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School opening hours are to be extended from 8am to 6pm to help working parents with childcare, the education secretary Charles Clarke has announced.

Ninety per cent of working parents will be able to use family tax credits to pay for school-based nursery care, and breakfast, after-school and holiday clubs, Clarke told a 4Children conference.

He said that childcare is often not flexible enough, despite one million new places being created in the past seven years.

“Parents and children too often have to move between nursery, school, childminder and childcare club to obtain the childcare they need,” he said. And the provision often stops during school holidays.”

A 4Children survey of 1,100 schools showed that almost half already run breakfast clubs, a third have after-school clubs and 39 per cent run holiday play schemes. Two thirds wished to become “extended schools.”

Clarke acknowledged that it would take time for schools to offer complete “wrap around” childcare and stressed that private and voluntary sector partnerships would be needed to make it possible.

Clarke also pledged that by March 2008, all under-fives in the 20 per cent most deprived wards in England will have access to Children’s Centres, offering early education and childcare and support services for parents.

Childcare and parents charities have welcomed the announcement. Jan Fry from Parentline Plus said: “We are keen to see that the extra-curricular activities provided by schools are not all academic.”

Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the TUC, said: “Crucial to extended schools must be the availability of social services and psychological support to help vulnerable children.”

More about the schools survey can be found at: http://www.4children.org.uk/information/show/ref/356

More about the plans for wrap-around school based child care can be found at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2004_0152