Downside accepts payment by the Working Tax Credit system which enables you to pay fees via your employer and offers tax benefits. We are also registered to receive the Early Years funded hours (Universal 15 and Extended 27 hours). Your access to this funding will depend on your eligbility. Funded hours are offered between 9am - 3.45pm Monday - Thursday and 9am - 12.30pm (Fridays).

There is a charge of £6.50 per session which includes break times, outings, special events and input by special guests and visitors.

Break times; our break times are designed and structured to provide a valuable learning and social experience, in the following ways.

A variety of fruits and vegetables prepared and shared at the table with a choice of different types of milk, which the children learn to pour themselves. This is followed by the provision of a healthy snack that aims to further promote independent skills: helping themselves to a guided portion of cereals, pouring their own milk and using cutlery effectively; spreading butter on crackers, toast, rice/corn cakes, We also theme our snack times around curriculum topics and projects, for example preparing and eating (using chopsticks!) fried rice and noodles with veg. Children regularly prepare and make their own croissants / banana bread / bread and butter pudding / scrambled eggs on buttered toast / smoothies / bread / pizza / apple or plum crumble using organic fruit from the fruit trees in the garden. All this additionally provides children with a valuable experience of how food is made and produced and culminates in their eating what they have made. 

Outings which require a higher staff ratio and include village walks to explore our local environment and rehoming tadpoles to the local pond that have we have watched turn into frogs! Delivering their own made wreath to the local Chapel for Rememberance Day.

Special guests and visitors; we have had The Yehudi Menuhin School students visit us, the police with their siren and blue lights police car, firefighters with their fire appliance and working hose (!), dentists, doctors and egg / tadpole hatching and re-homing, tortoise visitors! Some of these visits require additional staffing as they involve off-site activity. 

Special events are also included such as the Christmas Tableau, Sports Day and music concerts, Halloween, World Book Day events. Exploring cultural festivals through craft, music & drama : e.g. Christmas, Easter, Divali, Chinese New year, Nooruz, Eid, 

Handmade gifts for Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, Chinese New Year, Eid, Easter.

If you do not wish to fund your child's participation in this range of additional activities described above, please inform us in writing. It is parents' resonsibility to provide their child/ren with a suitable drink and snack in their own, named containers for nursery in line with our healthy eating policy. 

Regardless of parents' income, we can claim funded hours for all children from the term following a child’s third birthday, at which point each child can access 15 funded hours. Fees are payable termly in advance. Unfortunately we cannot provide refunds/discounts for holidays and other periods of absence.

A term's notice is required when children leave the nursery or full payment of fees in lieu.