Organisation of OSC services

• Author: Ludwinek, Anna; Clevers, Franziska
• Pages: 11-13

11

As shown in the previous chapter, how OSC features in

the policy discourse and the policy debates across the

countries varies greatly. This chapter provides an

overview of the organisation, provision and funding of

OSC in Member States, the UK and Norway.

Regulation at national, regional

and local levels

In the majority of these countries, the overall planning

of OSC takes place at the national, centralised level. The

planning includes adoption of laws and decrees that lay

the foundations for the organisation of OSC. In turn,

that organisation involves setting out the framework for

the overall conditions, opening hours, recruitment and

appointment of staff, curriculum of teaching and

activities, and eligibility criteria.

National level

The diversity of the OSC concept and policy discussion,

as described in the preceding chapters, is reflected in

OSC regulations and the way policy is designed and

implemented. Government bodies responsible for the

set-up of OSC are predominantly government ministries

or agencies of national education systems. To a lesser

extent, other ministries and agencies, such as ministries

for family or social affairs, are actors at national level.

In countries without specific and integrated legislation

for the provision of OSC, there are often various OSC

measures which have been incorporated into broader

pieces of legislation, such as that concerning childcare.

In general, laws tend to address child development

rather than other OSC policy drivers, such as labour

market participation or work–life balance, which is

the case for the Education Act 2004 in Czechia, the

Public-School Act in Denmark, the Education Act in

Norway, the Elementary School Act in Slovenia and the

Education Act (Skollagen) of 2011 in Sweden.

In Finland, activities are regulated by the Basic

Education Act 1998. Based on the act, the provision of

out-of-school activities is organised by municipalities

(local governments), which can provide services

themselves or buy them from an external service

provider. Municipalities do not have a formal obligation

to provide OSC services, but in practice almost all

municipalities do, at least to some extent. Under this

act, OSC services should be provided to all children in

first and second grade. In addition, pupils with special

needs in the first to ninth grades are entitled to the

same services. According to the act, the needs of

different language groups should also be taken into

consideration (which means, for instance, that there are

both Finnish- and Swedish-speaking OSC groups in

bilingual municipalities).

The acts mentioned above mainly define education –

including formal OSC – by the school education system

and determine the general rules for the functioning and

funding of the system and the establishment of school

facilities. In Bulgaria, Czechia, France, Portugal,

Slovenia and Spain, the legal regulation of OSC is

defined in decrees and implemented through the

content and scope of OSC activities, the range of

participants in the services, the conditions for their

admission and charges.

OSC provision may also be covered in national

strategies. For example, in Croatia provision is covered

by the National Strategy on the Rights of Children in the

Republic of Croatia 2014–2020 – although this is an

exception rather than a mainstream approach.

In Estonia, with a rather less systematic infrastructure,

OSC provision is regulated via the Youth Work Act and

the Hobby Schools Act. Three countries have acts

specifically related to the provision of childcare, which,

in principle, encompasses OSC: the Childcare Support

Act 2018 in Ireland, Childcare Act 2004 in the

Netherlands and the Childcare Act 2006 in the UK.

In some cases, such as in Austria and Germany, OSC

provision is regulated via various laws. Germany is

something of an exception as the Basic Law determines

the different regulations for each of the federal states,

which have constitutional sovereignty over the

educational system.

Regional and local levels

Generally, formal OSC is implemented at the regional

and local levels, with local municipalities playing the

most significant role in designing services to provide

children’s care before and after school daily opening

times and, to some extent, during holiday periods.

Municipalities, such as those in Belgium, develop their

strategies for the development of education over the

medium term. Unless a specific area is explicitly

regulated at the national level, it often falls within the

competency of the head of the school facility, as in

Czechia.

Objectives of regulations

Holistic and comprehensive explanations that include

all three identified objectives of OSC (accessible,

affordable and high-quality) are seldom visible in

national regulations. Instead, the OSC policy

frameworks across the Member States, the UK and

Norway focus on one or maybe two out of the three

objectives. The education factor is the most visible,

3Organisation of OSC services