Look out for the ratio of fees to wages

Wednesday, April 24, 2002

In the 28 March edition of Nursery World, there were two items that particularly interested me - the news story 'Nursery profits "are hyped to investors"' concerning the Children's Nurseries - UK Market Sector Report by Laing and Buisson, and the letter 'Between a rock and a hard place' by Kirsty Lester, who owns a day nursery. If, as according to the Laing and Buisson report, the average fee for a full-time nursery place is 120 a week and the average hourly rate of nursery nurses is 5.45, then day nurseries like ourselves which charge just 80 per week (because that is all the local economy can stand) should be paying staff an average of Pounds 3.63 per hour on a pro-rata basis. National Minimum Wage requirements, however, are considerably higher, and the lowest wage paid in this nursery is Pounds 4.40 per hour.