Wraparound care at school cancelled

I'm sorry to hear you now have even less time to work out a solution. It does suggest the financial trouble at the school is even worse than anticipated though.

But this isn’t true. My DD is in reception - the school day starts at 8.40 and ends at 3.30. That is when the education takes place. That is when she is under the responsibility of a paid teaching professional and she is taught a curriculum. Yes, of course she needs ‘caring’ for during those hours, but that takes place in a structured and educational setting.

Breakfast and after school clubs have no educational requirements or expectations, and are not operated by paid teachers - these are purely for childcare purposes.

To maintain the two are the same or interchangeable is ridiculous.

I do not use extra clubs. My DD is dropped off and picked up by me when school starts and finishes. She is in education only. Any caring for at the start or the end of the day outside of school is done by me. But if I did have to use an after school club I would certainly not consider it on a par with the school day. It solely meets a childcare requirement when the actual education ends

Just like holiday clubs. My dc goes to a holiday football club. Is it childcare? Or is it for her to learn football? Clearly both, it's a stupid distinction at that age

Of course school is child care. Until the age of about 9, it is both child care and education. In fact there is little distinction, because small children always need looking after, and are always learning. After that children don't need as much looking after, and it's not.

I hate the saying 'school isn't childcare' yet if you claim universal credit you're told it is!

I can see the government plans for every child to be offered a free 30 minute breakfast club place will be a complete nightmare as well!

Whilst the afterschool club at my school is failing badly (can’t get the staff and not enough parents want it regularly), our breakfast club is well attended. It’s full most mornings and some LSAs are happy to work another hour before school. If the government plans of everyone being entitled to half an hour of free childcare and breakfast come to fruition, this will be a nightmare for us. There is no other room for us to use and I can see large numbers of people wanting their extra half an hour if it’s free-I don’t know where we will put them all! The 60p per child a day would barely pay for toast/cereal and fruit for them, let alone the staffing costs. We can do it well, for a certain number of children and paying for the club, but would just not be able to manage everyone coming. It would probably mean the breakfast club couldn’t run at all.

Yup.

Generally the volunteer committee employ a member of staff and make covering that part of their job description.

I think Theyre probably run as CICs but I’m not sure.

Aren’t school supposed to consult and figure out how to help make it work?

There's no statutory requirement to consult, no.
There would also be little point in consulting parents if they already know that the service isn't financially viable. If anything that would just be a wasting your time and giving you false hope.

Many school run ASC's have historically been run at a loss. Given that so many schools are now in a budget deficit, operating recruitment freezes and facing the prospect of making staff redundant, this scenario is going to become more common as schools simply won't be able to absorb the loss. In a small school with a falling intake and lots of parents who WFH or have family help, even putting the fees up for the few families who do need the service 5 days a week is unlikely to make it sustainable long term.

In your shoes I would be looking at other schools, especially as you currently have no way of knowing how likely it is that the school could close.

This is something that always baffles me during these kinds of conversations on MN. There seems to be an assumption that all parents - well, mothers - do or should do little hobby jobs that fit nicely around school hours. I know the loads of the parents who use ASC at our school - there are lots of GPs, nurses, teachers, etc. Yet you know these people would be the first to whinge if their GP appointments got cancelled.

It made me laugh as well, I don't think working parents are choosing a school based on its childcare offering instead of its education offering. Rather they are considering the package of the a good education offering with suitable wraparound care to be preferable to one without wraparound care.

There's no winning, I've seen posters on other threads torn to shreds because they picked a school they really loved without thoroughly researching local wraparound care options in advance, then couldn't find provision that worked with their jobs.

This made me laugh. Believe me , I (and expect many others) wish we didn’t have to factor in childcare but this is the reality we live in. what is your actual solution other than vague “back up plan” and flexible work. OP can’t help having no family closeby - she’s already said she’s financially supporting a parent who is living with cancer. She’s moved out of a big city to somewhere rural because of rising costs (which is often suggested as a solution to the affordability crisis)

Not all jobs are flexible. I and many of my friends work for NHS. Would you be happy if your doctor / nurse / radiologist / podiatrist etc wasn’t available because they had to leave to collect their kids from school early? Or should I quit my job and depend on the state to top up DHs salary when my little is ready for school. Those are my options without wraparound care. This is not a choice parents / guardians are making. Even if this is not a situation you have directly found yourself in, I can’t fathom why so many people don’t understand it and think that working people prioritising schools with wraparound care are mad 🤷🏾‍♀️

Yeah it's impossibly cheap.

My dd's ASC (admittedly at a private school) is £6.50 per half-hour, to include food if you stay at least an hour.

It's pretty expensive considering it's not an actual class like ballet or swimming. We pay for it because we couldn't both work otherwise.

But £2.50 per hour is stupidly cheap compared to £13 per hour. No wonder it's not viable.

Edit to add - dd says there are "way more than 20" kids at ASC at her school each day, a mid sized prep school. They must make a bit of a profit on it.

Still I'd imagine people would be willing to pay more like £8 or 9 per hour rather than £2.50.

Is there any venue local to the school like a library or a play venue or even something like a supermarket cafe

I love seeing people's idea of "rural"!
Where I am, rural libraries have long been closed. The nearest supermarket is 40 min walk. I'm not even that "rural".
Where my sister lives, there's a phone box and that's it - and I don't expect that works tbh!

That’s interesting, I don’t know of any schools with that model. How does it work-a group of parents all wanting afterschool care are responsible for setting it up? Risk assessments, hiring and firing staff, sourcing equipment, safeguarding etc?

If there’s appetite to continue it then could move to committee run. There are quite a lot around that operate on that model and hire the premises from the school.

Would need to shift to viable pricing though.

As a single parent, I can completely empathise, OP.

But as a senior leader in a primary school, I can say that school budgets are not just non existent- they’re often in a deficit. Ours is. And that deficit is getting bigger and bigger. It’s largely caused by un funded staff pay rises. Schools in this situation then face a lot of pressure to reduce that deficit. We can’t make staff redundant and staff the school effectively so we’re having to make savings everywhere else.

It’s not feasible anymore. But it’s a wider problem with school funding.

The government don’t seem to want people to use childminders-they want schools to do everything but won’t fund them properly, so so it all collapses. A school near to us stopped running their ASC as they couldn’t recruit anyone to work in it and when they looked into private providers, it was so expensive, it just wasn’t viable for the few families that wanted it. To set up a business for just a couple of hours a day at a pretty inconvenient time for most people looking for work, is not sustainable.

This is the risk you run when you choose a school based on it's childcare offering instead of the education offering. Don't mistake schools for childcare.

I hope you have planned for back-up solutions, have flexible jobs and take heed from the OP just in case...

I think parents can override that decision if they put it in writing to the school. Ours used to let kids from year 3 walk to and from school alone with parents permission so they could be as young as 7. Recently they've changed it to year 5 which seems more in line with other schools but as far as I'm aware there was never actually any issues with year 3's walking alone, we just don't trust kids to do things like this anymore.

No magic solutions OP but I feel your pain, my DC are in a small rural school with a falling roll number. We chose the school over another nearby one because the other one had no wraparound care. Recently our school switched the wraparound care to an outside provider as they were no longer able to staff it in-house.

My concern is that the new provider could just pull the plug at any time (they've already had some staff turnover in a term and a half), then we'd be screwed. There's no childminders locally any more, no magic pool of students and an au pair would be isolated and miserable here (even if we could find one).

Yes I know exactly what is involved with running an ASC thanks, I'm a school governor (not at this school). Loads of schools- including this one at times- run a one hour coding club or art club, or multi sport as part of their extra--curricular activities separate from ASC provision. Putting one or two extra of those on -bearing in mind lots of TAs were already employed by the ASC private provider, and are now employed directly by the school at the new ASC, wouldn't have been beyond them and in fact would have ensured those TAs didn't miss out on the money for a term. School is open anyway for paid sports clubs from private providers (all full). Parents would have been happy to pay.

They just expected parents (women) to mop it up.

It is now set up properly and school did reveal they were already planning on taking it over, just not so quickly. Where did I say I expected it for free? ASC costs £16, proportional costs for the shorter time period would be fine.

Although at my other child's school those extra curricular activities are already free where they are provided in house.

@Fishinthesink do you know what is involved with setting up ASC and finding funding. Or did you expect staff to do it for free until it could be set up properly

That seems crazy tbh. I’d have thought people would be happy to raise prices to keep provision. £2.50 an hour for the early slot is clearly not viable.

At our one they removed the option to book for just an hour- it was 3 hours or nothing and part of that reason was financial viability.