Overcoming Staffing Fears When In-Housing Childcare

1. Dispel the 7am myth

It’s noticeable how often the following comment sums up the barrier to schools considering in-house care:

“I don’t want to be responsible for finding cover for the breakfast club when somebody calls in sick at 7am, or worse still, I will have to cover the club myself”.

This is completely understandable; senior leaders are already immensely stretched, and the thought of having to cover a breakfast club, rather than prepare for the day ahead, is unthinkable.  However, staff absences from clubs are typically low, and when they do occur, there are ways to ensure they’re dealt with without any SLT input.  Read on to find out how.

2. Understand the ratio requirements

This… is the biggie.

Ratios are much more flexible than schools realise.

Whilst ratios are strict for preschool children, there aren’t fixed ratios for school-age children. Instead, Ofsted expects providers to carry out a risk assessment and ensure sufficient staff to supervise children safely.

In practice, this means schools can set sensible ratios (usually 1:10), that they operate to on a normal day.  Schools then establish a comfortable drop-point — the minimum number of staff they require to continue supervising children safely in the event of unexpected staffing changes.

A busy, £150k+ a year club will typically have 35+ kids in breakfast club and 50+ in after-school care.  This means on a normal day, you’ll have 4 staff in the morning and 5 in the afternoon.  But you can, as long as your staff are skilled, drop down to as few as two staff a morning and three an afternoon, whilst maintaining these attendance numbers, to cope (for a short period) with illness/absence.  Yes, it’s not ideal, and yes, you may have to adjust the club schedule, but it’s far more preferable than SLT getting dragged into making toast or running activities.

The parents will understand (and be grateful you’re still open), and as long as it doesn’t last too long, the kids won’t mind either.

3. Use the power of your income – appoint a great manager to deal with everything, including staff absence

Schools that run large clubs keep close to 40% of the income and return it to their school budgets.  In a £150k a year club – that’s £60,000 a year.  Every year.

Many use this income to appoint a great manager – often an ex-teacher who can not only run a great club but also deal with staff absences (and the logistical challenges this may create).  When we ran our own commercial provider, all of our clubs were run by ex-teachers, each earning £30,000 a year, working term-time only.  This was a hugely attractive job for teachers leaving the profession, and, crucially, it meant we could delegate almost everything to a qualified professional with the relevant experience to deal with parents, behaviour management, staff management, reporting to SLT, etc.

Supporting over 2,000 children a day, across 20+ school sites, our senior staff have never had to cover staff absence at the club.

4. But – where will we find the staff? The power of TUPE

One of the great things about bringing the care in-house is that TUPE applies, meaning the staff have the right to “follow the work”.  In essence, the staff can stay with the club and become the school’s employees.  There is a process to follow, and the staff must be made aware of any proposed changes to their current contract (as a result of changing employers), but 99% of the time, they choose to stay.

The reason?

Staff are primarily loyal to the children and the families they support, usually above their employer.  Plus, people don’t particularly like change, and best of all, school Ts & Cs are usually better, meaning an improvement to their contractual terms.  It makes the whole process pretty straightforward, as the school’s pension contributions, pay scales, and general employment terms will almost always be equal to or better than their current terms.

As a school, you have the chance to train the staff to reflect your school’s values, and for those that don’t measure up, you are allowed to move them on, like you would any other staff.

5. You can now recruit more strategically

Once you’re up and running, and churn occurs in the school support staff team, you can begin to look at more varied contracts:  7.30am – 2.30pm (to include breakfast club, 10.30am – 6pm (to include afterschool club), apprentices, etc.  Indeed, your existing support staff may well be interested in additional hours, allowing you to build a team of high-quality bank staff who can again cover for staff absences.