EXCLUSIVE: Government relaxes guidance on holiday clubs

After we pushed for clarification, the DfE released extra background information to Nursery World last night and confirmed a change in the guidance that children should be kept in consistent groups 'as far as possible'.

The move will be a lifeline for many holiday club providers who were worried that without this caveat they would be unable to run their clubs this summer, because it would be financially unsustainable.

On Wednesday (1 July), the Department for Education published guidance for holiday club providers on what measures they would need to take in order to open their settings.

The long-awaited document had already been subject to much consternation within the sector, with many holiday club providers calling for ‘urgent clarification’ on key aspects that would determine whether or not they could open over the coming weeks.

The protective measures contained in the guidance stated that children should be kept in small consistent groups of no more than 15 and that the children should be in the same group whenever they attend the setting:

‘This means that at the first session children should be assigned to a particular class or group and should then stay in those consistent groups for future sessions.’

It goes on to say, ‘If you are unable to keep children in your setting in small consistent groups for future sessions, you should only operate your provision outside.’

But holiday club providers and the Out of School Alliance have argued that this effectively meant that bubbles would not be able to be mixed, and was unworkable, because unless they were prepared to incur the cost of providing care for a bubble that could, for example, start off with 15 children in week one and then diminish down to one child by week three, they would not be able to open.