All-Year-Round vs Term-Time Nurseries: What a "50 Weeks" Place Actually Means

You've found a nursery you like, you're halfway down the fees page, and there it is: *"50-week places available."* Next door, another setting offers term-time only. A third says 51 weeks. Nobody explains what the difference means for your bank balance or your August.

It matters more than almost any other line on a nursery's price list, because it decides how many weeks a year you actually have childcare — and how many weeks you'll be scrabbling for cover with two days of annual leave left.

Here's the plain-English version.

What the numbers actually mean

Nurseries in the UK broadly sell three shapes of place:

- Term-time only — usually 38 or 39 weeks a year, closed for school holidays. Common in settings attached to a school, a children's centre or a family learning centre. - All-year-round (50 or 51 weeks) — open across school holidays, closing only for a week or so at Christmas plus bank holidays and a handful of training days. - 52 weeks — genuinely open all year bar bank holidays. Less common, but it exists, particularly in city centres and around hospitals.

The phrase "all year round" is doing a lot of work in nursery marketing, so don't assume it means 52. A 50-week place is all-year-round *and* closed for two weeks. Ask which two.

The other thing to check: are those closure weeks fixed, or do you get an allowance you can choose? Some settings sell 50 weeks as "51 weeks minus one holiday week you book yourself." Others close the doors on set dates and everyone takes their leave then, like it or not.

Why the fee comparison isn't as simple as it looks

A term-time place will nearly always show a lower annual cost, because you're buying fewer weeks. That doesn't automatically make it cheaper for your family. If you work 46 weeks a year and the nursery is open 38, you have eight weeks to fill with grandparents, holiday clubs, annual leave or a childminder — and those weeks have a price too, even if it's paid in favours rather than pounds.

Most all-year settings annualise: they add up the year's fees and divide by 12, so you pay the same amount every month including the month they're shut. This confuses a lot of parents in the first December, when an invoice arrives for a month with a closed week in it. It's not a mistake — you've already had the closure priced in.

What you want to compare is the cost per week you'll actually use, not the headline monthly figure. When you're weighing up shortlisted settings, work out: annual fee ÷ weeks open. That's the only number that lets you compare a 38-week place against a 51-week one honestly. It's worth doing this side by side when you compare your shortlist, because two nurseries with near-identical daily rates can be hundreds apart over a year.

How funded hours work with each

This is where most of the confusion lives.

The government's funded entitlements — the 15 hours for eligible two-year-olds, the universal 15 hours for three- and four-year-olds, and the 30 hours for working parents from nine months old — are all calculated on the basis of 38 weeks a year. That's the default: term-time.

But most nurseries will stretch the funding for you. Stretching means spreading the same total annual hours across more weeks. So 30 hours a week over 38 weeks becomes roughly 22 hours a week over 51 weeks. You don't get more funded hours by stretching; you get fewer per week, spread further, so there's some funding covering your August.

This catches people out badly. A parent expecting "30 free hours" at an all-year setting, and finding they're funded for around 22 with the rest invoiced, has usually just met stretched funding for the first time.

A few things worth knowing:

- Stretching is optional and at the provider's discretion. Not every setting offers it. Ask directly: "Do you stretch funding, and what does that look like weekly?" - You must reconfirm your eligibility for the working-parent entitlements every three months through your childcare account, regardless of which pattern you're on. Miss it and the funding stops. - Tax-Free Childcare works alongside all of this. You pay into the account, the government adds 20% — up to £2,000 per child per year — and you use it for the unfunded hours, meals and extras. Annualised monthly billing actually makes this easier to budget, because your payment is the same every month.

The small print that bites

Before you sign anything, read the fees policy for these five things:

Bank holidays. Almost every nursery closes for them and almost every nursery still charges. That's normal, but it means a Monday-only place loses several sessions a year. Ask whether they let you swap a lost bank holiday session for another day.

Training days. Settings close for staff development. Two or three a year is typical. Find out when, and whether they're charged.

The Christmas shutdown. Ask for exact dates, not "about a week." The gap between Christmas Eve and the 2nd of January can be a genuine problem if you work in retail, hospitality or healthcare.

Holiday discounts. Some settings let you book a week or two off at a reduced rate with notice. Others don't budge. If you take a long summer trip every year, this is worth real money.

Notice periods and fee reviews. A month's notice is common; a term's notice exists. Check how much warning you get before fees change.

Which one suits your family?

Term-time places tend to work well if one parent teaches or works in a school, if you have generous or flexible leave, if a grandparent covers holidays reliably, or if you're using nursery mainly for the social and educational side rather than for work cover.

All-year places suit shift workers, self-employed parents, anyone with the standard 25-ish days of leave, and families without local relatives on hand. They also give a younger child far more continuity — no six-week gap in the summer, which for a two-year-old can mean starting settling in all over again in September.

There's no universally better answer, only the one that matches your working year. Across the 66,476 active providers listed on NurseryMatch you'll find both patterns in most areas, though the mix varies enormously by neighbourhood — commuter towns often skew all-year, while settings attached to schools skew term-time. It's worth filtering by what's near you on nursery search rather than assuming your area only does one or the other.

And when you visit, put opening weeks on your list of questions alongside the usual ones about staff turnover and outdoor space — our visit checklist has room for it. Ofsted judgements tell you about quality, not logistics, and only around 12.9% of inspected providers hold an Outstanding grade, so you'll likely be choosing between good settings on practical grounds anyway.

Nanna's takeaways

- "All year round" isn't 52 weeks. Ask exactly which weeks the doors are shut. - Compare cost per week open, not monthly headline fees. - Ask whether funding is stretched and what your weekly funded hours will actually be — stretching spreads the same hours, it doesn't add any. - Count your real gap. Weeks you work minus weeks the nursery opens. If that number is above zero, you need a plan for it before you sign. - Get the closure dates in writing for the whole year, including training days, before you commit.