£66 for an after school club?

We pay £65-78 a term per activity depending how long the term is. DS is doing athletics and dodgeball this term, we put him down for cooking club every term but he never gets it. That's technically an hour but by the time they've left class gone over to the hall/sports field having changed into kit, that's 10-15 minutes gone and they usually finish at least 5 minutes before the advertised finish time.

There's the odd cheaper one but it's hard to get spaces, DS did wellbeing club which mainly seemed to be basic arts/crafts and a bit of yoga that was £10 for a whole term absolute bargain.
His out of school activities are more, gymnastics is £40 a month and swimming lessons are £32.50 a month

ETA that's Essex and a very mixed demographic catchment, 37% PP eligible

My DCs are at High School now. DS does Physics club and Hockey, DD does Football, Dance and Gymnastics.
All free.
We're in the North.

i hear you OP. It’s not wraparound care you are booking it’s a 40min after school club costing £11 per session. Yes, I think that’s expensive.
equivalent activity clubs here work out about £3- £4 per hour session for the hour sports clubs, that’s junior school.
The high school my eldest attends all clubs are free.
If you want the full, before & afterschool wrap around care it’s more expensive, but a different thing.

I run After School Club with another TA at our school. It’s £5 a session, from end of school till 5:15.
Some of the Clubs that take place after school have a small fee if an outside specialist comes in, but generally, those run by Teaching Staff are free.

They were all free when I was at school and then when I was teaching at secondary schools. There was an expectation in certain subjects that you offered them.
When my DC were at school (between 2000 and 2024) they started off pretty much all being free, at primary school, then gradually as outside providers started being brought in there were charges. At secondary school they were still all free bar one or two very specialist short term clubs.

We pay for clubs run by external people but not those run by teachers e.g. dance is £5 a week, karate is more than double that. All are 1 hour sessions. What annoys me is having to double pay for both the club and after-school care (one day a week my child goes to a club until 4.15 then on to after school care).

My dc primary school stopped all after school activities when covid hit. Now they only do one club at a time for about a term a year. Before they would have a free club every day after school and one every day at lunchtime. I pay just over £3 a session for my year 7 child to do trampolining club with an outside provider.

Sounds normal to me YABU

None of the clubs at our school are free - they range from £10-50 a term, depending on what it is.

We are in London but 50% of the school is pupil premium - they get a very hefty discount I believe

I find scouting organisation is very good value for money… beavers, cubs, brownies etc. about £40 for a whole term and longer than 40mina

It’s not a personal allocation for your child (unless they are LAC). It’s additional income to schools to support this group as a whole. Look in their website and their PP statement will detail how they are spending it.

Cross posted. The published Pupil Premium Strategy will be on the school website.

Ours are £4 per session run by staff. DS had done darts, history and Eco/science.

The annual country dancing festival, which the children practicing after school for, is free though.

Wage increases, ni hike, increase in gas and electric etc etc etc. Everything has gone up making all businesses more expensive to run. Schools are no different really.

Schools don’t get enough money (new taxes won’t be making much ) so very little can be free anymore
Increase in cost of educational trips and visits is using up more and more of the PP.

All the staff led clubs at my dc school are free. Only the external clubs have fees. However without knowing what that club actually involved and what the running costs might be, it’s hard to say whether it is poor value or fair.

Ask them?

And PP funding isn’t an individual allocation to spend in each child who is eligible. It’s to fund improvements in outcomes for children in this group as a whole so can be used for a wide variety of things. Your schools PP strategy will be on their website so you can see how they are using it.

School budgets are incredibly tight and they are having to look for ways of raising income to pay for the basics. Most charge for extra curricular activities but will offer free or reduced places for families that need it.

The school will have a published Pupil Premium Strategy.

It maybe that they have allocated some PP money to support disadvantaged pupils to attend after school, if this matches the areas identified for support. Wider opportunities are part of the strategy and included in inspection.

Our school does hour long teacher run clubs 2 days a week for free, but they are generally amazing 😬

Nope I’m in Yorkshire. You can see from the replies plenty of people think charging reasonable though even if you dispute the amount.

I am also ‘far far North’ and my children’s primary school has never offered any free after school clubs. Most are in the £8-£10 per session region so I would not say £66 for 6 sessions is unreasonable

It seems odd to complain about the cost of something when you don't know what it is.

I live in the north, school has higher than national average PP, we pay for clubs