To think schools should get with the times re working parents.

[working8til4]

Why can't they be open 8-6 for everyone? It would help reduce gender inequality in the work place

AIBU - DON'T BE SILLY
YANBU - actually you have a point

I think schools are used for too much for social work already. It sometimes feels like education is no longer the main priority.

Ideally wrap around care should be in all schools. There are issues though. One is that, perhaps surprisingly, demand is not always as great as you’d imagine. Grandparents pick up, wfh parents pick up. This can reduce profits so I think it would have to be government funded, not for profit, and parents need to pay a reasonable hourly rate.
IMO, it should be in the school building, but not school run. Schools are absolutely swamped with safeguarding and social concerns these days. Childcare has to be separate.
The biggest issue is staffing. It’s much harder to get staff in all roles in schools these days. So it needs to be a decent hourly rate, again, I’d government fund it, not for profit, run at a loss if need be.
Afterschool childminders should have ofsted for safeguarding only, not assessing quality of education provision, so that more people might offer that.

Schools are to educate. Why is it the school’s responsibility? Why isn’t it your employer’s responsibility, for example? Why isn’t it yours? You say you didn’t have a child when you bought your house, but surely you thought ahead? Thinking ahead involves thinking about having children and the practicalities, along with increases in the mortgage rate.

More than that, to answer one of your early points: yes, fancy jobs that pay well don’t always offer flexible working. That’s part of parenthood - one or both parents choosing a job that works or going P/T which they wouldn’t have done if they didn’t have children.

What about nightworkers? Why not make schools into 24hr boarding houses so parents could do what they want while other people look after their children for shit money so the parents can work in a fancy office. Alphas and deltas, yes?

Well that depends on who you vote for doesn’t it.

Could we’ll be your fault. 😂

Scandinavia have a government who charge more taxes; they also care about children and their mental well-being and research shows they have some of the happiest kids in the world.
We have none of those things, sadly!

How about reduce the working day to 9-3 without making pay pro rata 😂

Teachers would be working a 12 hour day? If you add setting up/marking etc plus what they take home. I think you may be missing that the education system needs an overhaul. It’s a one size fits all system which does not work for children with sen. Requiring 5/6 year olds to sit still at a table for hours is ridiculous in my opinion. Children's mental health issues are at all time high. Plus the amount of teachers leaving education….

Yep came on to say this. And if you need childcare there are childminders, breakfast clubs and after school clubs. It's not the schools duty to work around your work schedule- so entitled.

My DC can be in school 7.30am - 6pm; I’m one of those awful people who deserves to pay 20% VAT and wear sackcloth and ashes…who chose a private school for the wrap around care so I could continue to further my career that I worked so hard to establish. Onsite wrap around care is near top of the list why I and my friends chose private school.

SCHOOLS ARE NOT FOR CHILDCARE

Before the Conservative party got in there were many proposals in my local area new schools being built because we went two tier (never happened local schools are now overcrowded) and extended wrap care provided by outside sources at the school the idea was you pay (ofstead registered legit people) to watch your child at the school then they go to their classes from the wrap care this would be seperate from the schools in the financial sense so not using their budget etc coupled with free breakfast clubs (government paid for) it was designed to streamline the whole work/school balance and it would have worked it was a well thought out consultation teachers were behind it parents were behind it then they lost the election and poof it vanished along with funding for new schools we couldn't go back to three tier so we have over crowded primary schools with little to none play areas and secondary schools over two seperate sites quite a distance apart

Logistics arnt a Conservative speciality

Some local authorities want to shorten the school week!

There just aren't that many people who want to work in wraparound care in schools. The roles aren't attractive. They're inflexible, because of their nature they have to be a set time and place. They're not that many hours, but they still tether you to school holidays and the associated crowds and prices for your annual leave.

The government could fix some of this with better pay. If it paid the same as the average full time role for 4 hours a day, I expect there'd be more candidates. But that's not realistic, especially not when there are so many other areas of school that are crying out for funding.

Basically, a lot of this is just a consequence of living in a society with a tight labour market. The poster upthread made a good point about demand being lower than you'd think too. The way the birthrates have been going, we're likely to see more of this.

I’ll get flamed but I think it’s sad that parents put the buck, or need to put the buck as their priority - instead of seeing their children 8-6 daily.

Basic not nice 2 bed apartments where I live and come from start at 170k and houses about 220k. I am not commutable distance to London. Only someone on an average salary and 5 times that multiple would be able to afford the flat… based on zero deposit and as I say aren’t nice. Of course 2 people need to work to buy somewhere to live as not everyone is even on the average. Renting isn’t far different. The poor standard of the 170k 2 bed apartments don’t appear on rightmove for rent. The ones, which do cost upwards of 200k to buy and just over 1k a month in rent.

I don’t think schools should be forced offer wrap around as standard. But I’m not unaware of how hard things are for some.

Many workplaces need someone there for their opening hours. Imagine if the supermarket closed early as they had already served their quota of customers. Also, they'd have to significantly increase minimum wage for people to be able to make ends meet on fewer hours.

If you don't want to extend the actual educational part of the day, that's staffed by teachers OP, then of course YANBU. Schools should have wraparound provision for all who need it. Thankfully where we live all primary schools do already open from 8am-6pm (often longer, 7.30am seems the usual start time). Of course it comes at a cost, there's no getting away from that, someone has to pay for it, and for that reason it won't be accessible to all. But I have friends and family who live in areas where wraparound care is practically non-existent, or so limited it's only available to a small % of those who need it. Given the government's commitment to this years and years ago, that's really not acceptable. What are working parents supposed to do? For some of them it really isn't an option to reduce their hours at work or find a more flexible job. The government need to provide adequate funds and resources so all schools can provide wraparound care that meets the needs of their communities. It's not OK for schools to simply opt out, or have very limited provision so it's only available to a minority of families. If a parent needs to give up paid employment purely because the wraparound care they need doesn't exist, that's a huge loss to individuals, families and the economy. Yes employers should be more flexible, but not all can be, and that's not appropriate for all roles. Regardless of all that, it was a manifesto promise, it should be happening. But given the track record of our current government, I'm really not at all surprised that the reality falls very far short of their promises.

Do you mean pass the buck? Can’t figure out what this means?

do you think parents shouldn’t work and kids not go to school then so they can hang around together 8-6?

how does that work? Who pays rent and food? As a society if everyone stopped work and homeschooled?

Although there is a valid point to be made about childcare issues, "schools should get with the times" is a very goady statement.
You're saying that schools- all schools? - are behind "the times"?
If you've never worked in school management you have no idea of the layers of complexity involved. The budget decisions are increasing difficult.
If people want low cost, readily available, subsidised childcare like the Swedish model, fine - but are you prepared for the tax hikes?.

It can’t pay well either. My son is frequently the only child after school. That’s a grand total of £5.50 an hour for the woman who runs it, less food and resources.

To the person who asked if parents didn’t consider this before having kids: Yes, we did, but we had a huge change in circumstances, meaning I no longer had my term-time, school-hours job. School holidays are an absolute nightmare and we still have no idea how we are going to get through the summer holidays.

God, this thread is an absolute mumsnet bingo of people inexplicably dripping contempt for all the people working to ensure the society they enjoy keeps going, isn’t it?

It’s self evidently not ideal that the working week and school week bear no relation to each other for the vast majority of people, and that being able to organise your time to avoid the consequences of that for you/your children while not suffering financial or career penalties remains the privilege of the few (which includes me in my cooshty job, incidentally, before the brain squad inevitably trot out their “bitter” comments).

The answer to the wider issue of how we organise society in a changing economic landscape probably isn’t that your doctors, chemists, freight drivers, job centre workers, nurses, teachers, sanitation workers and social workers are all entitled shoddy parents who shouldn’t even have had children but now they have, how dare they suggest society/public services could be arranged better for them. However, I look forward to another 15 pages of the same old shite inevitably being trotted out.

Why don't you think schools should be forced to offer wraparound care? In my area the actual staff at the school have no involvement in the wrap around care. The company that provides the care handles everything, it very much seems like the only involvement the school has is in providing the buildings. Given the building exist, and there isn't anything else going on in the parts of the school where the wrap around care takes place before 8.30am and after 3pm, what exactly is the problem with all schools being forced to allow the use of their buildings in this way? I gather they also charge the wraparound care provider for the use of the buildings, so it's a win win, surely? If, for some reason the after school club companies don't exist in certain areas, it's the governments responsibility to provide the incentives for them to do so. They're all for private companies rather than the state providing solutions to society's problems after all, so if that's their chosen model, they better make damn well sure it works.

Contrary to the idea that school is not childcare, Matthew Walker, sleep scientist and author of 'Why we Sleep', talks about how school hours are set up for the convenience of working parents and he talks about the detrimental impact this has on children, especially teenagers. Teens sleep patterns change developmentally, and they are wired to need later morning starts. But they're shoehorned into school early with knock on consequences for all sorts of areas of health and achievement. It's a sobering read. This is a modern working life problem, and children shouldn't have to absorb adult problems, to their detriment.

You're conflating two things in this post. Schools being obliged to offer wraparound care, and be obliged to allow their buildings to be used for it. They're not the same thing at all.

And the latter is a much stronger point than the former. A school existing in an area doesn't mean a workforce is available to provide wraparound care in it, much less at a rate that would make it viable.

It's unreasonable to think that before you have children you should be able to completely plan ahead for their care. Circumstances change.
You can't predict illness, redundancy, additional needs, never mind a financial crash or a pandemic!
Parents need reliable and reasonable childcare. It's not about schools being "behind the times" it's about getting a government with the will to put support mechanisms back in place that were removed, and develop them further.

No, I think employers need to get with the programme instead. THAT is what is causing the inequality. It’s no coincidence that the majority of flexible working requests come from women, not men.