ECCE Year & Part Time in Creche

Hi There,

I've been researching for the last week trying to get an answer on this and I've read a lot of conflicting information.

I work full time and my wife works part time (3 days per week).

We have 1 child in primary and 1 who is eligible as of January 2018 to start his ECCE year. Both kids are in the creche 3 days per week.

The creche has told us that they can only provide Montessori class under the ECCE grant for the 3 days he is there, and will not provide the other 2 days for 3 hours.

My wife doesn't mind keeping our child home those days, but we do think 1 more day in a structured environment for 3 hours would be good for him.

Can the creche deny us this? Some websites say absolutely not, some say the creche has final say on enrolment.

In appreciate any advice.

Ocean Blue

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Hi There,

I've been researching for the last week trying to get an answer on this and I've read a lot of conflicting information.

I work full time and my wife works part time (3 days per week).

We have 1 child in primary and 1 who is eligible as of January 2018 to start his ECCE year. Both kids are in the creche 3 days per week.

The creche has told us that they can only provide Montessori class under the ECCE grant for the 3 days he is there, and will not provide the other 2 days for 3 hours.

My wife doesn't mind keeping our child home those days, but we do think 1 more day in a structured environment for 3 hours would be good for him.

Can the creche deny us this? Some websites say absolutely not, some say the creche has final say on enrolment.

In appreciate any advice.

Are the creche saying he isn't entitled to the other two days, or that they have no space? If they just have no space to increase his days I don't see what you can do. They have a limit on the number of kids that can be in each group for supervision, health and safety etc.

They aren't saying anything, they've repeatedly denied other parents this and the general consensus is that they are holding slots for full day kids. They've put in a policy of only providing the ECCE to children who are there for the full day, though if pushed I suppose they can fall back on saying it's space availability.

They are a business and I've no issue with a desire to maximise profits but it's very frustrating from our point of view that they won't accommodate the extra day(s).

There is also virtually no reduction in cost. We're kinda stuck with this as our only viable option though.

Cakerbaker

My crèche is the same. It’s to do with the staff/ child ratio apparently. They don’t have the staff to mind the extra kids that would turn up for 3 hours 2 days a week as the staff are allocated to care for the kids there for a full day of childcare (which includes the 3 hours ECCE) for that age group.

Moonbeam

They probably don't have the space