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.

TBH I don't think relying on volunteers for something parents are this reliant on would be the best idea, as well as likely taking a while to sort a CRB check out. The reality is that if it's not a paid commitment, people (understandably) have a lower threshold for not coming than they do if they're being paid. That's not really compatible with a service that parents need to be able to rely on. Volunteers do brilliant work but they need to be supplementary rather than core, it's not sustainable otherwise.

You can't just ask for parent volunteers - it's not like on a school trip. They'd need to be DBS checked, likely first-aid trained etc. It's not free. Plus, the parents who benefit from after-school care are not going to be the same ones free to volunteer.

There should also be a member of the safeguarding team onsite for the duration as well.

Our after school club charges £9, 3 hours 3-6pm.
No choice to pay hourly, if the child leaves at 3.30pm or 4pm the charge is still £9.

Apparently it can be claimed back, but no one really knows how / nor how long that takes.

The maximum number of children ever has been 4.

2 members of staff.

It is not financially viable.

True. For those hours, parents are probably either working or, if not, often have DC in activities or who have additional needs and have to be at home to recover from school. It's not a timeslot most parents are going to have available.

TBH I don't think relying on volunteers for something parents are this reliant on would be the best idea, as well as likely taking a while to sort a CRB check out. The reality is that if it's not a paid commitment, people (understandably) have a lower threshold for not coming than they do if they're being paid. That's not really compatible with a service that parents need to be able to rely on. Volunteers do brilliant work but they need to be supplementary rather than core, it's not sustainable otherwise.

Volunteering for this only works when it's well established and, imo, when the full staff is volunteering long term.

Our set up worked because it morphed from a very old (as in when I was a kid) playscheme run by some mums and grans, into one run by some volunteers who either worked with children already (I worked in schools for example) or were going down that road (we had a link with the local college and uni so had lots of trainee teachers and childcare staff). Add into that a couple of folks on career breaks and a retired head teacher and that was our core group.

Day-to-day one off parent helpers doesn't work. It's got to be people who have a reason for doing it.

The bigger issue than the volunteers having a lack of commitment is actually that parents very often have a massive lack of respect if something is run by volunteers. That's what closed ours in the end - volunteers got sick of parents treating them like crap and using "but they're just volunteers" as their excuse.

Ironically they now all have to pay the extortionate prices for the "professional" settings that they all said was better, but actually got a much poorer inspection rating than we had!

Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking. It's all very well finding somewhere else, but how will the children GET there? If someone has to collect them to take them, surely it defeats the whole object of the thing. It makes me wonder what this other "wraparound" facility can be?

Why would parents volunteer to look after other people’s children when they could be at home with their own children?

Our afterschool club is £5.50 up til 4:15 and £11 up to 5:15.

Both pretty useless when you work traditional full time hours. We have to use an afterschool nanny for £15 an hour.

Are you using tax free to pay for the afterschool club, OP?

Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking. It's all very well finding somewhere else, but how will the children GET there? If someone has to collect them to take them, surely it defeats the whole object of the thing. It makes me wonder what this other "wraparound" facility can be?

I would assume if the school have actively mentioned the other wraparound they must collect from the school.

That would depend on your local Childminding rate I know childminders that only charge if used and for the time used so pick up for an hour is £5 whilst most are a minimum of 2 hours.

Yes the other setting collect from school.

Although, looking again at the prices they sent us in the information is says ‘collect from school - £6, care until 4.30 - £8.50, care until 6pm - £15.50.’ So now I’m thinking it would actually be £21.50 a day for them to collect directly from school which makes it even worse.

I can’t believe the range of prices people are being charged for wraparound. Seems like we were somewhere in the middle. It is (was) run by the school which I imagine is why it’s cheaper than an outside provider.

I would be less annoyed if I went in to it thinking it was a higher price. It’s the doubling of what I was originally expecting and the admin faff of sorting it out which is what is most frustrating.

It's not a timeslot most parents are going to have available.

Absolutely. If parents are not working already, they are unlikely to want to work an hour or two after school when they could be at home with their own children. We have hugely struggled to staff our ASC because nobody wants to work the hours. All our TAs have children and want to go home.

Also, because Koru Kids use students, their availability changes all the time as they suddenly get told they have a seminar at a certain time or are required for a careers event. We tried looking for a nanny through them, but it was a non-starter as noone we spoke to could commit to being available for certain hours until they had their timetable in early October, then said it would change again after Christmas.

Like others have said, they consider this very carefully. They may need more staff if there are more kids. There can be increased wear and tear on premises, they may need to provide more resources, snacks, drinks etc. All of this has to be factored in.
A lot of schools are also very mindful of the impact of rising prices on parents. I’m a governor at a primary school which runs an in-house wraparound care provision. It’s uber flexible because we have a lot of parents working shifts but it was losing money. After discussing with the business manager, we decided to ring round the other schools to find out what the going rates were. Ours was the lowest by some considerable amount. They had held back from increasing prices because they worry about losing families (as undersubscribed and money is tight) but decided on a modest increase that brought them closer to the average but they genuinely agonised over this. Please don’t think they're just increasing prices to milk parents dry. They’re doing it because they have to. Schools are horrendously underfunded - an average school spends over 80% of its budget on staff and aren’t usually given extra funding to pay for annual pay rises. So less than 20% goes on everything else.

They are offering nannies and are very expensive.

Can’t believe there are after school provisions that are Empty or undersubscribed?!

people in your area must either not work, have a lot of grandparent help or there’s a lot of childminders

I do laugh when people say they wfh full time but spend an hour at each end of the day doing the school run. You’re not working full time then are you?! A woman at my kids school does this and she has been asked to go in office one day a week and she tried to say she was being discriminated against as a mother. Try having a job you have to actually go to every day!

At the primary where I used to be governor, the after school club ran at a loss.

If they wanted extra money though could they not let the staff’s kids attend for free that way they have childcare but can earn extra money?

Our after school club is empty too. Lots more parents working from home and picking up kids on their lunch break. Cost of living is so high any savings on childcare just have to be taken.

Yes someone up thread said that.
I've never used them so didn't realise.

Sounds incredibly very cheap. I am in a different European country and it’s €50 each day

£8.50 is ridiculously cheap. We pay £15 in a working class town in Yorkshire!

It’s quite normal for ones not based in schools to collect children from nearby schools

We pay £5 in greater manchester, until 5pm!