Extended schools - a serious new market?
This time last year the then Secretary of State for Education, Ruth Kelly, was talking up the government’s plans to invest £680m (by 2008) in the development of extended hours provision in schools. Initially spun under the moniker of Kelly Hours (although it was Charles Clarke who launched the idea), the idea outlasted Ms Kelly’s tenure and now schools are being told what sorts of services they can and can’t charge for.
Initially, private sector providers worried that the funding would be directed primarily to charities and not-for-profit enterprises, but it seems this could be a viable commercial market after all. Schools have now been told that they can charge for extra out-of-hours services like breakfast clubs, photography, language learning and similar services.
The catch is that some activities like breakfast clubs can be charged at full cost while others only on a cost recovery basis. To make things even less clear, extra activities in science, maths, some types of exam tuition and special needs provision are only to be offered for free, although homework clubs will be chargeable.
Confused? Well consider things like sport and entertainment. Some schools will still offer free after-hours sports, provided that their staff run the activities. But if they aren’t going to be paid to do this, but would be by a private sector provider, then many teachers will simply not give their valuable free time away for nothing.
This then opens up the market for organisations and companies who provide services like sports and drama coaching. Two companies who fit this market are Stage Coach Theatre Arts and Planet Sport. When we spoke with Planet Sports former CEO, Thomas Godfrey, he commented that the two biggest challenges facing companies trying to crack this market were recruiting quality staff to work limited irregular hours and managing payments from schools and parents. ‘It is a very exciting market, but it’s not simple; you have to put in a lot of work and investment to have the right people and facilities’.
So it seems that out of hours provision is a real market but like many opportunities in education, those most likely to succeed will need to understand the system as well as making the investment in people and systems.
This means there will be real barriers to entry for organisations wanting to make a commercial return from this area. Now that the tag ‘Kelly Hours’, has slipped from the media’s radar, we have come up with an new acronym for Out Of Hours Provision – OOHPs!