THE leader of Britain’s biggest head teachers’ union accused the Government yesterday of turning schools into a “national baby-sitting service”.

Plans to open “extended schools” from 8am to 6pm all year round would place intolerable stress on heads and condemn children to a 50-hour week away from their parents, Mick Brookes said.

Mr Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, also gave warning that a minority of parents were creating barriers to their children’s education by allowing them to stay up late playing computer games. Pupils arrived at school too tired to pay attention in class because their parents were guilty of “loving neglect” and afraid to say no to them. This often resulted in children behaving badly.

“The vast majority of parents are supportive, concerned and well-meaning. But there is a minority who create huge barriers to learning for their children and others by sending them to school in an unfit state to learn, with negative and violent attitudes to authority, or who simply don’t send them at all. They wash their hands of parental responsibility,” Mr Brookes told the union’s annual conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

Mr Brookes, who was the headmaster of a Nottinghamshire primary school for 27 years, said that the problem affected about 5 per cent of families. “I have always run a school which has had firm but fair discipline and children love it. It is quite interesting to see some of the children who have been little angels in school go out of the gate and treat their parents as if they are some sort of scum,” he said.

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, wants to establish extended provision for children aged 3 to 14 at all schools by 2010. Mr Brookes said that the association would oppose the idea unless heads were given clear guarantees of adequate funding and administrative support.

The rush to concentrate health and social services for children in schools, as part of the Every Child Matters agenda, risked undermining their core purpose of education. “We must not allow the lives of our colleagues to be further eroded by taking on further responsibility without the power and resources to ensure that the brave new world is feasible,” he told delegates.

He predicted that the introduction of “wrap-around care” for pupils would lead to the collapse of traditional after-school clubs as the Government imposed charges to pay for the reform. Parents would have to pay £70 a week for each child enrolled from 8am to 6pm during term, and £200 during school holidays.

Unpublished government guidance showed that academic activities such as reading clubs would remain free, but heads would have to charge for other provisions such as sports, games and arts. The system threatened administrative chaos and “the loss of goodwill that may well see the end of the traditional after-school club”.

Heads supported the Every Child Matters agenda, but very few realised that it meant that they were “being inveigled into . . . the administration of the national baby-sitting service”.

Mr Brookes said: “Condemning children to a 50-hour week doesn’t quite fit in with my idea of childcare.”

Relations between the association and Ms Kelly are severely strained. Teachers have been entitled since last September to a half-day away from the classroom each week to plan and mark work, but heads say that they lack adequate funding to pay for the time off.

Mr Brookes said: “Heads tell me that the past two terms have been the worst in living memory partly as a result of having to deal with reforms introduced without sufficient thought or resource.”

The Department for Education and Skills rejected the criticism of extended schools and said that they were “valued in the communities they serve”. There would be at least one extended school in every local authority area this year, and funding of £680 million until 2008 to establish more.

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