the 4.30 kinder finish. The biggest pain in the but and all the extra babysitting cost more than i saved.


However it was in Victoria and the child is now ten so may not be the situation for you.

 

Yes school holidays would make it a bit tricky wouldn’t it? But given she would still be in daycare for 3 days so it would be manageable given my my mum could potentially help or taking leave would also be an option for me.


I’m working from home a few days a week and have flexible work hours so can manage the shorter hours.


The other think is I’ve recently increased my work days so this means we may go over the cap next financial year and recent budget announcement is not kicking in till 2022 apparently.


But thank you, you do have a really good point that it does seem very tricky to manage. It’s seeming like it’s something I should only do if the it’s going to be of significant value to DD rather then a money saving option.

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I think its a great idea if you can do it. Not sure what its like in NSW but where I am, the better educators are in the preschools. I managed it with my eldest but my youngest has only experienced childcare.

 

Thank you I think this might be the deciding factor for me. I do know her daycare has a school readiness program in place and I think daycare is already good prep for school but I don’t know much about preschools so will have to look into a bit further to be sure.

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Our kinder is sessional kinder with after care, so 8am-6pm but a council run kinder, and they run a holiday program- if you can do that then hell yes.

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I believe that the two free days are only funded by the NSW government for 2021 (it’s something to do with COVID). Just something to consider if you are also needing care next year. Also, because it is free at the moment it can be really hard to get a place.


I switched my oldest daughter from daycare to preschool in the year prior to her attending school. She was never really happy at daycare and thrived at preschool but I think that may be more to do with her personality and the educators at the centre than any real benefit of preschool over daycare.


In saying that though, I would make the switch to save on the fees if you can make the preschool hours work for you. The saving is substantial (or it was for us).

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Julie3Girls

Really going to depend on the individual centres and child.

Qualifications of staff would be the same - early childhood educators with a variety of degree teachers, diploma and cert 3 educators. So you won’t get better educators in a preschool as a general thing, it is a simply a case of one childcare centre/preschool may have better educators, or ones that suit your child better, than the one down the road.

Childcare centres do run a preschool program, no different to what they would get in a preschool. They have to follow the early learning framework.

So really the differences are just going to be what you would get between individual centres/preschools, not a generalise childcare vs preschool, if you know what I mean.


Preschool is going to have shorter hours, and school holidays. Which can be hard if you work, but a nice break from longer daycare days if you have the right setup.


Location is a big one ... I know our local schools all have teachers visit the local preschools AND preschool rooms at the childcare centres, to meet kids that will be heading to their school the following year. And they get feedback from the preschools/daycares as well,

It can be lovely to send your child to first day of school with friends from preschool. But, it’s also not a necessity. Friendships in fyos form up pretty quick with the kids in their class, and friends often change.


The other thing to consider is the two places. I actually did this with my dd3 - when she hit preschool age, I moved her to a dedicated preschool (still officially a childcare centre, but they only ran preschool age), where my older two had gone. Partially for cost, partially because I loved our preschool.

Put her in there for 2 days a week, and kept a day at the childcare centre - in case my work hours increased or changed, I thought I should keep a foot in the door in case i needed to switch back to longer days. Also thought it would be good to give her the variety, so she wouldn’t get bored.

With in a month, dd was crying and fighting me every time we went to childcare, and was absolutely loving the preschool. Managed to get a third day at the preschool and dropped the daycare.

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Kiwi Bicycle

Strangely enough DS was the only one going to his school from sessional kinder and that was a school only 2km away. So no guarantees you will get friends going to the same school. And this was my closest kinder to me as well.

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WaitForMe

Strangely enough DS was the only one going to his school from sessional kinder and that was a school only 2km away. So no guarantees you will get friends going to the same school. And this was my closest kinder to me as well.

 

Yes thats a good point, depends a bit on the kinder and types of families that use it though. For instance, the kinder that is on our (public) school grounds has very few kids go to the school, because they all go to religious schools. The kids that go to the school seem to mostly come from childcare.

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nom_de_plume

The only thing you might want to double check is whether your long daycare already claims the preschool funding for your child and passes it on in the form of reduced fees for the preschool room/s. I'm not sure if it works the same way in NSW as VIC, but here you can only receive the funding at either LDC or a sessional preschool, not both.

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Kiwi Bicycle

I can also say that if your daycare is offering a kinder class ( so a accredited kinder teacher runs a class normally 9 to 4.30pm) embedded into the daycare, it's very much the same as sessional kinder. Plus they most likely are getting any funding from the government as well. DS did one day of daycare and 2.5 days of kinder. The kinder offered bush kinder for half a day but the daycare had outings to the library and the aged care facility. The rooms were set up the same with little areas of equipment and toys of the same theme set up as stations. Both places had incursions of farm animals, etc. The kinder did have the museum visit, and drama with costumes done by a 3rd party but the daycare had a weekly sports program, yoga etc. Daycare, the teacher had mat time, storys, show and tell and sign in for the kids to learn to write their name, same as at kinder. Only real difference was daycare provided lunch and kinder had the bring your own lunchbox thing, but I think the last month before end of year the daycare suggested you did a packed lunch to get kids used to that.

Personally I called my daycare our " fancy school with all the bells and whistles" and the kinder " a low tech, rough and ready" experience. But very, very similar.

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Bornagirl

It would really depend on your working day. Daycare was out of reach for us financially 25 years ago (guess who started a business right on the cusp of the early nineties recession?), so my self-employment at least meant I could fly by the seat of my pants with a few hours of occasional care, then blissfully, sessional kinder hours.


Wouldn't be blissful if, as per pps, you had difficulty during holidays etc.


My niece heard about the free kinder and her twins were miraculously the exact age for four year old kinder, so she quickly moved them from daycare to sessional kinder.


They can do that because she works in aged care in 'inhospitable' hours, and he also has some flexibility, so between them they can make it work and save a bundle. Good for those who can make it work - hard work but will pay off.

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We are doing split centres as it works out so much cheaper. I can get a grandparent to pick up if I'm running late. Plus, we are teachers so have holidays with no classes. WFH, if you can switch your days around to work while kinder is on (as the times are not convenient at our kinder!), then it could work. Oh, and make sure the session times don't change- we chose our kinder partly because it was w short days and they changed to be one long day.

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Julie3Girls

The only thing you might want to double check is whether your long daycare already claims the preschool funding for your child and passes it on in the form of reduced fees for the preschool room/s. I'm not sure if it works the same way in NSW as VIC, but here you can only receive the funding at either LDC or a sessional preschool, not both.

Nsw is completely different to vic in this way. This funding for a 15 hrs free preschool, is only for children attending community preschools. Preschool programs in childcare centres are not included at all. It’s also only temporary at the moment, for this year.


The two are funded completely differently, with community preschool not considered childcare, and therefor not eligible for childcare rebate. Nsw has one of the most expensive early education situations in the country.

The vast majority do preschool in childcare centres. Community centres are cheaper but still not cheap - I know when my girls were going, the local community preschool was $30 something a day, no childcare rebate.

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Little bit different, but when we moved, we had to change childcare. My child, who I thought was adaptable and someone who would cope, did not cope as I hoped, despite the new centre having a lot more going for it than the old one. So prepare for the chance of it backfiring and drop offs being stressful and painful. This in turn could be more complicated by having to do two different things in the week where one might be seen as a lot better than the other one.

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Jane Jetson

In the ACT you get two free days a week, and a third free day every second week. And it's 9 till 3 (unless it's changed since). In other words, still predicated around the concept of Mum being part-time or a SAHM, especially given that for almost all centres, there was no Afters (one around here is affiliated with a long day care, but that's an anomaly).


So with DD1 we just couldn't send her, as I was in the office till 5 and I was not going to pay for every second Wednesday at long day care that I wasn't using. With DD2 I was working from home right around the corner, and the in-laws stepped in for those second Wednesdays - and that's the only reason it was possible.


I'd totally do it if you can manage to work around a structure that is intrinsically unfriendly to working mothers.

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Our preschool (ACT) is attached to the primary school and they can access the out of hours school care like the primary kids can.

It's cute seeing the carers leading a little line of preschool kids towards the preschool each morning.

I know people who've used family day care every second Wednesday and the 2 days preschool isn't on for their kid.

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