A couple of things:
Firstly I get mighty sick of people saying " school is not childcare".
I have a teacher friend who says this a lot.
Actually, it kind of is.
Schools for kids of non-rich people only exist in the first place because after laws were brought in to protect children from having to go to work in the factories with their parents, they had to go somewhere.
That is why the government of the time brought in universial education free schooling for all children.
So that the children of workers were literally kept off the streets.
So. If the world as it is demands that we need to go somewhere to work, in order to live,we need schools to provide the childcare to do this.
some of us have "jobs" rather than "careers" and those jobs have the working hours they have, You can't usually "just ask to leave early".
In the current economic climate any job is hard to come by, so it is not reasonable for a working parent to be picky about what job they take.
Also, most of us have to work. Its not a choice.
All very well for my teacher friend and her public sector working husband who has flexible hours to say that school is not childcare.
There are two of them. She works only in term time. He can arrange his hours to do school pick ups.
Lastly, something has got to be done about public transport, because the awfulness of our buses is the reason I could not possible work beyond 5 pm, even though our after school club goes until six.
OP-get together with other parents who want the same thing and ask-they can only say no.