Has Ruth Kelly got it right on extended school hours?

I WELCOME the proposals from Ruth Kelly. They would give people choice. So often you hear people say: "I cannot work because I haven't got anyone to look after the children."

Having wraparound care from 8am to 6pm, available for all young children, as Ruth Kelly seems to be suggesting, wouldn't force parents to go out to work. But it would give them the choice, which is as it should be.

Here at Tang Hall School, we have an after-school club which has been running since 2001, and have recently set up a holiday club.

The after-school club typically takes 16 children a night and runs from the end of school at 3.15pm until 6pm. The holiday club runs from 8am to 6pm every weekday during school holidays, except Bank Holidays and Christmas. There are also plans to start up a breakfast club.

Parents like it. It is flexible - they don't have to sign up for every day of the week, they can 'mix and match'. If they want to go shopping one day, they can say "Right, I will put the children in the after-school club and come back for them at 6pm" - but their child doesn't have to attend every day.

Or it might allow parents to work till 5pm or 5.30pm if they choose to. So before, where they could only go for a part-time job, they can now work full time.

Parents also appreciate the holiday club. Trying to sort out someone to look after their children for six weeks over the summer can be a nightmare for parents who are working.

With the club, they know that children are going to be cared for in a safe environment.

It is important that the extra hours are not used for formal lessons. They have to be fun and relaxing.

But the proposals wouldn't lead to a longer school day. In one sense the extra hours are nothing to do with the school, other than providing the accommodation and the children.

Our after-school club is run by a private company called Tang Hall Squirrels. They use trained nursery nurses and sometimes classroom assistants but teachers are not involved, and it is nothing to do with the national curriculum.

The children play sport, play games, do activities, watch TV or get help with their reading - all in a safe, supervised environment. And parents who bring their children here know where they are. They are not running around on the street.

I hope what Ruth Kelly is proposing will be in a sense an extension of what we are doing: £600m sounds a lot of money but isn't when it is for the whole country.

Perhaps the money could be used to help schools start up.

We received some New Opportunities lottery funding to help us pay for set-up costs, and now we try to break even.

The parents do have to pay for the after-school club, the holiday club or the lunchtime club. But we try to keep costs down, because for some parents it is difficult, by the time they have paid for child care, to decide whether it is worth going out to work.

So we're not looking to make a profit, just to break even. That's how it should work if it is extended to other schools.

No...says Phil Willis, Harrogate MP, onetime headteacher and former Lib Dem spokesman on education

I think the idea of using our schools for greater periods of time to support young people and their families is absolutely right. They are expensive pieces of kit and stand there for an awful lot of time without anybody in them.

I do have concerns, however. I think there is a danger the Government might start to try to prescribe what happens in the extra hours. It might say something like "We cannot fit modern linguistics into the curriculum so we will put it into this extended day".

That would worry me.

I hate the whole idea of a nanny state prescribing what our children do from 6.30 in the morning to 6.30 in the evening.

Children have a long enough school day as it is. What they would want is relaxation in those extended hours, rather than more school work.

I can also see the extra time being used for so-called 'minor activities' such as PE and sport, which might then not be offered during the day. That could result in the child who is not very good at sport being able to opt out.

Another concern is the family. Young children need the best part of ten to 11 hours sleep a day. If they are going to be at school for ten hours, where does that leave the role of the parent?

I heard someone joking on the radio that since in future people were going to have to work at least ten to 11 hours, getting children used to it from the age of five was a good idea. But I think there is a sense that the easier you make it for parents to have their children looked after, the easier it is for employers to say we can extend the hours we expect people to work.

There is a huge conflict in Government thinking. On the one hand they are talking about the family being the key, providing better paternity leave and maternity leave and encouraging families to be together. But then a policy like this seems to be working in exactly the opposite direction.

Another thing I'm worried about is who is going to organise all of this? It is all right saying headteachers won't have to be involved. But they have responsibility for everything that goes on in their school, and it is their budget that provides the resources.

The allocated £600m is not going to be nearly enough when you consider there are something like 25,000 schools in England and Wales. That is a small amount of money for each school.

So who is going to be in charge of the children? Ruth Kelly has been talking about volunteers - but you can't just recruit a volunteer to work with children without going through all kinds of police checks.

Overall, this is a proposal that is well worth serious consideration. But I think it needs to be thought through much more carefully. I don't think it is for all parents and I don't think it is for all schools.

:: How the scheme will work

SCHOOLS in York and North Yorkshire are to receive an extra £7.6m over three years to help fund 'dawn-to-dusk' care for pupils.

Education ministers want schools in England to be open from 8am to 6pm by 2010.

The extra hours will be used to give children under 14 breakfast and offer extra-curricular activities, including homework clubs, sport, drama groups and visits to museums and galleries.

The measures will allow working parents to drop children off at school before work and then pick them up at 6pm. This scheme also aims to ensure supervision for so-called 'latch-key' kids who for years have left the school gates to go back to an empty home.

The Department for Education and Skills has set aside £680m over three years for the extended hours. Of this, schools in York will receive £478,553 in 2005-06, £747,225 in 2006-07 and £835,751 in 2007-08 - totalling £2,061,529.

North Yorkshire will receive £899,571 in 2005-06, £2,021,908 in 2006-07 and £2,738,473 in 2007-08.

The money will be divided so that LEAs and community-based Sure Start schemes can co-ordinate the extended hours scheme.

A typical primary school would receive £30,000 while secondary schools could expect about £50,000.

Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said: "Schools are at the heart of our communities and it makes sense to extend the services they offer beyond the traditional school day." Ms Kelly said teachers would not be expected to work longer. Schools could buy in services from councils, voluntary organisations and private firms.

Critics have questioned whether there will be sufficient money to fund extended hours, but the proposals have been broadly welcomed locally.

In York, four schools - Hob Moor, Clifton Green, Westfield and Tang Hall - already offer 'extended hours' schemes, including breakfast clubs and after-school clubs.

Coun Carol Runciman, left, City of York Council's executive member for education, said the plan was to double that to eight. "The Extended Schools scheme is a great help to parents that have to work often during hours that the school is not open," she said. "It also allows children to have experiences outside lesson time which they enjoy very much."

Sue Lowery, manager of the Squirrels after-school club at Tang Hall school, said: "The children love it and we have had excellent feedback from parents. They don't have to go looking for child care because we provide it here in a safe environment."

Mum-of-two Sarah Watson, 28, of Dodsworth Avenue, Heworth, whose six-year-old daughter Chloe goes to the Squirrels club every Thursday night, added: "It's absolutely fantastic. The children have got so much to do while they are there. They can go outside and play or play dress up, or watch TV or get help with their reading.

"Chloe loves it - I get told off if I go to pick her up before six."

Updated: 11:08 Tuesday, June 14, 2005