Main barriers to accessing OSC

• Author: Ludwinek, Anna; Clevers, Franziska
• Pages: 19-24

19

The literature review identifies availability, affordability

and quality as the main barriers to accessing OSC

services. Other potential obstacles are lack of suitable

provision (for example, for specific target groups, such

as children with disabilities) or too few spaces being

available in OSC centres. Lack of provision is closely

linked to regional differences; for instance, accessibility

issues, including transport in rural areas, affect the

provision and the take-up of OSC. Cost, either to

providers or to parents, in the form of full or part

financing can act as a significant barrier, especially for

families on lower incomes. Specific eligibility criteria,

such as employment status, may exclude some

potential recipients. Finally, the issue of quality or

perceived quality can influence parents’ decision to

enrol their children into OSC. The following information

addresses barriers to accessing OSC occurring during

term time.

Regional differences

In most countries, the organisation, provision and

funding of out-of-school activities are highly

decentralised. Hence, regional differences can result in

patchy and fragmented access to OSC in many

countries. These regional differences are visible in both

larger and smaller countries. In Germany, where OSC

provision is decentralised, regions are concerned that

the amount of federal funding earmarked for the

provision of OSC is not enough to deliver high-quality

OSC activities.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, OSC in all-day schools is

supported by the state with €766 per child per year

(€1,529 for children with special needs). Two-thirds of

these costs is covered by the state and one-third by the

municipalities. The reality is that this amount of funding

is not enough to ensure high-quality OSC. Participating

schools’ calculations show that the costs of essential

OSC exceed their budgets, leaving school authorities

(such as the municipalities) with deficits.

In Italy, long-term absence of a national policy

framework that budgets for OSC has maintained the

traditional north–south divide in terms of meeting

families’ support needs: OSC coverage is more evenly

spread across the north and the centre of the country

than it is in the south.

But the issue of spatial inequalities in accessing OSC is

not the only challenge for large countries traditionally

known for regional governance. In Croatia, there are

large regional differences, mostly related to the level of

economic development achieved by, and the fiscal

capacity of, the local authorities. Only one-fifth of

schools offer OSC programmes (as a rule, in larger cities)

and parents pay the same amount – usually

HRK 350–500 (€45–70) per child per month. In addition,

there are large differences in terms of provision and the

duration of activities. For example, in Zagreb, some

primary schools offer two years of extended stay, while

primary schools in other areas offer three.

In some regions, demand for OSC exceeds the capacity

of after-school centres. This regional issue of supply and

demand has been flagged in Czechia, for example,

where the baby boom and the popularity of certain

regions have been cited as reasons why demand for OSC

is now outstripping supply. In cases where all applying

pupils cannot be enrolled, individual care centres devise

their own criteria to select which pupils to accept. The

after-school centres may, for example, reject children

with a parent who is not economically active (for

example, the mother is on maternity or parental leave),

limit the intake of children to certain age groups or give

priority to single-parent or socially disadvantaged

children (Kuchařová et al, 2009; Český rozhlas, 2013;

Mach, 2013). However, in practice, after-school centres

tend not to reject children but, rather, exceed their

official capacities, which forces them to divert funds

from other commitments, leaving a deficit

(Kuchařová et al, 2009;).

The other regional aspect is the urban–rural divide. In

most countries and regions, the network of OSC

activities seems to be much more developed in urban

settings. In Austria, almost one-third of all OSC and

almost two-thirds of all mixed-age childcare facilities

can be found in Vienna. Moreover, those urban services

offer longer and more flexible opening hours

(typically until 18:00), which facilitates the lives of many

working parents (Statistik Austria, 2016). In Czechia,

according to MŠMT data, the participation rate in OSC is

highest in the capital (66% of all children in the first

stage of elementary school attend after-school centres

in Prague), with the lowest rate found in the rural region

of Ústí (48%), which is also the region with the highest

unemployment rate. One of the explanations given for

this urban−rural difference is that because the capital

has high employment, parents utilise OSC services more

frequently. However, an earlier study on childcare

services that included OSC (Kuchařová et al, 2009)

implies that access to after-school centres was the

lowest in municipalities with 20,000–100,000

inhabitants. Moreover, parents from smaller

municipalities indicated more often than parents from

larger cities that their children were turned away from

after-school centres because the centres were full.

5Main barriers to accessing OSC