In view of the massive expansion of all-day schools, clubs are facing unprecedented problems. While some seek the solution in cooperation with the schools, looking to recruit the young there, others have not yet really realized their situation.

In recent years some 7,200 all-day schools have sprung up. In view of the massive presence of these schools, clubs are seeking new ways to reach the next generation. Studies suggest that particularly clubs in sparsely populated rural areas are threatened by the social change – for example, by the increasing performance pressure on pupils and parents. Can clubs still be saved?

“We certainly have our fears”, says Bernhard Alscher, mayor of Birkenfeld in rural Rhineland-Palatinate on the border to Saarland. The community fears that all-day schools could jumble up club life. Yet, according to Alscher, precisely clubs are irreplaceable today: at a time when the Internet and the media absorb children and young people more and more, “only clubs can preserve social structures”.

The community association is already feeling the trend of the majority of the population getting older and fewer children being born. In view of this demographic development and so as not to lose touch with the young, the Birkenfeld Sports Club, for example, offered football courses in the all-day schools. “We were able to gain new members”, says Helge Dietze, youth leader of the football club, “but the organization didn’t work in the long term because our volunteer workers all have full-time jobs”.

“Creating an afternoon offering at the all-day schools is difficult for clubs because they work primarily with volunteers whose jobs demand their time”, explains Claudia Busch, co-author of the study All-Day Schools in Rural Areas (Ganztagsschule in ländlichen Räumen / GaLäR) of the University of Jena and the Socio-Agricultural Society of Göttingen. “Sometimes they also have inhibitions about fulfilling the educational requirements of a good offer for a longer period of time.” The object of the study, which was completed at the end of June 2010, is to investigate the collaboration between lower secondary schools and youth work in sparsely populated rural regions of the Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia. The study encompassed 12 schools, 24 villages and 40 clubs.

One of its important results: Village clubs have been affected by “various phenomena of modernization” that can sometimes threaten their existence. The all-day school is one such factor. And “the more rural the structures, the greater the effect on the clubs”, says Claudia Busch. Since club life usually begins only in the late afternoon, clubs and all-day schools compete not so much for the time of pupils as for the scarce resource of available space. Respondents to the questions of the study also stated that all-day school pupils are too tired after a long day at school to take part in the group meetings of their clubs. If the pupils also have homework, then they have only enough energy left for passive media consumption. Another complication in rural communities is that young people living in villages sometimes have long ways to their clubs.

Nevertheless, the total number of clubs that make common cause with all-days schools has steadily increased. In the Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, each of the approximately 460 all-day-schools has found its a suitable extra-curricular partner, whether in the country or in the city. So that no club need itself negotiate the conditions for cooperation with a school, 24 associations and organizations have concluded so-called framework agreements. In this way, the Rhineland-Palatinate, which makes the agreements on behalf of the schools, ensures continuity by, for instance, having the associations pledge the schools to provide substitutes for trainers who have fallen ill.

The top position among extra-curricular partners, according to Johannes Jung, division head in the Ministry for Education, Science, Youth and Culture in Mainz, is held by the State Sports Association and its clubs, with 76,000 school hours. That is one third of the total time frame available to all-day schools. The State Sports Association is followed by churches and music schools.

“We may assume that a significant proportion of the projects organized as exercise and sports groups in the afternoon are carried out by extra-curricular partners, mainly by sports clubs”, says Ralf Laging, sports scientist at the University of Marburg. According to Laging, exercise and sports activities generally are one of the “most visible signs of the all-day school”: a sign that clubs should make use of. Many clubs are ready to cooperate: “In our study, we were able to show that half of all all-day schools cooperate with clubs, and that the other half ensures a regular exercise and sports program with its own staff, with parents and with volunteers”. But the catch is the infrastructure: in Bavaria, Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, the high density of all-day schools, that is, the number of schools in relation to the number of inhabitants, has led to a demonstrable shortage of athletic facilities.

Are then all-day schools an opportunity for clubs or a threat to them? “Both and”, says Mayor Alscher. Therefore “imagination is in demand”. Experts recommend that the responsibility for cooperation should be placed in the hands of local government, and propose agreements at the level of regional educational alliances.