Ratios help!

[platptea]

I hope this is the right place to post this!
I work in an after school club (and a pre-school) where we have two staff members, recently we have quite a few more children attending the after school club and I am overwhelmed. I brought it to my manager who insists we are in ratio but I can't see that we are.

For example say we have 19 children:

16 of those children are between 3-8yo at a ratio of 1:8 (we have two staff so we are in ratio here).

We then have the 3 children who are 8+ at a ratio of 1:10.

The two staff are already used in the ratio of the other children so we need another staff member for the older children. Am I wrong?

I think you are right, but you might find more people who know in thr nurseries/ childcare / whatever its called now topic.

In this instance, you need at least 3 staff.

Over 8s do not need to be counted in ratio at all. As long as they don’t negatively impact on the provision for the younger ones.

I think it depends who runs the club. If it's run by the school, I think that the over 8s do have to be accounted for.

The pre-school children are in a ratio of 1:8 but there is no ratio for the school age children. 1:8 for under 8s and 1:10 for over is considered good practice, but for Reception and above you can have 1:30.

So legally you're fine so long as you have no more than 8 pre-schoolers.

Your argument needs to be about whether you are operating safely.