Extra curricular clubs / activities, what does your school provide?

[ilovealistortwo]

Ds's school just told me they are no longer running an after school football club during this term. They have also stopped school swimming lessons and guitar/music lessons for the forseeable future. These were being held during school time for all the juniors and now year 5 and 6 are not allowed to participate.These are the three things my ds really enjoyed at school. AIBU to think this is borderline unacceptable as these things are part of an all-round education? Not sure if my pregnancy rage has something to do with how I feel or if I am justified.

Well - 'borderline unacceptable' sounds like your hormones running amok.

IME, some schools have a culture of providing lots of out of school activities and others don't. You are lucky if your dc go to a school where someone / some people is/are willing to volunteer, but it's hardly a "right".

Like Trouble said, I assume you or someone you know have offered to coach/ plan sessions/ actually get involved in these external activities the school has no obligation to provide?

Actually I think swimming is part of the curriculum. My children got a term's worth of lessons in Year 3 I think.

As for football and music lessons, music (in general) and sport (in general) are I think also part of the curriculum. I'm sure they cover those within the school day. If your DS enjoyed swimming, football and music lessons can all be done independently so he doesn't need to lose out.

They should do swimming in school anyway.

Tbh if the clubs are run by teachers then fair enough to cancel. They have enough to do without running clubs they don't get paid for.

I don't know about the UK but in Ireland swimming is on the curriculum, but they aren't obliged to provide it each year for the class. Is your system along the lines of that?

Swimming is on the curriculum and is compulsory for ks1 and 2. They cannot drop it.
Same with music in general. Actual specified lessons - piano, guitar etc are optional.

After school clubs are either run by school staff on a voluntary basis and listen to mountains of complaints from parents. After several years of listening to loony complaints they say fuck it and stop... Or it's a paid for service run by someone external and either they leave/increase cost which the school pass on and parents don't want to pay so the service stops.. Sometimes the school won't consult parents because parents already moan about the reasonable cost.

Swimming is on the curriculum - but not by any means "compulsory for KS 1 and 2".

It must be provided in either KS1 or KS2, and until pupils have reached a certain, pretty basic, level of competency. A term's worth of lessons would cover it.

Our Junior school's after-school clubs are all arts-based (art, handicrafts and photography) with the exception of Multisports (Y3 only) and Girls' Football.
There used to be a Gardening Club but that's stopped for the winter.
Ds3 (8) is not remotely enthusiastic about any of them. He asked why they didn't do boys' football and apparently it's because there is already a boys' football club in town. There's a very good girls' one too but school are keen to raise female sporting opportunities .

My ds school has great afterschool clubs which all cost about 3-4 quid a session. He does badminton, chess, hockey and orienteering. Its great value and it means I can pick up at 4.45 so really useful for my job. Just a normal state primary.

They've stopped music lessons? As an extra club or in the curriculum?

Regarding football, It depends, what other clubs are left to choose from? And do they do lots of football in the sports lessons?

As a minimum I'd want 2-3 clubs a week, preferably of different sorts to appeal to girls and boys. If the school was big I'd hope for a few more than this though, and if it was private I'd want tons more.

Volleyball, basketball, debate club, speech club, International Genetically Engineered Machine club, gaming club, think they still do robotics, cross country club, athletics club, social justice club.

Mine just do debate, speech, iGem and basketball. To be honest, they get a lot out of them, but I'm not sure I see it as any sort of God-given right... They are offered and taken up. They each take up quite a lot of time and involve a lot of parental input driving to other schools for competitions, volunteering etc. iGem is particular has really given dd1 a clear idea of what she wants to do with her life though, largely through travelling to the competition and getting to see Harvard and whatnot and mix with science geeks from all over the world.

Only dd1 does band - it's a timetabled class but they do take part in stuff outside of school as well. I can take or leave that if I'm honest (trombone lol).

Surely he can still take part in football and swimming? Just outside of school?

As a compulsive volunteer myself, I take nothing for granted - if they don't have the volunteers, game over.

KS1-
cooking, ballet, tennis, modern dance, craft&DT, golf, science, forest school, circus skills, choir, recorder.

They swim weekly during the school day.

Don't know about KS2/Y7&8 yet, but it's many more.

madwoman - How do your children get to take part in iGEM at primary school? I thought it was only high school age and above?

Interesting mix of opinions. Yes i do volunteer and I actually run two other after school clubs for kids and I also help out at the (now non-existent) football matches.
That being said, the swimming and the music were part of the day curriculum whilst they were at school and now PE lessons only happen twice a week and there is no music provision whatsoever for year 5 and 6. The only thing that was after school was the football and the reason I was given for it being stopped was that "its too cold to play football over the winter". I think that's a load of cr@p. Football everywhere else is played right throughout the winter and the kids are all really disappointed.

Gruach- I didn't catch the primary school, so I thought it was a general thread lol. It's actually a catholic school that goes right through, iGem starts in y7. Debate and whatnot earlier.

OP
So have I got this right? There's now no after school clubs at at since football has been cancelled? And there is now there is no swimming or music in the curriculum for years 5&6, and yrs 5&6 only have PE twice a week??

If that's correct then that's unacceptable! Sounds really awful. Is the school having problems generally?

We have a lot of clubs at our school (mostly lunchtime ones), but it's left up to the individual teachers to decide what is run and when. They can run whichever sports/activities interest them. You cannot force a school to provide extra-curricular activities as it's up to the teachers to be prepared to give up their lunchtimes or non working times to provide the activity. If no teacher at the school is interested in a particular sport or hobby, then it just doesn't get offered that year.

I'm not sure the legalities of what they offer in the UK with swimming, but it's compulsory here as we're a beachside suburb and so many people have a pool in their backyard. Kids need to know how to swim. We're lucky that we have an onsite pool, so it's easy for us.

Two hours of PE per week sounds fine to me at school if they are getting a broad cross-section of sports to try.

Is it just specialised music lessons that are being cancelled? For us, music is part of the Arts curriculum so it gets incorporated in a lot of other subjects, not just formal music lessons.