From External Provider to In-House Wraparound Care
After struggling with bad debt, growing admin demands, and inconsistent wraparound processes across its schools, Discovery Schools Trust partnered with Childcare Bookings for Schools to create a more efficient and sustainable childcare operation.
In the first instance, we were keen to grow our wraparound childcare, holiday provision and nurseries. We have an ambition to be able to offer our families 8am – 6pm childcare, 52 weeks of the year, and wanted to take ownership of the offer across all schools, to not only ensure high quality provision, but to free up the schools to focus on their day job – educating the children.
However, the administration was a stumbling block to us moving forwards: invoicing and reconciliation was hugely time-consuming, and we had limited confidence in the accuracy of our school-produced data (both financial and attendance). Were we deal with this element ourselves, we recognised that bringing this inhouse would require a huge amount of work, including the recruitment of a specific team
We were drawn to working with you for two main reasons. Firstly, because you don’t offer just a booking system, but an end to end service. The fact that you deal with all of the admin, the bookings, the credit control – and you maximise income & attendance – made it an easy choice. From an operational perspective, it was incredibly encouraging to see the efficiencies that we could achieve working with you.
Secondly, and more importantly, we want to work with partners, not suppliers. What you provided was tremendous
added value. Your background and expertise in wraparound childcare, from both the commercial and operational perspective, gave us a lot of confidence in making decision decisions going forward. It had a significant impact on the high-quality and profitable provision we now run.
The business case was easy to articulate, and when sharing our plans with stakeholders, it was really important to be able to say that Childcare Bookings had high credibility, worked with other large Trusts, and, for me, it was really important that at no point had there been any hard sell. You were happy to go at our pace, and give free insight and support without pushing for a contract.
Prior to working with you, we had a centralised finance team that had to deal with all of the financial administration for the schools’ childcare. This meant hundreds of transactions to reconcile, trace back to the invoice/payment, and crucially manage any bad debt. This is a thing of the past, and your administrators and support team feel very much like an extension of our own team.
Wraparound care across a dozen schools generates the same amount of revenue as a small primary school. We have been able to use the uplift you have generated to pay for 1500 laptops across our school network. It’s been a brilliant opportunity to utilise our assets and generate cash flow when budgets are so tight. Adding holiday care, and
our new nurseries, will push the revenue up towards that of a 2 form-entry primary.
The landscape is tough, and growing revenue is an important alternative to cutting costs. It also helps us as it’s a significant point of difference against competing schools. We asked ourselves the question “If we’re not open 8am- 6pm, are we truly supporting the parents?” We can now proudly answer this question at every parent’s evening and school tour. We’re proud to be the cornerstone of our communities.
Testimonial
Working with Childcare Bookings has transformed our wraparound childcare provision. We wanted to offer families high-quality 8am–6pm childcare, 52 weeks of the year, but the administration around invoicing, reconciliation and credit control was a major barrier. Childcare Bookings provided not just a booking system, but a true end-to-end service that feels like an extension of our own team. Their expertise, operational support and partnership approach have helped us maximise attendance and income, free up our schools to focus on educating children, and create a high-quality, profitable provision that genuinely supports our communities.
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