Yet their contribution to a crucial decade in children's lives is worth fighting for, says Simon Vevers, and some creative lifelines are available.
Out-of-school provision has long been regarded as the poor relation in the childcare family - often underfunded, inherently unstable due to the fluctuating numbers of parents taking it up and at the mercy of economic uncertainties which have seen clubs opening and closing with dizzying regularity.
The development of the extended schools programme - and the statutory requirement that wraparound childcare must be offered in or around schools - appeared to throw a lifeline to this sector. Many local authorities have heeded Government demands that they and schools should work closely with private and community providers - but some clearly have not.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) acknowledges that 'there is a wide range of provision available for school-aged children that is not provided through or by schools'. But asked how many clubs there are, a spokeswoman replied, 'We do not collect data on the numbers of out-of-school clubs operating in schools or how many clubs are opening and closing.'
She says that more than 9,000 schools - two in five - are providing access to the full core offer of extended services, which includes access to childcare and a range of activities. According to Ofsted figures produced last September, there are 10,800 providers of out-of-school care supplying 372,600 places.
Anne Longfield, chief executive of the charity 4Children, says the extent to which out-of-school clubs are being embedded within the extended schools programme is 'pretty varied'.
She explains, 'Where there is little leadership and little support from the local authority and everyone is left to their own devices, it can be much less of a rosy picture and out-of-school clubs can fall through that gap.'
Essex County Council, which has worked with 4Children for 15 years in developing out-of-school provision, has tried to keep childcare separate from other aspects of extended schools so that schools do not get 'an unfair advantage' over other provision, according to Alex Binks, who is responsible for Strategy-Management Development at the authority.
She says the council is also looking at ways in which its children's centres can get involved in out-of-school care. Some centres are linking up with existing out-of-school providers and where there are gaps two centres are offering it on site. She adds that this enables them to provide a service for the whole family.
EXTERNAL PROVIDERS
Anne Longfield believes that the overall number of out-of-school clubs has declined slightly 'in terms of numbers of places', which may be partly due to consolidation and the lack of many new developments. She says this may also be explained by the fact that most extended schools in the first phase may already have had their own clubs up and running or had links with external providers (see case study, left).
One example is the Kingfishers out-of-school club based in East Devon College in Tiverton, where team leader Debbie Milton says they use the college minibus to pick up from local schools, including two which have developed their own extended services. Many of the children who attend the club were also at the day nursery and she says that parents clearly like the continuity.
Jackie Nunns, chief executive of Kids' City, which runs 14 Trojans scheme clubs in south London, can also testify to the long-term worth of out-of-school care. She now has staff who themselves attended her after-school provision as children. But she is dismayed that while the extended schools initiative - a hybrid of activities and childcare - mirrors the service her organisation has developed over many years, she has not been consulted about it nor engaged in its development.
She is 'baffled by the way it has been rolled out' and says the problem lies with the way funding has been given to schools. It came through the Standards Fund, was not ring-fenced and 'many schools did not know they had it'.
She adds, 'What we have seen is schools taking the money and setting up in the old-fashioned sense some out-of-school activities that have perpetuated the boom-and-bust cycle that is so familiar in this sector. They may run clubs for ten weeks and then when the money runs out they stop.
'I think the Government needs to speak to the people doing the work. We were not consulted, and we are one of the longest-standing and most successful providers in the country.'
She points out that the pool of potential funders - such as charitable foundations - is diminishing, because they are reluctant to provide money for what they now regard as statutory provision and, therefore, the responsibility of the Government. Consequently, she fears for the clubs that have opened in the last few years. The increasingly difficult funding climate prompted her organisation to diversify its activities to include developing training and employment opportunities for adults, as well as out-of-school care for children and services for young people.
GOLD DUST
However, the organisation Schoolfriend etc opted for rapid growth, developing hundreds of clubs in different parts of the country. But managing director Stephen Argent says that it has been obliged to close many of them, including 150 in November, and now has around 150 remaining.
He blames some local authorities for refusing his organisation sustainability money to keep clubs going. Council officials insist that Schoolfriend etc was given the option of funding and turned it down because it had received £15m from two private investors.
Mr Argent accuses some local authorities of being 'loose with the truth' and claims he has written evidence that Schoolfriend etc approached them with requests for funding. He says, 'We have probably had to close hundreds of clubs we ran. We were supported by private charitable funding in 2007. It was given to develop provision in areas of deprivation, but it ran out towards the end of last summer and we could not get it renewed. We thought local authorities and schools, having seen what a difference the clubs made to children, would have stepped in, but in the majority of cases we were told there was no money. Sustainability money seems like gold dust.'
He says Schoolfriend etc still plans to be active in the sector and is awaiting results of local authority childcare sufficiency assessments to establish where its services might be needed. He has approached schools to explore ways in which they might support existing clubs run by the organisation by waiving the rent they charge and putting the money towards places for disadvantaged children - a group he argues has been lost in the translation of government policies into local authority practice.
Anne Longfield says the sufficiency assessments will be important in determining where there is demand but also because local authorities have money to plug the gaps and have urgently needed start-up cash. The allocations for this and sustainability money come from the £1.3bn earmarked by DCSF secretary of state Ed Balls for extended services between 2008 and 2011.
Understandably, Ms Longfield says, children's centres have 'got most attention from early years and childcare teams because they are larger entities and more is at stake'. As a result, 'out-of-school clubs have often been in the shadows of local authority thinking'. She wants local authorities to support local community groups more and facilitate funding because out-of-school provision covers a crucial decade in children's lives.
Case study: Earlyworld, Midlands
Earlyworld has developed five large out-of-school clubs on the premises of primary schools in the Midlands, which are housed in their own new £150,000 purpose-designed timber buildings - and the company is well on its way to setting up two more.
Managing director Paul Edwards says Earlyworld has provided all the capital funding. The facilities are shared, at minimal cost, with the primary school - providing spare teaching and meeting space - and also with a local pre-school.
He says the contributions of the school and pre-school help to reduce premises' costs and this allows parents' fees to be kept down to the same level as other local providers, while the children enjoy the most extensive facilities and activities.
Mr Edwards says: 'It really is an ideal partnership for everyone. Although we have to shoulder the burden of a long wait to break even, we have a 15-year lease to allow this. We have to put a lot of management time into the long-winded process to achieve many bodies' backing for planning permission and we are quite experienced in commercial property development and sitework.'
FURTHER INFORMATION:
- 'Extended schools get £1bn' by Laura Marcus (Nursery World, 2 August 2007)
- ContinYou, www.continyu.org.uk
- 4Children, www.4children.org.uk
- Training and Development Agency for Schools, www.tda.gov.uk/remodelling/extendedschools.aspx.
