6. Very little is known about the true scale and diversity of ‘supplementary education’ or ‘out-of-school provision’. There is no reliable information on how many settings there are, how many children attend them and for how many hours, what activities are provided and who runs them.^[1] This is because they do not have to be registered with any state body, and have no supervision or oversight from them in respect of child protection.

7. Between 2018 and 2021, the Department for Education has been running a pilot project with 16 local authorities to try and find out more about out-of-school settings. Ms Kate Dixon, Director of School Quality and Safeguarding at the Department for Education, told us:

“I think the first thing that absolutely surprised us about the pilots is how long it has taken the local authorities who are piloting this to map, or even try to map, the number of settings that are in their patch. I don’t think any of them would say they have done that comprehensively.”^[2]

8. Local authorities have also had significant problems identifying which organisations providing services are within their areas, describing this as a “challenge for us all”.^[3] In particular, Mr Richard Baldwin, Director of Children’s Services for Tower Hamlets Council, told us:

“one of the challenges that we have particularly in our borough is that a number of these organisations are very fluid. They start, they stop, they close down, they reappear under different names with slightly different personnel. So the mapping of those organisations is very difficult and, if we were to do it, it would be very time consuming.”^[4]