Letter informing parents about the closure of after school club

[oodles50]

Apologies for this, but this has annoyed me this afternoon and I feel like I need to vent about it!

We received a letter this afternoon totally out of the blue informing us that our school’s after school wrap around care is closing in two weeks time.

The school apologised for this but said there aren’t enough numbers for it to be ‘viable’.

I have several friends who talk about how oversubscribed their children’s after school club is, and I can’t comprehend how there aren’t enough children each day to cover the costs.

What’s more annoying is that in the letter they said don’t worry, there’s another setting down the road that can offer wrap around care - it’s double the price! (£8.50 vs £15.50 a day).

My DD has just started in reception and a big reason why we chose this school over another one we liked, was ironically the wrap around care provision. I just feel like we’ve had two weeks of school and just settled into things and the rug has been pulled, and I’m left scrabbling around, working out if I can change my hours, or if I’m going to be forced to pay double the amount I was expecting.

£15.50 sounds like a really fair price for the best part of 3 hours childcare. I was paying similar before Covid and everything has shot up since then. I was just relieved to see an end to nursery bills tbh.

The costs are enormous. Staff employed by the school have to enrol them in LGPS, which is over 25% contribution. Like every employer they’ve also been hit with NI increase. You need at least 3 staff. A really rough calculation for. 3 hour provision is £145 staff costs, so you need 17 kids for the full 3 hours to break even at £8.50.

To the PP, you may not chose school WA because it’s a cheap option, but many do and go absolutely bananas when rates are increased.

The point is it wouldnt cost them any more money - they would achieve more revenue by attracting more service users.
3 kids paying £8 per hour gives you £24
Reduce the price to £5 per hour and suddenly it becomes affordable for a lot more parents and you attract more kids! If you can attract 10 kids paying £5 an hour thats £50.
They dont seem to see that the reason the numbers are falling is because the price keeps going up, to a point where parents decide its no longer worth the cost.
I used to use our wraparound 2 days a week when i was wfh - it was priced such that it was worth me paying for it. They kept creeping the price up, the last price increase was one too many and i just could not justify it so i and many others stopped using the club.

Mad it’s under subscribed when its so cheap. I was paying more than that over 10yrs ago. I think a lot of parents now have the flexibility if working from home to take a late lunch break to collect children from school, then log back on whilst they watch TV / play video games etc. I suspect that’s why it’s not as viable anymore. Very frustrating to have 2wks to sort new arrangements.

I totally understand that it needs to financial viable. It’s more the annoyance of thinking everything is in place after the initial stress of starting school. There was a load of hassle getting the app to work to even book the after school club when we first started and I had to go into school to get it sorted, they never mentioned it was at risk of closing.

I just feel a bit misled - at all the open days and very recent parents meeting they were raving about the after school club (in hindsight probably to try and get the numbers up!).

I am going to ask them what the numbers are and what they would need to keep it running. Seems crazy to suggest people pay double and move somewhere else, would rather they have said we need to put the price up to £X to keep it going.

From what people have said it seems like an issue lots of places. I probably just had a skewed view about it because from what friends had said about the over subscription of their wrap around - it’s obviously more school and area dependent than I assumed!

Just out if interest why are 3 staff needed? If there are only say 8 children surely 2 staff is more than adequate. I thought ratios for primary children were 1:8 children? So you could have 2 allowing ratios to be safe if one was using the loo or dealing with a child who'd had an accident or similar?

In a contrast of worlds… the afterschool at DD’s school is oversubscribed for 4 out of 5 days and costs £19 a session. She’s still on the waiting list for 2 days, nearly 18 months after she was allocated a place in reception.

Same thing happened to our after school club a few years ago. Went out of business and closed within a couple of weeks. Worst part was it took hundreds of pounds of peoples money as you had to book in advance. Think we lost about £800.

The school set up its own club recognising that there was no other option for parents and many would move schools. It’s staffed by teachers presumably working unpaid overtime and runs at a loss. They still charge £8 for breakfast club and £15 for after school club though

You need to spend your energy looking for different provision rather than trying to get the decision changed. They're not going to reverse it with 2 weeks to go.

It’s staffed by teachers presumably working unpaid overtime

Wow-that's dreadful. I'd be surprised if they didn't all leave at the next possible resignation date.

We charged £3 an hour last year. It simply wasn’t viable for us and the numbers were too low to make it viable with so little uptake.

Our choices were either close the club completely or increase the price in the hope we would some days break even. We went for the latter but it is still a fine balancing act.

Schools want to try to help families, many school staff rely on wrap around for their own children but it comes at a cost.

When our playscheme was asked to run the breakfast and after school club we charged £5 a day for afterschool care.

We had volunteer staff so no wages or NI etc. We had a very very low hall hire cost due to being volunteer led. No utilities to pay for and a local businessman paid for our insurance, and our staff training.

Yet we only just broke even after costs. And that was pre covid when prices were lower.

So £8.50 a day now is very low.

Oh I didn't know how much Koro Kids would be.
A childminder might be do-able though.

Better than what we had- an email saying it’s stopping with no reason and no response to emails asking why.
school closes at 12:20 on a Friday and the alternative wraparound doesn’t operate on a Friday.

The only option is a nursery that offers care at a whopping £50 for 12-5 compared to the £2.50 an hour the school was charging.

when we went back they said numbers weren’t viable to keep it open. Like the OP part of the reason I chose the school was the wraparound care available.

This, there could have been a lot of Y6 last year, but they have now moved on and I expect many of the reception parents have decided their children have a long enough day and have made other arrangements. Only takes a small number to tip the balance, you need to have at least two workers, preferably three and even if they are on minimum wage three people working for two hours adds up.

This happened to us a couple of years ago but the closure was immediate. School made a few suggestions one of which was Koru Kids. I made a profile, interviewed 5 people online. Did in person trials with two, both uni students. One was a clear favourite and is still working for me now. It is way more expensive than WA but there are advantages to having the child taken home from school, able to relax in their own environment. Nanny gives them supper, helps with homework etc. You're not racing to get to pick up at 1800 and you don't have to do dinner when you get in. It has been worth it.

If you had 2 staff for eight pupils, they'd need to be paying over £10 per hour each for it to be financially viable.

Not really helpful to the OP but THIS is what the government needs to be funding.
Not the free breakfasts. Most children in breakfast club aren't there because they need free food but because their parents are off to work. Apparently most children have their breakfast before they leave the house - they don't need/want it at school.

Oh that’s annoying op, with such little notice. However I’m guessing it’s just not viable anymore. Maybe ask the other parents what they’re going to do? Maybe there will be a demand for childminders now in the area.

I think thd lack of notice with these things is poor.
I don’t see why they wouldn’t communicate issues within the school community either.
Why not say “we need 10 children to make staffing costs viable and we haven’t got enough”? See if parents make a choice to help thd school. Other suitable parents might volunteer rather than having all paid staff?

This happened to me, like you the afterschool provision was one of the reasons we chose the school over a different better located school. We were told just before the summer break, only weeks after booking school summer camps with the same provider. So not only did we lose afterschool for the following Sept I also had to take unpaid leave in the summer. The school promised they'd organise an alternative but it dragged on for months and never materialised.

What annoyed me most of all was the lack of communication and leaving parents in the dark. We moved schools the following year as it was just a pattern of mismanagement in general.

Doesn't remotely surprise me that it's not viable, even if one down the road is. I expect to see this happen more often as the 2020s cohort hit school age, since birth rates have dropped like a stone this decade. After schools clubs can be a bugger to staff as well.

But I get being annoyed at the lack of communication.

That’s really disappointing but I am so shocked to see the prices here! My son’s school is £4 for care up until 4.30pm! I use it 4 days a week!

There’s probably more staff involved than the ones running the club. You have to pay someone to lock up the building, having the right number of first aiders on site. The rising costs of electricity and heat going into the winter.

with the current early years guidance then as lovely as the idea of parents volunteering to do it it wouldn’t work because they would need to be suitably trained and have paediatric first aid if they were going to have any early years pupils.