Running extracurricular school clubs can be a massive headache for school business managers, and a hidden drain on resources. However, parents value clubs a great deal. In fact, one in three parents says they’d consider moving their children to another school if they felt the provision of extracurricular activities and after-school clubs was inadequate, according to Clubs for Schools' research. For a typical two-form entry school, that equates to 100 families making decisions based on extracurricular clubs. Clearly, there’s a lot at stake.

In my experience, most primary schools have the capacity to offer 20 to 30 clubs, but actually only a small number are doing this. I’d estimate that more than half offer 10 or fewer clubs a week. A school business manager colleague of mine told me that the complexity and burdens of administration are a major factor in reducing the provision of clubs in many schools.

Logistical complexity is certainly the biggest challenge. Enabling every pupil to go to at least two clubs per week in a two-form entry school could mean more than 800 initial paper registrations and payments. Just a few of the other challenges include:

• Identifying reliable, high-calibre providers from the deluge of sales calls and then properly referencing and vetting them;
• Putting proper risk mitigation in place to ensure that the school’s duty of care has been discharged and that any data collected is compliant with GDPR;
• Dealing with operational issues, such as rescheduling, if a coach is unwell;
• Maintaining the school website with the latest club information, so parents are up-to-date with any changes, full clubs, etc..
   

It can take a full-time member of staff at least a week to administer club bookings at the start of each term, just when the school office is busiest. And then there is the day-to-day handling of issues, with club leaders and parents, as the term progresses.

The value of extracurricular activities

The good news is that there is help out there for schools that enables them to run clubs much more efficiently and free up precious staff time.

An increasing number of school business systems offer “club modules”, which integrate with the rest of the system. They can help where teachers are leading clubs themselves, or collect payments where the school is funding the club or paying the provider. The modules are limited as they are not specialist so, for example, it’s not possible to source coaches, manage safety checks or record attendance, but they provide good, basic support.

Finding space to offer more clubs can help to build economies of scale and allow schools to offer a greater variety of extracurricular activities. The hall and playground are obvious locations, but try and evaluate all possible spaces you can use for clubs. For instance, how about running a cookery club in a classroom? Research shows that cookery is the second most requested club parents that wished their child could do.

Many schools ask club providers to solve at least part of the problem by offering web bookings. This is very useful when you’re dealing with just a small number of providers. It is less efficient if a school runs lots of varied clubs, but it can certainly help at times.

A specialist cloud option is most likely to reduce costs and solve the issues listed above, so you can offer more clubs more efficiently. Many are free to schools, as coaches fund it. There are other options and I’d recommend researching them all.

Rather than managing third-party suppliers, it may be worth offering new clubs that are run by staff. According to research, nearly half (48 per cent) of parents preferred clubs to be run by teaching staff.

Research shows that more than half of parents say that extracurricular clubs help their children with their progress in school. As a school business manager colleague recently told me – and Tes reported in the summer – offering a large number, and wide range, of clubs makes a huge difference to attainment and behaviour. More than anything, this seems to me to be the best motivation for cracking the logistical challenges and offering more clubs.

Michael Ledzion is a school governor, past chair of a primary school PTA, and most recently founder and CEO of Clubs for Schools and the social enterprise Sports for Schools. You can read more about the new research here