A survey by Catholic Education Flanders among 567 Flemish primary schools shows that most schools finance their out-of-school care with educational resources. Almost all primary schools also spend education money on afternoon care. Schools often charge parents for the care of their child, but that only covers part of the costs. The rest is covered by educational resources. This leaves less money for schools to invest in classrooms, textbooks and other school supplies.
“Organizing before-school care, afternoon supervision and after-school care is actually not the task of the teacher and the school, so schools are only given limited resources for afternoon supervision. Nevertheless, parents rightly expect that the school can provide supervision before and after school , and schools also want to meet the expectations of working parents,” says Lieven Boeve, director-general of Catholic Education Flanders. “Schools want to assist parents in this, but too often have to remove resources for their educational task. This is at the expense of the quality of education. We therefore ask for structural funding for this type of care.”
Allocating resources for out-of-school care is a shared responsibility of the ministries of education and welfare. Catholic Education Flanders expects the departments to work together on a solution. In addition, they also ask the government to provide resources for the recruitment of quality reception staff.