HEAD teachers today threatened to block Education Secretary Ruth Kelly's plan for extending the school day to include more childcare facilities, branding the proposal "the national baby-sitting service".

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the so-called "Kelly hours" proposal had "very worrying" financial implications for schools.

Ms Kelly wants schools to open from 8am to 6pm offering a range of breakfast and after-school clubs to give parents a chance to leave their children in school while they go to work.

Burden

But Mr Brookes said the extra burden on schools, and particularly head teachers, could undermine the goodwill of staff which could spell the end of the traditional after-school club.

He told the union's annual conference in Harrogate that schools were "being inveigled into the administration of the national babysitting service".

He continued: "The as yet unpublished guidance to schools on the financial aspects of extending schools is very worrying.

"The requirements to charge for some after-school activities and not for others, to co-ordinate community transport and to further erode financial capacity by raiding school budgets to support such schemes not only threatens administrative chaos but also the loss of goodwill that may well see the end of the traditional after-school club.

"We must have the courage to put progress on hold if it threatens to further erode the work-life balance of school leaders and therefore damage the capacity of the school to fulfil its core purpose."

Responsibility

Mr Brookes also warned that a minority of parents were "washing their hands" of responsibility for their children.

"The vast majority of parents are supportive, concerned and well meaning.

"But there is a minority who create huge barriers to learning for their children and others by sending them to school in an unfit state to learn with negative and violent attitudes to authority, or who simply don't send them at all."

Mr Brookes warned that the Government's proposals for improving school meals could backfire.

"Whilst we agree that childhood obesity does need to be challenged, we will not achieve that aim by creating a kind of gastronomic puritanism that will simply encourage our young people to leave the premises at lunchtimes or to bring lunch boxes full of contraband," he said.

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