It's coming up to 7.50am and the first parents are beginning to arrive at Oatlands Primary School.

The children have an hour of activity before the proper school day begins.

When the school bell sounds in the afternoon, it marks the end of class for some. But for others, it is the beginning of the school’s aftercare services.

There’s a homework club, sports activity and arts and crafts which will continue until about 6.15pm.

“It has been a huge benefit to the school and parents, since it started up eight years ago,” says school principal Ber O’Sullivan.

“Everything happens on campus. It’s convenient for children, who don’t need to be driven anywhere. It’s affordable for parents. And it’s generating a certain amount of income for us.”

It may also be a glimpse of the future direction many other schools will take over the coming years. Under a new plan being developed by Minister for Education Richard Bruton, schools will be encouraged to make greater out-of-hours use of their school facilities.

In addition to offering working parents greater access to affordable after-school services, it holds the promise of extra funding for schools.

The INTO, the country’s biggest teachers’ union, says some schools have been providing these kinds of services for many years, though there has never been an official national policy.

In the past insurance, staffing and other administrative issues have proved stumbling blocks to realising these kinds of plans.

But one idea under consideration includes providing greater capitation funding in cases where schools respond to demand for after-school services.

There is much work to be done, however. At present, parents are left on their own to piece together a jigsaw of care once the education system is finished with their child halfway through the working day.

Variable quality

The provision of after-school care – or, more broadly, out-of-school care – is patchy, unregulated and of variable quality, according to childcare professionals.

The previous government published a childcare strategy which pledged – subject to funding – to make subsidised after-school services available for children up to the end of primary school.

These subsidies would be provided for children attending services that meet certain safety and quality standards.

For Ber O’Sullivan, the idea of making after-school services and homework clubs available in school premises makes perfect sense.

The fact that the school is paying for rates and other services means it is able to offer after- school services for up to a third cheaper than private facilities.

Its prices start at €100 a month for five mornings of childcare before primary school begins, from 7.50am to 8.50am; it climbs to €500 a month for a child who avails of childcare both before and after school five days a week.

The after-school service is provided by seven staff members who are not teachers, but who have childcare qualifications.

The school also leases out the premises for Easter, summer and midterm camps when the schools are on holidays, while other groups hire the classroom in the evening time for other purposes. All profits, says O’Sullivan, are reinvested back into the school.

Not everyone is so keen on the plans, however.

Early Childhood Ireland, the main representative group for childcare providers, is worried the schools could undercut its members by benefiting from cheaper rent and overheads.

Ambitious plan

Teresa Heeney

, chief executive of Early Childhood Ireland, says any plans to increase after-school provision need to recognise that many groups are providing these services already.

Similarly, governments have a habit of discovering after-care as a policy idea, only for the results to fail.

For example, an ambitious plan announced four years ago to provide thousands of subsidised after-school places, resulted in just a fraction of the numbers that had been promised being delivered.

While ministers said the scheme would provide “upwards of 6,000” subsidised places, targeted at low-income families, just over 100 children had ended up availing of the scheme two years after it was launched.

Childcare experts said a combination of low payment rates for childcare providers, limited knowledge of the scheme and practical obstacles to accessing after-school care were to blame for the low take-up.

Whatever about the dilemma facing private providers, after-school services are in heavy demand in schools such as Oatlands.

There are long waiting lists for aftercare services: about a quarter of the children in the school avail of some of these out-of-hours services.