City nursery fees up by third
Childcare fees for council-run nurseries in Glasgow are to increase by a third from August.
Changes approved at a Glasgow City Council committee meeting mean that the hourly rate for childcare will increase from £1.34 to £2 at all of Glasgow's 120 maintained settings.
The revised charges follow pilots at London Road Nursery and Crookston Early Years Centre, which began in January.
According to a council committee paper, the increased income generated from the free increases is to be re-invested within early years services.
The local authority said that a reduced rate of 50 pence per hour will be available to families on income support and that more fee reductions will help in other circumstances, such as when families have more than one child attending a particular nursery.
Jonathan Findlay, executive member for education at Glasgow City Council, said, 'Under the old system, parents had to pay a flat rate without taking into account whether they could afford it or not. This new system means we look at the individual circumstances of each family, giving them special rates where applicable, which could see some parents paying as little as 50 pence an hour. Glasgow is already providing all three- and four-year-olds with 15 hours' free nursery provision a week, which is two-and-a-half hours more than the current national entitlement. This new pricing system will affect any hours over and above that free entitlement.'
- Glasgow City Council it is to bring forward the date at which children start school. All pupils entering P1, which is the equivalent of reception class, will now start full-time classes from the beginning of September. Previously, P1 pupils were not in class for a full day until after the September weekend.
