All schools guilty

As a private day nursery we take children right up until they go to school, but we are finding that a lot more of our children are leaving earlier and earlier.

We offer free education, but parents have told us that the primary schools where their children will be starting have said that if they don't take up all five free education sessions, they can't have any. This means the child is taken away from our setting because the parents fear they will lose their sessions at their preferred school.

After speaking to our early years department about how the schools were saying children must take up all five sessions, we were told it was perfectly acceptable for schools to implement the 'take up all five sessions or none at all procedure' and that they had every right to do so.

But when we asked if we could say the same, we were told we were not allowed.

So, it is not just the independent schools that are luring children away and disrupting the continuity of care of young children ('Change nurseries now, parents told', 18 September). State schools are just as bad.

Louise Munro-Smith

Tots Corner Nursery, Suffolk