Giving an eight-year-old a saw, a hammer and a power drill may sound a little reckless right now, but by the end of summer plenty of parents will be congratulating themselves on their bravery.
At The Hive, summer camp means activities that are a lot more challenging than finger painting, football and watching a grainy video copy of Toy Story 2. Here, children arrive every morning to make their own camouflage shelter from scratch, race go-karts they’ve put together, or build a trebuchet that’s bigger than them.
“We take all of the principles from gaming that children enjoy, the characters and progression, and replicate that in a way that is live and in nature,” said managing director Caroline Leroi, who founded The Hive in 2013, since when it has expanded to four day camps in the south-east of England during school holidays. “So it’s really immersive, it’s story-based and there’s a whole range of technology and outdoor activities, cooking outdoors, building and making, introducing young children to tools, hammers, drills – hands-on learning.”
Summer camps these days offer everything from forest skills, computer coding, stand-up comedy workshops , film-making, forensic science and GPS tracking system engineering. Competition for places is keen – there are 8.25 million school-age children in the UK, but three-quarters of local authorities in England admit there are not enough childcare places for working parents during the summer holidays, according to the Family and Childcare Trust.
Free or discounted childcare is a lifeline for parents trying to maintain their careers, but prices keep going up. Premium operators such as The Hive charge up to £73 a day, although Leroi offers scholarship places to about 15% of families. For mainstream summer schemes in the UK, the average cost over six weeks is £800 and rising.
The Lambeth Summer Camps, run by Metropolitan Police schools officers, has run for 30 years, but it has been affected by local authority cuts.
“We used to take 800 kids off the streets – we had five camps. Now we’ve got one,” PC Ian Wells said. He’s been running the camps for seven years and the cost has risen from £25 a week to £150. Now the officers – out of uniform – take only 200 children to do activities including sailing, canoeing, rock climbing and Quasar. “It’s a way of kids getting to know police officers,” Wells said. “You do get recognised in the streets, which is good because they know us more as people than just someone in uniform.”
The activities come with a gang awareness message – an issue that has led some councils, such as Islington, to offer a pared-back summer scheme of free lunches for children of families claiming benefits.
“It’s depressing to see that the same problems with holiday childcare still persist year after year: there’s not enough of it and it’s too expensive,” says Ellen Broomé, chief executive of the Family and Childcare Trust. “Until parents can afford to pay for it, we are going to continue to struggle to get enough childcare. We need help for paying for childcare that matches the needs of families with school children, including changes to the government’s flagship Universal Credit.”
One of the things that might make a big difference is the right to request wraparound and holiday childcare – an obligation for schools to consider making their buildings and facilities available. Yet only 4% of councils say this has had a positive impact, according to the trust’s research. Private holiday schemes are businesses that run for 12 weeks a year, and finding a decent venue can make the difference between success and bankruptcy.
During term time, Leroi offers consulting work in education. “You don’t start a business like The Hive to become a millionaire,” she said. “I was lucky enough to get investment at the beginning but not everyone does.
“We can’t be as inclusive as I would like. There are choices that are made in this country. In places like Scandinavia there is a lot more government support for places like this. In the US, parents recognise that going to camp is not just driven by childcare, it’s also about opportunities to do something they don’t do at school.”
While most UK summer camps are day schemes, there are moves to reintroduce the residential summer camps that were popular until the 1980s, driven by Chris Green, the founder of the Summer Camps Trust. He estimates that there are about 20,000 residential schemes run by his members which include PGL, XUK and the Outward Bound Trust.
“In 2019 we will be promoting a programme of affordable summer camps with £245 for a week, aimed at children who have never been to a summer camp,” Green said. The trust is aiming to get 1 million children on summer camps by 2030. “For a lot of children, it’s the happiest week of their lives.”
