The difference between what kids do at a state primary school on a Friday afternoon in practically any English town often boils down to what their parents can afford. Some schools charge £84 per term for science club. French, gymnastics, and music all have their own costs and subtly divide kids into families that can afford them and those that can’t. It’s a minor, unremarkable inequality that builds up over time without making headlines.
On June 13, the government unveiled Every Child Can, a £132.5 million initiative aimed at closing this kind of gap. The money, which comes from the Dormant Assets Scheme, will be used to support community and school-based activities on weekends, holidays, and after hours. These activities will fall into five categories: sport, civic engagement, arts and culture, nature and outdoor activities, and life skills, including STEM. In addition to the funding, the Department of Education released enrichment benchmarks that colleges and schools must utilize as a useful framework for developing their extracurricular offerings.
The announcement’s framing is intriguing. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reportedly preparing restrictions on under-16s accessing high-risk platforms, and ministers directly linked it to an impending social media crackdown. The implication is fairly straightforward: if you want to restrict what kids do on the internet, you must provide them with a real place to go. In a straightforward statement, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that these encounters inspire ambition and boost self-esteem. “A child who loves the arts shouldn’t have to be born into the right postcode to pursue it,” said Lisa Nandy, Culture Secretary. It is difficult to refute either of these claims. Implementation is the more difficult question.
Teachers who commented on the announcement used terms like “unpaid hours” and “two-tier system” for a reason. In the past, schools have been asked to increase their offerings, frequently without the staff or time to do so. While acknowledging that the goals were commendable, the Association of School and College Leaders pointed out—with a hint of fatigue—that staffing and financial constraints do not go away just because a policy is announced. That is more institutional memory than cynicism. For at least 20 years, there has been a persistent conflict in English education between what government enrichment programs promise and what schools can actually absorb.
Perhaps this time feels different. The investment’s size is significant—£132.5 million is not a token gesture—and its structure, which links it to precise benchmarks and gives Ofsted a part in evaluating enrichment as part of personal development reviews, suggests an effort to incorporate accountability into the framework rather than leaving it optional. The 400 most underprivileged schools are the focus of a different £22.5 million strand that invites them to take part in an Enrichment Expansion Program with assistance to meet the benchmarks. That’s a more focused strategy than sometimes possible with widespread national announcements.
It is worthwhile to sit with the survey data that underpins the policy. When more than 14,000 youth were surveyed about their experiences, the results revealed a high level of loneliness among this generation, which has smartphones in their pockets and constant access to social media. It has an almost paradoxical quality, and it appears to have actually influenced the way the government thinks. The funding has an economic rationale that goes beyond the obvious wellbeing argument, according to research from the Education Policy Institute that suggests children who participate in clubs during secondary school are more likely to be employed or advance to higher education.
It’s still unclear if football teams and debate societies can fulfill the demands placed upon them. However, it seems like most people on both sides of the typical arguments might actually agree on the instinct that kids need more of the real world and less of the curated one.
