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.

Why don’t you and the other parents get together and run it? If it’s loss making I’m sure you’ll all be happy to stomach the costs.

How do you think small rural schools stay open? Their staff numbers are not a secret from anyone, including parents and Ofsted. In an absolute emergency, two classes would be combined under one teacher but there are times in many schools where there simply isn't a floating extra body to help. I have dealt with minor first aid incidents whilst the rest of my class wait on plenty of occasions. Even in bigger schools, the state model is built on teachers supervising 30 children in most cases. I just don't know why watching 19 children only now and again at a club would be considered out of the norm.

It is highly unlikely an ASC would be operating in an environment with that many children and no one else in the building anyway. Most schools have teachers around until 5pm at the earliest. If the club stays open til 6pm, there are rarely large numbers (eg 19) of children left anyway.

It isn't the genius point you think it is, because:

• simply dropping the price doesn't make more parents sign up. Most people who don't use an after school club do so because they have free alternatives
• your suggestion is way more expensive than OP's current club. She is paying £8.50 per session
• neither of your suggestions would be enough to hire the 2 staff minimum to man the club

There’s a few comments now saying that I’m moaning because I want the school to lose money and pay staff a pittance - where did I say I think they should carry on running at a loss or pay staff unfairly?

When I was looking at schools, all of the primaries in our area seemed to be charging between £8-10 per session, so assumed this was the going rate where we are (why would I think differently based on this information). Based on the replies in the this thread you can see the range of charges is huge.

My annoyance is not because I expect the ASC to carry on regardless, it’s because firstly the lack of notice of the closure, secondly because closure was the first option and not a suggestion that they raise the price to cover costs (they might have considered this and it worked out more than the other ASC, but this information wasn’t given to us), and thirdly because most people will be a bit annoyed if you’ve been expecting one price only to find out it will be double that.

If the rate in the area is actually £15.50 for a viable club, then that’s what it is. But anyone who has budgeted one amount to then be told it’s double would be annoyed (I would think!) there’s a cost of living crisis!

I'd be annoyed too OP, they used it as a huge selling point for the school and then withdrew it once you'd committed.

The drop noted in the birth rate of over 10% nationally will not be uniform, certainly in parts of London it is more than that. The comments about start time I find surprising as I had understood breakfast clubs to start earlier than 8.15am.

The rollout of free breakfast clubs as with the extension of nursery hours seems good in theory, but the previous and current government don't seem to have looked much if at all at the practicalities and especially staffing. I can understand Jeremy Hunt doing this along with all the other things that were designed to make things difficult for the current government (as he knew the Tories would lose), but not the present one and lack of detail.

No I understood it. But you didn't undersrand me. You can't just add more children and not add more staff - there are legal child: adult ratios required on after school clubs which make economies of scale virtually impossible.

I wonder if it's actually because the staff aren't up for it, but they don't want it to look like they're blaming teachers and TAs for not taking the job.

It could be that both are struggling for numbers so combining them means they can continue to offer one locally.

I mean if people can afford the nanny it's amazing, but there are a lot of hidden charges with them we didnt realise existed. It's really good from nanny point of view, but makes it expensive for families.

🤷‍♀️ that’s the position at my kids school

and ours.

It’s not good that they pulled the cover without giving notice or opportunity for parents to try and save it, but it still might be worth seeing if it can be saved - when after school closed at our school the parents got together and arranged for a minibus to take the kids to the nearest school with after school provision