£66 for an after school club?

[EmmaJane2025]

Just had some details from school about this term’s after school clubs. Two of them are £40 and the other, £66!
For context, this is a state school with a mix of a few students from comfortably-off families, many average & some Pupil Premium students. Obviously if this was an Independent school then this wouldn’t even cross my mind to be an issue but a state school? Do state schools usually charge for after school clubs? This one hasn’t done before; I’ve never been required to pay for the ones my DC attended previously.

Perhaps I’m missing a factor in it all, perhaps I’m out of date? It just seems unfair that students from lower income families will likely miss out on something I truly believe all kids should have the opportunity to attend - extra curricular activities.
AIBU?

Free trips? Yes before anyone tells me everyone can go for free now, I know that, but those that are pupil premium are funded by that.

I tend to agree that £11 for 40 mins is a relatively expensive club.
My kids do privately run classes for drama (£12/hour), dance (£7.60/45 min session) & drawing/painting (£11/hour). They’ve previously had swimming lessons, gymnastics sessions & done various team sports and none of them were as much as £16.50/hour.

In terms of volunteer led clubs our Cubs charge £12/month, which works out at under £4/1hr 10 min session. We also have an occasional £5 top up charge for more expensive activities but it still would average out at under £5/hour. I happily volunteer my time even when my kids are not there and actually quite enjoy it. Most teachers and TAs at the kids school who do free clubs offer to run things because they enjoy a particular activity & want to share it with the kids. They are awesome & we always get some thank you gifts or make a donation to help run tne activity. We really hope they know they are appreciated. I think charging is totally reasonable but I think I would expect it to be offered on a not for profit basis.

We've always been charged for any activity after school hours end. It's currently £8 to attend the afterschool activity until 4.15 (55 minutes), which can be art, Lego, football, netball or film club.

Teachers dont get overtime…ever!

This sounds odd to me - there's some schools which offer paid after-school activities round here, but they nearly all advertise them as £x per session (rather than just a cost per term, even if that's how they're paid), and they're usually stuff where an external agency has come in to run it, so languages, or proper lessons or coaching in things (eg ballet, karate), so it's advertised as 'Mr Bob's karate @ local school'.

Stuff like school netball club, chess club and art club are usually free. I do think that these should be kept free and run in house, and ideally a range of different clubs offered, and anything which involves a practice or training to represent the school on a team shouldn't charge.
I think that there's a general understanding that any clubs which aren't run by teachers do charge, but I wouldn't expect that a 'Dare to Believe Club' would be a charging one, but to be honest I wouldn't know what to expect from it anyway - I assume it's come out with a brief summary? What does it involve?

the fact that you wouldn't use it as childcare, or that it isn't explicitly being billed as childcare by the school doesn't mean that for some parents that isn't primarily what they use after school clubs for.

For some parents, if it was something their child wanted to do and saved them the effort/cost of finding someone else to look after their kids for 40mins it would be worth it.

If the fact that "children from lower income families" might not be able to afford every single extra curricular activity feels so unfair to you now at £66, you're going to be aghast at secondary school when you see the price of ski trips, etc.!

If only 8 kids were allowed to attend the previous free clubs then that must have meant a lot of kids missed out, so why is this any different? Some might say that people paying for something getting it is a fairer way of choosing than teachers picking their favourites.

It isn't as simple as parents asking for funding to be spent on your own child.

As I said up thread, check your school strategy.

Headteachers are accountable for evidenced improvement using PP money.

Saying that, it could be possible. For instance, I had a pupil who wasn't reading at home (parents illiterate), and a HLTA running breakfast club. Pupil was also often late/absent. Using PP money to fund breakfast club meant the child’s attendance improved to national averages and with extra support every day from the HLTA at breakfast club, he passed his phonics screening test, supporting school aims in the PP strategy of improving attendance and phonic outcomes of PP pupils which were both sitting at below national levels.

Teacher in Ireland here . Do teachers in the UK really have to run after- school sessions free of charge ??
As well as working so hard ?
In my school many of the teachers run activities but they are all payable .

As a teacher, I voluntarily (& it really was - not expected by school) ran a club for a term. I didn’t charge. Never again. Parents (some) saw it as free childcare and forced children to come who didn’t want to and were then disruptive. Whilst I can manage that so it didn’t actually spoil it for those who really wanted to do it, I spend enough of my
working day managing behaviour thanks. If I’d charged, those who actually wanted to do it, would have had a better experience. (NB low income families get one free club a term at our school.)

I've taught for 12 years, 3 schools and this has never been an expectation at any of them and I can't imagine it ever being. In school time clubs or one off enrichment activities are different. A few TAs run clubs but they are all paid for them.

If you are not there with your child it is a form of childcare as well as being a club.

I’d say that is an expensive for a 40 minutes club. £11 for 40 mins works out at £16.50 an hour. I’d normally expect for pay an external provider for group activities about £10 a hour max per week. It depends on how many children can do it though. If only 10 can do it then the cost per child is higher than if 20 can do it.

Wow! I work in an independent/private school in a very upmarket part of London. All of our after school clubs are £15 per child. That’s outrageous!

Gosh - we had to pay to go to "film club" after school in 1969.

You do realise that’s a termly charge, right?

I scanned through the responses here but am
mostly surprised to see that teachers are working outside their contracted hours to just - run clubs for a random group of kids? For free? I had absolutely assumed this would be paid work.

there is nothing after hours for free at the primary school but there are a few things in school hours (lunchtime clubs) that I now understand teachers would be giving up their own lunch break to do. That doesn’t feel right at all and I’m going to ask about it at the next pta meeting.

the high school has loads of lunch clubs and several after school clubs - they have a school musical this year so loads around that and a bunch of other stuff. Again, assumed they were being paid for their time!

there are also several paid after school classes in the building - my kids have done dance and football and coding club. All paid and dance and coding are I think £12-15/hour (it’s hard to work out as they have different terms and random weeks off and such). Football is cheaper as it’s a council thing and we are in a deprived area so get some funding for inclusion. We use the after school club for primary school as well but I see that’s not what this is about.

Teachers should be paid extra for any after school clubs.

Nope they do not, they can claim for extra time. It is not well known. I only found out last year but yes they can and should be claiming.

Our afterschools clubs have always been paid for by parents - I don’t know any schools that do them for free! I’m up north as well as saw you comment on London schools. The clubs ran by teachers like Lego club is cheaper than ones like football which is an external provider . And it is childcare. They are looking after your child and you pick them up 45 mins / an hour later than usual time which is massively helpful for working parents. £5-7 per session is average price.

Oh well no, admittedly this is a weekly charge! But the teachers are working an extra hour (on top of the hours of marking that is to follow) so I think pretty reasonable to expect to pay! The teachers who don’t run clubs don’t have that extra hour of childcare…. I think at least £8-10 would be reasonable per week)….

Sorry that last post was in response to @Merryoldgoat

That does seem expensive for a school run club, especially as I assume it's the one below which is free to download. I would assume that the school is being hard hit by budget issues in particular rising unfunded wage bills and they have decided to start charging for their afterschool clubs.

https://www.daretobelieve.ie/about/

Are teachers contracted hours the same as school hours? I lived opposite a school that finished at 3.15 but teachers didn't come out until around 5. TAs would leave at the end of the school day but not the teachers.

If the club is run by school staff it’s unusual for there to be a charge (except perhaps for things like ingredients for a cooking club).

The school has to publish on their website details of how they spend pupil premium money.

My friend is a teacher and that’s when she cleans up the classroom, does marking, sets the classroom up for the next day, has meetings with parents or other staff, that sort of thing. My daughter’s planning meetings were usually just after school for example. Maybe schools can timetable a rota of teachers to cover extra curriculars as well?

£11 is about the hourly rate…