Planning For Erin’s Future Education

Erin’s 3rd birthday is coming up sooner than I would like. Turning 3 means the funded nursery hours start next April and we will no longer be paying anywhere near what we are now in nursery fees. Honestly, sending Erin to nursery at 2 has been crippling. While we have managed to pay the fees it has been incredibly hard and John has been working every second of overtime available to make sure we can pay for it.

Now don’t get me wrong, we absolutely did the right thing for Erin by putting her in nursery at 2. She wasn’t seeing other children or socialising and she needed that so much. Since starting nursery she has developed so much and I love seeing her so excited about school and her friends there.

Obviously, when Erin is 4 it means that she can move up to reception and Erin’s nursery is attached to a private school. Not only does Erin attend the nursery but she mixes with the older children and the teachers there and the nursery children are treat like a part of the whole school. Since Erin started going to nursery there she has become this confident girl who will happily stand on stage in front of a room full of people and perform in an assembly. She’s only 2. John and I love the school as well and we did as soon as we went to view it as a nursery.

First day of nursery

We would love to be able to make it so Erin can carry on going to this school as her primary school. However, private schools come with expensive fees to pay each term and luckily, this is one of the cheapest in Norfolk. Still, it’s a lot of money to pay compared to sending your child to a school without fees. If we want to pull this off though John and I are going to have to be really careful with money and be clever about what we do with it in the future.

At the minute we’re trying to figure out how much we’ll be paying in nursery fees from April. We don’t completely understand the funded childcare and with it being the summer holidays, there is no one in the office to explain it to me. We know that some schools have ‘top up’ amounts and if Erin’s school does this, we don’t know what the amounts will be yet.

No matter what, the fees will be considerably less than what they are now which means we are looking to save the difference. Putting money aside each month that we have been paying anyway would make it so we are ahead with the school fees. Depending on the amount we are able to save investing some money could also be an option for something a bit longer term. We think that as long as we get ourselves enough ahead before the primary school fees start then we’ll be okay.

John and I won’t be having any more children so if we can send Erin to private school and give her a more personal education then we will. It might not be easy and we will definitely have to make some sacrifices along the way but hopefully we can do it.


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Disclaimer: This is a collaborative post. All opinions are our own.

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