Nursery World - Look out for the ratio of fees to wages

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.

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 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 4.40 per hour.

Clearly, those day nurseries with larger incomes are committing a much smaller proportion of that income to staff remuneration than legislation requires day nurseries like ours to do. Given an income of 160 a week for a full-time child - which some day nurseries enjoy - we could pay every member of our staff, regardless of age, almost 9 per hour (more than 18,000 per annum).

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