£66 for an after school club?

You do realise that’s a termly charge, right?

Gosh - we had to pay to go to "film club" after school in 1969.

Wow! I work in an independent/private school in a very upmarket part of London. All of our after school clubs are £15 per child. That’s outrageous!

I’d say that is an expensive for a 40 minutes club. £11 for 40 mins works out at £16.50 an hour. I’d normally expect for pay an external provider for group activities about £10 a hour max per week. It depends on how many children can do it though. If only 10 can do it then the cost per child is higher than if 20 can do it.

I've taught for 12 years, 3 schools and this has never been an expectation at any of them and I can't imagine it ever being. In school time clubs or one off enrichment activities are different. A few TAs run clubs but they are all paid for them.

If you are not there with your child it is a form of childcare as well as being a club.

As a teacher, I voluntarily (& it really was - not expected by school) ran a club for a term. I didn’t charge. Never again. Parents (some) saw it as free childcare and forced children to come who didn’t want to and were then disruptive. Whilst I can manage that so it didn’t actually spoil it for those who really wanted to do it, I spend enough of my
working day managing behaviour thanks. If I’d charged, those who actually wanted to do it, would have had a better experience. (NB low income families get one free club a term at our school.)

Teacher in Ireland here . Do teachers in the UK really have to run after- school sessions free of charge ??
As well as working so hard ?
In my school many of the teachers run activities but they are all payable .

It isn't as simple as parents asking for funding to be spent on your own child.

As I said up thread, check your school strategy.

Headteachers are accountable for evidenced improvement using PP money.

Saying that, it could be possible. For instance, I had a pupil who wasn't reading at home (parents illiterate), and a HLTA running breakfast club. Pupil was also often late/absent. Using PP money to fund breakfast club meant the child’s attendance improved to national averages and with extra support every day from the HLTA at breakfast club, he passed his phonics screening test, supporting school aims in the PP strategy of improving attendance and phonic outcomes of PP pupils which were both sitting at below national levels.

the fact that you wouldn't use it as childcare, or that it isn't explicitly being billed as childcare by the school doesn't mean that for some parents that isn't primarily what they use after school clubs for.

For some parents, if it was something their child wanted to do and saved them the effort/cost of finding someone else to look after their kids for 40mins it would be worth it.

If the fact that "children from lower income families" might not be able to afford every single extra curricular activity feels so unfair to you now at £66, you're going to be aghast at secondary school when you see the price of ski trips, etc.!

If only 8 kids were allowed to attend the previous free clubs then that must have meant a lot of kids missed out, so why is this any different? Some might say that people paying for something getting it is a fairer way of choosing than teachers picking their favourites.

This sounds odd to me - there's some schools which offer paid after-school activities round here, but they nearly all advertise them as £x per session (rather than just a cost per term, even if that's how they're paid), and they're usually stuff where an external agency has come in to run it, so languages, or proper lessons or coaching in things (eg ballet, karate), so it's advertised as 'Mr Bob's karate @ local school'.

Stuff like school netball club, chess club and art club are usually free. I do think that these should be kept free and run in house, and ideally a range of different clubs offered, and anything which involves a practice or training to represent the school on a team shouldn't charge.
I think that there's a general understanding that any clubs which aren't run by teachers do charge, but I wouldn't expect that a 'Dare to Believe Club' would be a charging one, but to be honest I wouldn't know what to expect from it anyway - I assume it's come out with a brief summary? What does it involve?

Teachers dont get overtime…ever!

We've always been charged for any activity after school hours end. It's currently £8 to attend the afterschool activity until 4.15 (55 minutes), which can be art, Lego, football, netball or film club.

I tend to agree that £11 for 40 mins is a relatively expensive club.
My kids do privately run classes for drama (£12/hour), dance (£7.60/45 min session) & drawing/painting (£11/hour). They’ve previously had swimming lessons, gymnastics sessions & done various team sports and none of them were as much as £16.50/hour.

In terms of volunteer led clubs our Cubs charge £12/month, which works out at under £4/1hr 10 min session. We also have an occasional £5 top up charge for more expensive activities but it still would average out at under £5/hour. I happily volunteer my time even when my kids are not there and actually quite enjoy it. Most teachers and TAs at the kids school who do free clubs offer to run things because they enjoy a particular activity & want to share it with the kids. They are awesome & we always get some thank you gifts or make a donation to help run tne activity. We really hope they know they are appreciated. I think charging is totally reasonable but I think I would expect it to be offered on a not for profit basis.

Free trips? Yes before anyone tells me everyone can go for free now, I know that, but those that are pupil premium are funded by that.

It seems quite steep for an in-house after school activity. But we live in a relatively deprived area in the midlands and our primary school only charges for external providers (gymnastics) and electronics club (as they take things home).

Separately we have wraparound care which is paid for.

However, I would like to give a huge thank you to all the school staff that give so much of their time, energy (and sometimes own money) for the benefit of our children. It's so greatly appreciated. Not just teachers but the admin and support staff too. Thank you for all you do.

Edited to add that I'd be happy to pay for after school activities, I don't expect them to come out of the school budget. But I know that many children wouldn't be able to attend if they weren't free.

I'd be surprised if the teachers were paid. They should be but I bet they aren't.

Some of ours were paid, usually when they brought in outside companies or staff, and others were free.

Most clubs at our primary school were not free but lots are subsidised as they are run by a charitable foundation. So only £3 a session or something. They've typically ranged from £1-£7 a session outside of that.

That does sound really expensive actually. Our equivalent is 1hour and something like £3 a class. It shouldn't cost as much as private classes.

tldr- the goodwill of teachers has been sucked dry

Yes, I'm sure this is the case in many schools. It's such a shame, but I totally understand why teachers don't want to run clubs in the way they have done previously.

After school sports/activity club here are about £6-8 per session of 45-60 mins

After school childcare is £15 until 6pm.
So if you want to do the club and need the later finish it’ll cost you £21-23 total depending on the club. My kids don’t do anything other than the childcare club. It’s too expensive

I work in a school. Staff used to give up their own time to run clubs for free. Everyone is utterly broken, totally fed up and has run out of any goodwill that was left. They are exhausted by the system and vexatious complaints that seem to occur on a daily basis now- staff are simply unwilling to do this for free. However, one of the things that schools are judged on is their extra curricular offerings. Our head has decided to offer staff a say of in lieu if they run a club for a term. This will mean a supply teacher will need paying for- so we are starting to charge for clubs that were previously free. It’s the same in other schools within our MAT and seems to be commonplace now.

tldr- the goodwill of teachers has been sucked dry.

I'm in the North and after school clubs have always had a charge (normally around £45-55) per term. They are a form of childcare as they are still watching your kids!

Also not every pupil get pupil premiums - it's designed to support disadvantaged pupils, including those who are eligible for free school meals, have been eligible within the past six years, are looked after by the local authority, or are children of service personnel (according to google)

If the teachers are getting paid overtime for it then great, if not then I'd question why the fee has suddenly been introduced.

Oh right. So nobody needs to ensure the kids are safe, they can wander off whenever. No insurance is needed. Nobody needs to clean up. If the adult doesn't fancy it that day, they can just go home. How very relaxed. Super

Well, of course they need to do all of the above, as they have a duty of care to the children that they have attending that day. . But if the teacher/provider is ill, or have something else on that day, they can absolutely cancel it. Because it's not childcare in the same sense that a childminder/nursery/school wrap around is. It's an extra-curricular activity.