Choosing a primary school - extra-curricular activities

[Wigeon]

We are in the midst of visiting schools for DD to start Reception next year. The nearest school has a Good very recent Ofsted, but the Head says they have no afterschool / lunchtime clubs. She also didn't mention lots of other activities the school might take part in (such as fun runs, inviting people into the school to run one-off activities, fundraising and so on). Other schools nearby seem to have loads of activities (football club, guitar club, street dance club, cricket club etc etc) but other factors against sending DD to them.

How important are these kinds of extra activities? How easy is it to do extra-curricular activities outside the setting of a school?

its perfectly easy to do things outside school and can be good as DCs meet a range of different children sports, music, dancing, drama, brownies etc
-bit of shame not to have any -although as they are often run by teachers perhaps the head thinks they are better doing other stuff

I wouldn't choose a school purely on the basis of after school activities unless you need them for childcare and have no other options.

I wouldn't expect a head to mention everything on a visit, or did you ask about fun runs etc and she said they didn't do them.

IME children in reception get very tired and probably won't be up for too many activities at the end of the schoold day.

I can only speak from my own experience but where I live (fairly small town) there are loads of different activities that you could send a child to.

It's pretty easy to do these things outside school, but much more costly, and you will have to act as taxi-driver. So to that extent, it makes life much easier if a school offers plenty of clubs.

The availablilty of clubs depends a lot on having staff that are willing to run them - voluntarily - over and above a full school day. I'm grateful that our children's school has lots of such clubs and it does allow the children to "dip into" things that they might not be willing to try if it meant signing up to a commercial club after school.

But I probably wouldn't choose against a school purely on that basis.

agree - both not choosing a school on that basis and that reception children won't want to much after school, and in KS1 in my DSs school no good for childcare - you have to take the child to the class!

If the primary school offers a proper breakfast after school club you need for childcare, it's important.
Other extra curricular stuff is nice to have, but I wouldn't use it to choose schools.
Large schools may be different, but our small village school has in the last 9 years offered lots of bits and pieces.
Things start and stop at random, numbers are limited and getting anyone to run them is very hard.
They are fun, but no way compare with paying proper money for swimming, dancing or a sport club.

My experience tallies with startail - extracurricular activities tend to be cheaper at our local school but are not comparable to what's on offer elsewhere. They also tend to get cancellend/postponed or changed and you can't really rely on them as a form of childcare!

Our school does make the effort to provide decent ones but I find that my children only attend one or two as most of the stuff they want to do (swimming, ballet, tap, violin, piano etc) is not on offer!

I would look for a school based on other criteria.

Thanks very much for all the replies - very interesting. I agree that I won't want to sign DD up for hundreds of additional activities when she is in Reception, but thinking ahead, she may well like to do one or two when she's a bit older.

I suppose I'm partly worried that the lack of any clubs etc is indicative of a general lack of get-up-and-go in the school in general - the headteacher was pretty unimpressive actually when we met her (very passive, didn't seem to want to sell the school at all). But the Ofsted report (Oct 2009) says lots of positive things about the quality of the teaching and learning, so presumably that doesn't happen by accident. Hm!

I'd be more worried about unimpressive headteacher than lack of school clubs.

I have to admit my children have always enjoyed being able to do the odd after school club (if you do them at school there's more of an opportunity just to try things). Do they have external groups that come in and use the school (so you get the convenience of at school without school running it) or are they linked to other schools (DS's school has access to after school clubs run at local secondary).

Was it the same head in 2009?

I agree that I think that a good variety of clubs is a huge addition to a school. Aside from the logistical benefit of children adding on an activity to the end of the school day, and therefore not having to chauffeur them to another location, I find DD much prefers activities with her school friends to activities with children she doesn't know.

redsky - we are definitely worried about the unimpressive headteacher (who has been there for years and was there in 2009). Wasn't sure if the lack of clubs should add to our concern, or whether many primaries don't do clubs, and we shouldn't add it to our worries about the headteacher.

The problem is that our other options are: Oversubscribed Outstanding school with impressive head, which we might not get into, and two other less-than-ideal options: a Good school near council estate, and a Satisfactory school near other council estate (don't flame me - I used to live on a council estate - but I'm using this as a shorthand).

That's interesting Bonsoir that your DD prefers activities with her school friends - I was wondering if doing activities outside school might be nice because you get to make new friends.

You are actually going to choose a school for yor child on the basis of after school activities? What about quality of teaching? Dynamic head? SATS results? Pastoral care? Or does that not feature?

Hmm - Notwithstanding my comments above, I'd be a bit worried about the combination of the passive head-teacher and the lack of clubs. I wonder whether the reason there are no clubs is that the head-teacher is not sufficiently motivational to inspire staff to offer the enrichment that clubs can offer.

My children's two form entry primary has about 12 clubs for KS1 and about 25 for KS2. Some are run by teachers, others by outside agencies. I think that says something about the dedication of the staff, which might be linked to the fact that the head teacher is popular and pretty dynamic.

magdalene - no no no, of course we are extremely interested in all those other vital factors (DH is a teacher btw). As you can see from my OP, I was interested in views on how much weighting one should give the existence / non-existence of clubs etc (after factors which are a given, like quality of teaching etc, presuming that you are happy with them). Not whether one should choose a school on the basis of its clubs.

As AChicken rightly identifies, I am concerned that the lack of clubs is a symptom of the passive head, for the reasons Chicken says, and a reason to be concerned that its indicative of a wider complacency or lack of energy / dymanism in the school.

*dynamism.

Most of our extracurricular activities have been outside school. DD's previous school had good free clubs but because we were already committed to outside classes we only did a couple for a term each. Her current school has interesting clubs but again we won't be doing them to avoid overload.

I wouldn't choose a school on this basis - unless you need them for childcare. In your situation, I would put the outstanding school first and this school second.