Extracurricular time and the professional constraints of parents

Working parents have to organise themselves to ensure supervision of their children before school, at lunch-time, after school and also on Wednesdays. This is all the more necessary when the children are young. Seven nursery or primary school children out of ten eat in the canteen when their two parents are working, compared with a little more than a third when at least one of the parents are not working. Most go to school and return home with their parents. Where both parents work full time, nearly one out of two primary school pupils are not met by them directly after school, and four out of ten do not see either of them on Wednesdays during the day. The vast majority of secondary school pupils (aged 11 – 15) eat in the canteen, and go to school and return home alone. Once they have returned home, 16% of them are alone.