Prep school offering 6am - 8pm, 51 weeks. How quickly is that going to become common then?

[EBDteacher]

I've just been reading an article in a local 'services for kids' type magazine about at prep school in the area that is going to offer fully integrated care from 8am-6pm 51 weeks of the year, with optional sessions 6am-8am and 6pm-8pm! It's going to be charged monthly at £500pcm (for the whole lot- not just the wraparound) like nursery fees.

The school terms are also going to be different to the state sector so parents can take family holidays outside peak times.

Wouldn't suit us as DH and I are both teachers but I can see it appealing to lots of working families. If a few schools start offering services like that how long before they all will?

Do they take 14 year olds?

It's all about what suits adults though. What about children who don't love school? To be institutionalised 48 weeks a year 8 - 6 during my primary years would have filled me with dread.

at no justification for all the school holidays! This is a childhood we're talking about. Long days just doing nothing, playing with friends, finding out and exploring..... More important than school I would have said.

I wouldbe slightly careful with the financial viability of this school. They are very small and I searched for their accounts on the charities commission website and they don't appear to have filed for a few years! This could be a sign of desperation more than anything else.

The extra hours will not be staffed by qualified teachers. They will use a combination of nursery nurses and gappies, or people euqivalently qualified. If they get enough take-up, they will be able to keep their costs relatively low.

LeeCoakly I would agree it would be lovely but how many children have those sorts of childhood these days with both parents working, not many.
Better to be with your mates, in familiar grounds with trusted staff than having to try out every blooming summer camp available in the locality until you find one that the child likes only to find next year it's not running and then you start again, whilst being charged £125 per child for the pleasure. I have 4 so I should resign on the 12th July every year and start job hunting in late August.

The summer holidays are only to suit adults who require help from their children with the harvest, I think you'd agree they are in the minority nowadays.

what a ridiculous idea. when will kids just have to to play

and the extended schools project was meant to allow more wrap around care, not that many people really truly wanted to keep their kids at school until 6!

OLPS doesn't appear to be a charity - it doesn't seem to exist anywhere on the CC website. Nor did I find a reference to charitable status on its own website (but I didn't search that exhaustively).

Tearsofamushroom: where did you find eg their charity reg number? Is it linked to a former name? (They've been around since the 1960s)?

Some independent nurseries have been offering 24 hour opening 51 weeks a year for some time. The school is obviously seeing there is a market for this kind of service on site ... I doubt there is any extra teaching involved just childcare

I think it could well be a bid to 'save themselves' but reckon it might be quite a successful one. Presumably they have done their sums and can make the school work with 20 children in each year paying £500pcm.

I was thinking much the same

Well, I imagine this works as a kind of educational flexitime, so I don't see many kids being in there 6am-8pm, effectively orphaned (!), but I imagine it would be brilliant to be able to pick and choose your child's attendance times (within reason, obviously), and the time of year you want them to be there (again, within reason), and organise their schooling accordingly. It's like nursery - if you all fancy a lie in, or a day or two hanging out with each other, then you can have one, or if you have an early start at work, or a busy period, then an early drop off/late pick up is possible. And if the children are looked after lovingly, then they'll form a great attachment with the other kids and their carers, and it will become an extended family for them, as happens in good nurseries when families use them for a number of siblings over the course of several years and everyone gets to know each other very well. Plus I imagine schooling would be less fraught if it was not crammed into short term times.

In that sense it is actually a family-friendly school, rather than an educational institution that expects normal working parents to run themselves ragged a) paying through the nose, and b) always feeling as though they are doing something vaguely wrong in the eyes of the school.

I think if it was near me I would be sorely tempted to look around it, instead of being forced to spend £26k out of earned income just to get some after school care in the form of a nanny.

It is literally over the road from Wellington so reckon they are missing a trick not going through to 13.

Anyone local there aiming for Wellington would put their children in Eagle House so I'm not sure they are after the same market.

Talkinpeace, I have a different philosophy to you. I have had four children, and I don't think I have a monopoly on either their affection, or the capability to look after them. I think it's better for them to get out and about and mix with other people. I want them to be outward looking in this way, able to get on with people in groups, and to have good friendship skills, so I have been quite happy to pack them off during the day for most of their lives. They still know who their parents are, and we are a very close family.

but Boffin you work in academe - did you keep them in child care out of term time? as that is the implication of the "wraparound" care on offer here.
At least most boarding parents appear to make provision to see their kids in the holidays
my kids have always known that I work from home and heaven help them if they interrupt a phone call - but I do my darndest to be there as they grow up as they'll only do it once

and the poster who thought that she'd magically be able to take May out to avoid expensive holiday - hmmmmm

I use childcare in the holidays. I have 6 weeks holiday a year, one week of which I reckon is taken up with attending school things so that leaves 5 weeks to be at home with ds, assuming that I can actually limit my holidays to days when ds is also on holiday (not always possible). Realistically I end up with about 4.5 weeks a year holiday to spend with him. He has 17 weeks a year holiday. What am I supposed to do with him for the 12.5 weeks I'm working?

Actually, make that 11 weeks as I forgot the bank holidays.

We all get six weeks' holiday, like the rest of the country. We don't clock off when the students go home! That's when the real work starts ...

Eagle House doesn't do those kinds of hours from the start though does it? (DH used to teach at Wellington and we lived on site so I should have loads of local knowledge but don't- arrangements for small people were off my radar!). I would say it's a fairly unique selling point.

I guess this place have seen that they need to compete with EH, Yateley Manor, Lambrook etc to survive and this package gives them a platform to do so- at least with some families for whom flexibility is very important.

Possibly quite clever.

I don't know although I do know that their coach services collect at just after 7am and deposit back at 7pm, which seems like a pretty long day to me.

I don't see them competing with Lambrook, the attraction of Lambrook is the flexi-boarding it offers. I also wouldn't want to commit to a school offering that sort of wraparound care in reception and year 1 if it couldn't offer the same higher up the school (which it doesn't appear to).

Thing is, if you're a single parent to more than 1 child, have just 20 days leave a year (plus BHs, but obviously no flexibility about when to take those) then taking off a week for Christmas 15 days doesn't actually go very far to cover sickness, hospital appointments, etc for your children, let alone any for yourself, and imagine if you have 4 children say! They can take fewer than 4 days a year each then.

It's very easy for people not in that situation to sit there and say "oh well, we manage to have one of us SAH, we just have to tighten our belts a little" but by the time housing and commuting costs are factored in, for most single parents there really isn't another option but to work. Tbh if you've 4 children then even 2 parents' leave doesn't actually give very much leeway, heaven forbid you should want to take them away on holiday too.

I have lost count of the number of times parents have said to me sneeringly 'oh, are they going to holiday club again?' but I know full well their children are dumped on staying with the Grandparents and cousins for the whole holidays, usually in another part of the country so the parents have a break too.

Meh.

QZ completely agree with you, but it seems to be our fault for having children and not hanging on to the children's father

How is this different to younger children being in full time daycare?