By Lucy Carroll
Thanh Whittam went back to work full-time in February last year after spending more than a decade employed part-time after having her three children.
Most days she works at home, which allows her to be at the Matraville Public School gate for pickup by 3pm, making up for missed hours by logging on again to work between 9pm and 11pm.
Thanh Whittam returned to work full-time when her youngest child started kindergarten last year.Credit: Wolter Peeters
“It’s not ideal. I want to be in the office more, but putting three kids in before and after school care five days is not cheap, and [it’s] a rush to collect them by 6pm on public transport,” she says. “I’m lucky to have that flexibility to work from home at the moment, but at the same time I feel like my days are long, and I don’t get a break.”
As more families have both parents working full-time and employers impose return-to-office policies, a new Sydney University report, Beyond the Bell, is calling for an overarching strategy for outside school hours care.
The Coalition this month pledged to order public servants to work from the office if it wins government, with opposition finance spokesperson Jane Hume saying remote work arrangements had become unsustainable and unproductive.
Sydney University researchers say the outside school hours care sector has been largely “overlooked”, arguing that new models of care should be trialled, including having more extracurricular activities such as organised sport and creative arts in services based in schools.
“Families face huge stressors juggling the gap between working hours with the traditional 9-3 school hours, especially for parents of primary age children who can’t get home by themselves like older students can,” says the report’s author Kate Harrison Brennan, head of Sydney Policy Lab.
“Parents need reliable and longer after-school care simply to be able to do a full workday before leaving to do school pick-up, and they need help with the costs, so parents can stay in the workforce.”
The Productivity Commission last year recommended that by 2028 state governments should have outside school hours care available in all public schools for children aged five to 12.
About 19 per cent of students in NSW use outside school hours care services, in public and private schools and based off school sites, and about 418,000 families use the services nationally.
“At the moment it’s this uneven smattering of services. Meeting demand means adding services in after-school care deserts and expanding it in high-demand areas,” Brennan said. Many parents rely on the services for holiday care and pupil-free days, which in the public sector has increased from six to eight days.
A new Sydney University discussion paper, Beyond the Bell, is calling for an overarching strategy for outside school hours care services.Credit: Luis Ascui
Quality of care is inconsistent, the report states, with many parents struggling to find programs that are engaging and meet educational standards. Outside school hours care services are subsidised by the federal government, but for some families costs can be prohibitive and add up with several children, Brennan said.
“There is this broader issue of the school day being structured around the default of having at least one parent working part-time,” she said.
A 2018 report found that compared with children at private schools, children at state schools were more likely to attend outside-school-hours care programs and less likely to participate in extracurricular activities provided by the school. Another recent study notes that physical activity and screen time use varies significantly in after-school care services.
National Outside School Hours Services Alliance chairperson Kylie Brannelly said the sector needs a funding model that delivers affordability, inclusive care and higher wages for staff.
“We want to see more quality jobs and to grow the workforce professionally so it’s not seen as a babysitting service,” she said. The latest data shows about 11 per cent of outside school care services are failing to meet national quality standards, while 8 per cent are exceeding.
“The current funding model advantages large services with high volumes of children, but small services can struggle.”
Programs could be better if there was more choice, access to facilities in school grounds and staff were paid to plan programs that are rich and diverse, Brannelly said, such as drama, creative art and languages.
Whittam said she would prefer more opportunities for structured sport or homework assistance. “They really need that level of engagement in after-school, especially older primary-aged kids. The programs often aren’t engaging after a long day,” she said.
A spokesperson for federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the Labor government had made “childcare cheaper for more than 1 million families, including for families in outside school hours care. As part of our plans to build a universal early education and care system, the government is investing $3.6 billion to support a 15 per cent wage increase over two years for workers in the OSHC and centre-based day care sectors.”
The NSW Education Department said it works with parents, schools and service providers to meet community needs. “This includes providing additional space on school sites to increase service capacity where needed,” a spokesperson said. Services are available in 900 public schools.
Under the former state government, operating hours were lengthened at eight schools in a trial to modernise the school day to better suit parents and students.
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