Cost of full time nursery places 2020 to 2024 (FOI)

Request 697845590

​Average annual cost of a full time place at nursery in Jersey for 2020 to 2024. Can this be broken down into the categories: 

1. Under 2 years old,

2. 2 year olds, 

3. 3 and 4 year olds.

If the data is available, please also split out average cost for a Government run nursery and average for a private nursery.

Clarification Requested

To who’s annual costs, is that to the parents or to the Government of Jersey? 

We can only respond to what the Government of Jersey are in control of which is ages 3 to 4 only, as its free to parents and regarding under 2 and 3 year olds, these are private nurseries and private business and have nothing to do with Government.

Clarification Received

Hi FOI team,

Thanks for your response and noted on the information available. 

To clarify, please can you confirm the annual cost to Government for 3- and 4-year-olds at nursery over the period 2020 to 2024. If you can include how many children this covered in each period if available.

On the private nursery places, I understand the Government does not have control, however, I thought the Government would gather information or statistics on private nursery costs to assess the tax relief levels and any future extension to the nursery education fund. My understanding is that this would be covered by the FOI? 

Response

1 and 2.

CYPES does not hold the data for nursery costs for under 2 year olds or 2 year olds as places are only provided by private nurseries therefore Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.  

3. The Department cannot provide the cost per child to the Government of Jersey school nurseries for 3 and 4 year olds as the costing would need to be calculated taking into consideration funding to primary schools, to provide an answer to the request would require extraction and manipulation of data to produce new information. A Scheduled Public Authority (SPA) is not required to manipulate and create new data sets in response to a Freedom of Information request, Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.    

The Government of Jersey provides up to 30 hours of free early learning in the school year that a child turns four years old. Information can be found here:

F​ree early learning for your child (Nursery Education Fund) 

The table below represents the cost per annum per child to the Government of Jersey for a nursery place broken down by year from 2020 to 2024 under the Nursery Education Fund (NEF) scheme.

​Please note: the 2020 calculation was based on the NEF offering of 20 hours per week, this increased to 30 hours per week in September 2021. The rise in figures reflects both the increased number of children attending private nurseries and inflationary adjustments to the NEF hourly rates​​

The table below represents nursery pupil numbers in Government of Jersey school nurseries per academic year 2020 – 2024 inclusive. The data has been taken from the spring term census.

​

Please note, as nursery education is non-compulsory. some pupils were not on roll for the full academic year.

Article applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.​