To think schools should get with the times re working parents.

Poor kids at school from 8-6! Most adults don't do those hours and work is usually less full on than school too.

What is needed is more childcare availability, not schooling from 8-6. There is help available for the costs but sometimes the availability just isn't there - in my village, all the childminders are fully booked and the waiting list for wraparound care at the school is very long. I had to put my ds2's name down on the waiting list for after school club 18 months before he started school!!

We also need more flexible working for parents, working from home when the option is available. And the attitude of MANY men needs to change - they need to step up too. Now women have to work too it simply doesn't work otherwise.

I'm a single parent btw

I'm a teacher and don't agree.

@working8til4 does your DC’s school not have wraparound? When my son was a baby and DD was at primary I used a childminder and she did pick ups and drop offs at school for DD.

I think all schools having wrap around care isn’t unreasonable, but extending the school day to 8-6 is hugely unreasonable. Kids are not meant to focus and learn for so many hours in the day, that’s too much. Wrap around care is play and fun not learning. My eldest still isn’t able to do a full day at school (he does 30 mins less than his peers), but also where do we draw the line? If we cater to 8-6, what happens when families who start work earlier than that call for 7-6? Or those of us who don’t need our children in school for these extra 4 hours per day? It would be very unfair to force that on all families especially those who wouldn’t want or need it.
Im not taking away from the fact school days are a nightmare to work around, but wrap around care available to all who need it would be a much fairer way to overcome this in my opinion.

So you want an AFTER SCHOOL CLUB?

Pick a school with one.

What that families manage to find ways to work for them without forcing all children to do longer days?

it’s also pretty even at drop off, I don’t see end of day pick up to comment due to being in ASC

I think things need a shake up too.
Its not possible to teach/learn from 8-6

But i vaguely feel like you could do 8-12 school and then a team of childcare arrives to do lunch and take over with more club like activities

I think germany are like this.

In the EU country where I live, wraparound care is available at school from 7am to 6pm. In the morning until 8.10 it's free, and in the evening until 4.30pm it's free (school hours are 8.25-3.15). After 4.30pm it costs the equivalent of 25p per 15 minutes. It's run by a youth care group in the town (paid by the local council) not teaching staff.

In reality, no kids are there from 7am to 6pm. But it allows parents the flexibility to be able to work full time hours and still take kids to school etc. Kids are happy to be there longer after school as their friends are there, it's fun, etc. Parents get to share the responsibilities of taking/dropping kids at school as the hours are flexible.

School also arrange accompanied walks to the local centre for after school music lessons and to the sports centre for various after school sports that kids do.

9-5 as working hours are hardly difficult to find childcare for- it’s just you don’t want to pay for it, which I have sympathy for, I do think childcare should be classed as a work expense/heavily subsidised.

if you only need to drop at 8 and can pick up by 6 at the latest, there’s so many options from childminders and before/after school clubs at school to nannies.

the real childcare crunches are for those who don’t work 9-5 within a 30 mins drive from their dcs school.

for many shift jobs like healthcare, if you don’t have family childcare and you aren’t senior enough to afford a nanny, you can’t really do that job and have dcs.

I do the after school club at our school a few days a week and it’s pretty much 50/50
of mothers and fathers picking up.

This is reminding me of the lockdown threads about parents stressing re juggling work & home schooling. Lots of intelligent considered posts about not having dc you can’t look after. 🤔

I think it would be better if jobs round school times were easier to come by. I think for the majority of children it is better for them to have down time at home where they can spend time on their own and entertain themselves.
I'd argue it would also be good for a good many adults too.

The problem is that the line between child education and child care has been massively blurred over time. Teaching is a full time job, I wouldn’t expect teachers to do more than they do already. But I wouldn’t object to a social enterprise or similar using school premises to provide wraparound care outside of core education hours. We need to separate out the distinction between school and not-school, regardless of the environment it is provided in. So telling ‘schools to get with the programme’ is not the answer, we need funding to allow parents to work the hours needed to put food on the table and then determine where that provision should be provided at a subsidised cost.

What's stopping them? They have equal responsibility

I see it as an employer problem than the schools, there needs to be more flexible working options.

Because children can't cope with working the same hours as adults.

My kids's school is open 7.30 to 18.30 but that includes wrap around care you can pay for before and after core school hours. It would be great if all schools could provide something similar but it's just not financially sustainable for a lot of them. Our kids attend a particularly large school which I think is the main reason it works and is affordable.

I’m not being defensive.

As teachers DH and I have meetings til 5pm (we don’t finish when the pupils do). We then chose a school that offered wraparound (we have no family). Obviously we have to pay for that - it’s childcare not education. DD is now in secondary sorts herself out and in so has reduced our childcare costs.

TBH, I would have loved 24/7 childcare as it’s difficult to find solutions for evening events but that’s a “me” problem and not common for majority of families.