Wraparound care at school cancelled

One of my DCs school had similar. They closed their after school care during COVID, sold it as the school having one during enrollment for that year then told all new reception parents (which I was) once we'd all accepted the school place.
The frustrating part was this was a fully subscribed 30 kid per year school, not a rural village school. They couldn't find anyone to run it.
Parents massively got round it by having older siblings/cousins/friends high school age children collect on their way past from the local high school.
Then the school decided to enforce a new rule that no under 18s could collect children from school.
They did eventually get an outside provider a couple years later, 3 days a week to provide ASC and Holiday Club care but the uptake is still quite low, because by then most of us had found alternative options and reception children couldn't be included if they were under 5 as per the external companies insurance!
Childminders are going to become rarer and rarer for several reasons, I tried to find one for school holidays and there isn't one.

The problem is the school budget - even with the pay NMW plus taxes plus pensions costs can quickly mount up. Not every school has the wriggle room to operate an ASC at a loss for a small number of children. In my area demand for easily outstrips supply.

A friend looked into running an afterschool club as an external provider and costs/hoops quickly mounted up, along with school and parental expectations she gave up. She struggled dealing with some primary student needs and behaviours. There were a couple of parents regularly late with same old excuses and she had nowhere to leave those children as the few staff around would be in meetings or training at 5pm.

Not sure of a solution other than the country having more childminders.

Oh OP what a nightmare and at such short notice. At least If they’d said that they were closing in July and not re-opening in September, that would have given people some notice and a chance to organise something.
As People have said, yes there is a government push for wraparound to be provided and from September this year, I think schools are meant to facilitate this from 8am-6pm (am wraparound, school day and pm wraparound) with the aim of getting people back to work and keeping them in work, but ultimately it does need to be viable financially and if not enough children are going then they can probably use the “not viable” card. Our primary school operate a wraparound and holiday club but it’s very popular and they’ve got an outside company in to facilitate it but it’s an over subscribed school. The holiday club also takes in children from other schools in the area.
I have a childminder so I don’t use it but it is good to know it’s there and I’m sure it helps with school numbers.
Another issue is cost - our local childminders are substantially cheaper than using wraparound club but there is enough kids for it all to work.
I would be looking at moving their school as not only have you got this issue with wraparound, extras are usually the first thing to go before schools look at closure and I’d be getting this sorted before everyone else is looking for an alternative. I hope you can get it sorted.

There are multiple factors that have made ASC provision less viable, so if you're going to isolate one you need proof. What about shrinking rolls, for example? The kids who've most recently left primary school were the 2013-14 birth cohort. They were a bigger group than the 2020-1 birth cohort who replaced them. Your explanation doesn't even try to account for that.

@Owlbookend I think in Nordic countries childcare after a certain age, possibly 8/9, isn’t really a thing as children are deemed more independent than here, so ‘latchkey’ children are more common there from a young age.

What a worrying situation.

The points others have made show that it's complicated but I would also think that Post Covid Home Working has contributed to situations like these.

It's great for those who can work from home but for those who can't, it has a negative impact when there are no longer the same amount of families who need to use After School Care.

If Working From Home was no longer viable, After School Care would be thriving. As that is unlikely to happen, things are only going to get more difficult for those who don't have that flexibility.

We could support childcare and working parents more. However, this would need funding. You either divert from other costs or raise more tax revenue.

@Brewtiful the majority of village schools near me are smaller than OP’s. They are not all at risk of imminent closure. Not saying some of them won’t close at some point. But they will be doing everything they can to reduce their costs.

OP’s school heavily promoted their ASC but it still didn’t attract enough pupils, so unfortunately it had to close.

In a rural area 60 pupils may be hard to put in another school if OP’s school were to close. It could be one of the other rural schools close and pupils move to OP’s school.

It doesn't have to be this way. See link below about childcare in nordic countries. However, as a society we choose what we fund.

https://nordics.info/show/artikel/childcare-infrastructure-in-the-nordic-countries

No additional advice just lots of sympathy. We all know school isn’t childcare and nor are you saying that! But your childcare has fallen through and that’s very stressful as a parent.

I agree with those saying the school looks likely to close. With just 60 children, 5 new starters last year and likely a similar amount of not fewer this September the numbers just won't work. It's very likely they have been subsidising the ASC for a significant amount of time as it's clearly been running at a loss.

In all honesty I would forget about looking for new after-school care and move them to the other school nearby with wraparound asap before you get the inevitable letter telling you keeping the school open just isn't financially viable.

There would be no point. They will just tell you no. I previously worked at a school that had to close due to falling numbers and the school didn't even give staff a heads up despite being outright asked multiple times because they can't. The staff found out at the same time as parents that it was under consultation for closure. The majority of parents moved their kids to new schools meaning numbers fell further and closure was inevitable.

What is the normal intake for reception? And what do other classes look like number wise? It won't be an overnight closure and you will likely be informed well in advance. Our initial announcement was made on October half term and the school closed the following summer. There are measures the school can take, they can create mixed classes to reduce staffing costs to be more sustainable. So closure is not a definite but if that is the only school you can get to, it may be worth exploring what your options may be.

@FancyCatSlave some women don’t think this is okay, but if isn’t financially viable then it isn’t financially viable. Even ‘good’ schools may have to make this decision eventually as birth rate keeps falling.

So stressful, same happened to us last year. I was fortunate though in that I could shift my working hours - I now come in quite early and work through lunch and then finish at 3 to do school pick up. Would you be able to do something similar? My husband now sorts drop off but we share it with a neighbour.

Our friend DD is 16 and very responsible .She collects younger children, and looks after them till their parents are home .This works well for her and the families .she gets paid and they benefit.Could you look for someone like this maybe . Obv checks her background and makes sure shes responsible of course . I do think wraparound care should be regulated more .Women are working FT now .I was lucky (DC older now) and could work school hours then

I know, i agree its shit. I hated leaving the job I loved and as I said I never recovered career wise. But what if there is no choice? Sometimes you have to accept it and make the changes so you are at home at the right time for your kids. And I was supporting my elderly parent like you are too.
Its rubbish and you have my full sympathy but when push comes to shove you need to look after the kids.

If you have time, I suggest you raise it with your MP and local councillors, OP.

I'm not saying they may be able to directly help your situation (though they might) but I feel that it is a wider issue that needs raising here, and they do rely on feedback from members of the public, but don't necessarily, I would say, always hear directly from mothers of school age children.

The problem is that margins in childcare are small. With low numbers it is difficult to even break even. This is a small school so it is always going to be challenging. With a falling birth rate and falling rolls, it is going to get even more difficult. The school has likely been absorbing a loss for some time. They know that by offering wraparound they can attract families like the OPs and therefore it prevents further reduction of pupil numbers. However, there comes a point when the losses generated by the ASC are too big to be absorbed. 5 pupils joining reception in the next academic year was probably the final straw. It means that the school's total funding will be lower and the pool of children who may use the ASC will be even smaller going forward.
If we want to support working parents, we need to subsidise childcare and take a co-ordinated approach with local planning. Minibuses could collect children from rural schools and care could be provided in a central hub. However, this isn't electorally popular. People are resistant to raising & spending more tax revenue. The idea of local authorities planning and co-ordinating services has been largely abandoned to a private market based approach. This leaves working parents like the OP who do necessary but less flexible jobs in a very difficult position. We could make different choices about planning and funding, but there has to be a societal will to do this.

This 👌

I really feel for you op. This happened to me last year and I'm the same as you, no family and no help. I was devastated. I ended up having to cut my hour at work as there was no alternative. Eventually, after about 9 months, a local nursery opened an after school club but charge me £16 for half an hour for my two kids. Where as the wrap around at school was just over £10 for up to 6pm for both. I can't really afford it so only do it 3 times a week.

It's absolutely worth asking if any of the wraparound staff would consider a private arrangement where they collect your children and look after them in your house. Worth asking if any TAs at the school might consider this too.

What a stressful situation to suddenly find yourself in.

As a side note, in my school we have children who are sometimes not collected until up to 45 mins - 1 hour after the end of the school day. There is always a gaggle of children sat in the office waiting to be collected; most have parents who are simply running late and have communicated with school but other children are just left to wait until someone (often an older sibling) turns up. It's very sad.

It's definitely a wider societal issue, but unfortunately because the birth rates are plummeting it's not a sector that people can feel secure in. It's very difficult.

It sounds like there needs to be a campaign to get people into being a childminder again/ways to make it easier to do that/incentivise as there was at least locally to me in the South East of England in the noughties.

It's not just an issue for parents, this is an issue for the economy and society as a whole.

When my DDs were little in the 00s there was a good choice of childminders and not many nurseries (or the ones that existed had only a "satisfactory" Ofsted report, which I thought wasn't good enough) and they had two wonderful childminders.

Could you put them into a school near where you work with wraparound? I considered doing this as very rural but family stepped in to help instead. In scotland though so not sure how it works with placement requests. If parents start the process of moving children the school may reconsider as it brings closure even closer.

ThIs happened to us after Covid as school couldn’t afford to run ASC for multiple bubbles which would only have a couple of kids in. DH and I teach - not like we can swap our hours! Bloody moment upthread about choosing an inflexible job really annoyed - are we going to get to the point where people canning have kids if they WfH? Anyway, me and another mum (nurse - again can’t work different hours) paid the ASC supervisor until bubbles disappeared and the club ran again.