After School Club Ideas: 32 Activities With Real Costs

Most after school clubs get chosen the same way. Someone on site can already do a thing, so that becomes the club, and it runs every week until sign-ups dry up. That holds until you need a second club, or a third, and nobody left on the payroll plays chess.

Here are 32 after school club ideas, grouped the way the Department for Education now groups enrichment, each with an age band, a workable group size and what the kit costs in pounds. Plus the rule most organisers miss: in England, how many activity types one club offers is a registration question, not just a timetabling one.

The demand is there. 72% of mainstream primary pupils were reported by their parents to have taken part in at least one enrichment activity in the summer term of 2024/25, in the DfE's evidence review on enrichment. We have covered what clubs do for attainment separately, so this is about what to run and what it costs.

How to pick a club that will actually run

Before the ideas, five filters. Run every candidate through them and the shortlist gets short fast.

1. Space. Hall, classroom, playground or field, and be honest about what each one is like in November. A club that only works in dry weather is a club that gets cancelled six times a year.
2. Staff skill. The club survives if someone on the payroll can lead it without a script. Buying in a coach is fine, but price it before you advertise, not after.
3. Age band. Reception and Year 6 want different things. A mixed-age club needs an activity with a low floor and a high ceiling, where a five-year-old and a ten-year-old can both be busy at the same table.
4. Kit cost against expected income. At £4 a session across a ten-week term, twelve children brings in £480. That covers a coach for most of the term or a starter kit outright, but rarely both in year one.
5. Registration status. In England, the number of different activity types you offer decides whether you need to register with Ofsted. More on that below, because it changes what you can put in the letter home.

The five kinds of enrichment

The DfE published The enrichment framework for schools and colleges in June 2026. It is non-statutory, but it replaces the usual active/creative/academic split with five categories: sport and physical activities, arts and culture, nature, outdoors and adventure, developing wider life and future skills, and civic engagement.

It is worth borrowing the taxonomy for one practical reason. Sorting your programme into five boxes shows you which box is empty, and it stops a timetable turning into three flavours of football. It is also where the money is going: the £132.5m Every Child Can programme announced in June 2026 sits alongside more than £1bn for school sport over three years and £22.5m for an Enrichment Expansion Programme in 400 schools in the most deprived areas.

The 32 ideas below are grouped the same way. If you want the wider definition first, we have a plain explainer on what enrichment means in school.

Sport and physical activity clubs

The biggest category by demand, and the one with the clearest gap between what schools offer and what children ask for. The best national read on that gap is the DfE's Parent, Pupil and Learner Panel, which asked secondary pupils about the 2021/22 school year: 73% had the chance to play a school team sport outside lessons and 77% wanted one. Football was both the most offered at 58% and the most wanted at 37%. Dodgeball was wanted by 22% and sat nowhere near the top of what schools put on. Nobody has asked the same question at primary age, so treat it as a steer rather than a forecast.

Sport England's Active Lives survey puts the wider case: 49.1% of children in England meet the 60-minutes-a-day guideline, which leaves the majority short.

1. Football. Reception to Year 6, 10 to 24 children. Size 3 balls for KS1, size 4 for KS2, bibs in two colours. Balls and pop-up goals are the real spend; bibs and cones are trivial. Our football coaching drills will fill a term of sessions.
2. Multi-sports carousel. Reception to Year 4, 12 to 30. Four stations, rotate every twelve minutes. The most forgiving format for mixed ages and the easiest to staff, because no station needs a specialist. Racquet stations work well, and our tennis drills for kids slot straight in.
3. Dodgeball. Year 2 to Year 6, 12 to 24. Soft foam balls only, six or eight of them, and a hall. The widest gap between wanted and offered in the DfE's panel data.
4. Street dance. Year 1 to Year 6, 10 to 25. A speaker is the whole kit: £49 gets you going, £239 fills a hall and takes a mic. Mirrors are optional and a hall wall does the job. The case for dance is strong for coordination and confidence.
5. Gymnastics and movement. Reception to Year 4, 8 to 16. Mats limit the numbers, not the floor space. Start with gymnastics games and warm-ups rather than apparatus.
6. Yoga and mindfulness. Reception to Year 6, 10 to 30. Runs in a classroom with the tables pushed back. Mats are the whole cost, and skip the £378 mat trolley, because it only holds twelve. Our kids yoga lesson plan is a ready-made first session.
7. Athletics and running club. Year 2 to Year 6, 10 to 40. Highest headcount per adult of anything on this list, and the kit is cones and a stopwatch.

Arts and culture clubs

Cheap to start, hard to staff badly, and the category most likely to produce something to show parents at the end of term. Two of these cost effectively nothing to set up.

1. Art and craft club. Reception to Year 6, 15 to 20. Aprons and bulk paint are the real spend, not the ideas. Worth reading on the wider benefits of arts and crafts before you write the letter home.
2. Drama and improvisation. Year 1 to Year 6, up to 30. No kit at all, and it scales further than any other creative club. Our drama lesson plans cover a full term of games and scenes.
3. Choir. Reception to Year 6, 15 to 40. The only club here with genuinely zero equipment cost if you have a piano or a phone and a speaker.
4. Percussion and rhythm. Reception to Year 4, 10 to 20. Hand drums, shakers and homemade instruments. The cheapest music club by a distance, and the one that needs the least musical training to lead.
5. Film-making. Year 3 to Year 6, 8 to 16. Run it on tablets the school already owns. Buy tripods, a clip mount and a ring light, not cameras.
6. Photography. Year 3 to Year 6, 8 to 15. Same rule as film. A weekly theme and a printed exhibition in week six does more than better hardware.
7. Textiles and crochet. Year 2 to Year 6, 8 to 14. Slow, quiet and hugely popular with children who dislike the hall. Blunt needles, and one adult per seven at most.

Photography is the one place in this list where the kit decision changes the budget by an order of magnitude. Buying cameras puts a club at £800 to £1,600. Running it on tablets you already own, with tripods, mounts and a ring light, puts it at £150 to £250.

Nature, outdoors and adventure clubs

The category schools underuse because it looks weather-dependent. Most of it is not, if you own waterproofs and a plan B.

1. Gardening. Reception to Year 6, 10 to 20. The cost sits in hand tools and gloves, not the beds. A raised bed runs £19 to £72, but four child-size tool packs and 15 to 20 pairs of gloves runs £230 to £254.
2. Forest school and bushcraft. Reception to Year 6, 8 to 15. To call it forest school you need a Level 3 leader, which is £950 to £1,100 for the course and £1,090 to £1,320 all-in once mandatory outdoor first aid and awarding-body registration are added. Check the delivery format before you pay: since February 2018 the Forest School Association has only recognised Level 3 courses that teach at least 60% of their guided learning hours face to face, so a cheap online-only course may not count towards recognised provider status. Our guide to forest school training has the full price comparison, and the benefits case is well evidenced.
3. Nature detectives and minibeast hunting. Reception to Year 3, 10 to 24. Bug pots, magnifiers and an identification chart. Under £60 and it works on any patch of grass.
4. Orienteering and map skills. Year 3 to Year 6, 12 to 30. Laminated site maps, punch cards and a stopwatch. Once the course is drawn, it runs itself for years.
5. Den building. Year 1 to Year 6, 10 to 20. Tarps, cord and a bag of pegs. The single best wet-weather outdoor activity there is, because the point is staying dry.
6. Wildlife watching and bird surveying. Year 2 to Year 6, 8 to 16. Feeders, a couple of pairs of binoculars and a weekly tally. Pairs neatly with outdoor learning activities and our wider forest school ideas.

Wider life and future skills clubs

The DfE puts STEM, cooking, digital literacy, money and enterprise in this category. It is the one with the most hidden compliance and the widest cost spread.

1. Cooking and baking. Year 1 to Year 6, 8 to 16. Whoever leads it needs Level 2 Food Safety in Catering, which is £14 to £20 plus VAT online. The two swing costs are aprons at £100 to £120 for a class set and knives at £65 to £190. Our cooking class lesson plan covers session structure and allergen handling.
2. Coding. Year 3 to Year 6, 12 to 20. A micro:bit V2 Club Box of 10 is £145 ex VAT, £174 inc, and children work in pairs, so one box covers 20. Scratch on existing laptops costs nothing at all.
3. LEGO and construction challenge. Year 1 to Year 6, 10 to 20. A weekly build brief beats free play for attendance. Classic brick boxes and baseplates, not expensive education sets.
4. Science club. Year 2 to Year 6, 12 to 24. One bulk working-scientifically pack at £188 covers most of a year. Keep a written risk assessment for anything involving heat.
5. Chess. Year 1 to Year 6, 10 to 30. A ten-set school combo is around £135 and a demo board £39.95. Clocks add about £140 and can wait until year two.
6. Board games. Reception to Year 6, 10 to 30. The cheapest club in this entire list. Buy duplicates of the two fastest card games rather than a twelfth title, because duplicates absorb late arrivals without breaking a game in progress.
7. Enterprise and young business club. Year 4 to Year 6, 10 to 20. Design, cost and sell something at a school fair. Needs a float and a spreadsheet, nothing else, and it teaches more about money than any worksheet.

Civic engagement clubs

The category schools skip most often, which is odd, because responsibility-based activities are already the second most commonly offered form of enrichment in English schools at 79%, behind competitive team sports at 88% and ahead of musical performance at 75%. These are also the cheapest clubs to run after board games. Most need a room and nothing else.

1. Debating and public speaking. Year 4 to Year 6, 10 to 24. Motions, a timer and a rotating chair. Pairs well with a mock election in the summer term.
2. School council and mock elections. Year 2 to Year 6, 12 to 30. Manifestos, hustings, ballot boxes made from cereal packets. Cost: paper.
3. Volunteering and community projects. Year 2 to Year 6, 10 to 25. Litter picks, letter-writing to a local care home, a seasonal charity drive. Litter pickers and hi-vis vests are the only outlay.
4. Newspaper and podcast club. Year 3 to Year 6, 8 to 15. A termly edition or a monthly episode. One USB microphone and a free editor covers the audio version.
5. Buddy and peer mentoring. Year 5 to Year 6 mentoring Reception to Year 2, 10 to 20 pairs. Structured, supervised, and the club most likely to change how a playground feels.

What each club costs to set up

Before the numbers, the thing that catches everyone out. School suppliers such as Hope Education and TTS quote ex VAT by default, while Argos, Dunelm and Zatu quote inc VAT. The same micro:bit ten-pack can read as £145, £150 or £180 depending on whose convention you are looking at. Every figure below is inclusive of VAT.

Prices were checked against live UK supplier listings in August 2026 (Hope Education, Baker Ross, Newitts, Chess & Bridge, Kitronik, Rapid Online, Zatu, Dunelm, Wickes, B&Q, Screwfix, Richer Sounds and CameraWorld). Treat them as a planning range and confirm before you order.

Two things that will otherwise waste an afternoon. The Consortium has closed and now redirects to TTS. And LEGO Education's school range is being wound down in the UK: BricQ Motion, SPIKE Essential, Simple & Powered Machines and SPIKE Prime are all retired, with direct sales ending in June 2026, so anything you find is reseller stock at reseller prices. A construction club is better served by LEGO Classic boxes at around £45 each.

The rule that limits how many activities one club can offer

This is the part that catches new organisers, and it is a decision about which activities you pick.

In England, most providers looking after children under 8 for more than two hours a day have to register with Ofsted. There is an activity-based exemption, set out in Ofsted's guidance on registration exemptions and underpinned by the 2008 exemptions order. You do not have to register if you provide tutoring or coaching in one or two of five activity types, to children aged 3 and over:

• School study support or homework support
• Sports
• Performing arts
• Arts and crafts
• Religious, cultural or language studies

Offer three, and the exemption falls away. It also falls away if any child under 5 attends for more than four hours in a day.

The subtler point is that it is not only which activity, but how you run it. Ofsted's own examples are unusually clear. A bouncy castle, or a free choice of racquets, balls, bikes and roller skates, counts as physical exercise rather than sport coaching. Putting out pens, paints and paper is not tuition in arts and crafts. For the exemption to apply, the activity has to be the main focus and the children have to be improving a specific skill.

Exemption cuts both ways commercially. An exempt club usually cannot be paid for with Tax-Free Childcare, which narrows your market to parents paying out of taxed income. There are two ways round that. An exempt provider can still join the voluntary part of the Childcare Register, which is what makes Tax-Free Childcare available to the families using it. And school-led school-age childcare that is exempt from registration stays eligible for Tax-Free Childcare and the childcare element of Universal Credit under the school's own URN, per DfE guidance on delivering school-age childcare. Either route makes taking Tax-Free Childcare payments worth setting up properly, and we support it as a payment method.

One more wrinkle. A club running under two hours a day normally cannot register at all, but there is an exception if it runs immediately before school, immediately after school, or both, under the two-hour rule.

So a three-activity carousel club is a different legal animal from a football club, and the paperwork belongs in the plan before the timetable is set. We go deeper in our guides to Ofsted registration for after school clubs and setting up a club in the UK.

This covers England. Scotland registers through the Care Inspectorate, Wales through CIW, and Northern Ireland through health and social care trusts, each with its own rules.

A worked half-term rota

Rotating themes inside an activity holds attendance better than the same thing every week. Here is six weeks across three club days, deliberately kept inside two activity types so the exemption still applies.

Two rules make a rota like this work. Build towards something visible in week six, whether that is a tournament, a performance, a mural or an exhibition, because attendance holds when there is an end point. And keep two low-prep fallbacks permanently in the cupboard for the day the field is unusable or a member of staff picks the club up at an hour's notice. Board games, an indoor scavenger hunt and a drawing challenge cover almost every emergency.

What to charge, and how many children it takes to break even

Published 2026 price lists from UK primary schools and providers cluster tightly. Expect £2.70 to £7.50 per child for an hour-long session, with most sitting at £4 to £6, and £40 to £60 for a ten-week term as the most common structure. Real examples: £4.00 a session at a Bexley primary, £4.50 at a Lewisham primary, £5.50 to £7.50 from a Bristol provider, and £6 a session or £55 for an eleven-week term at a club in Newham.

Longer wraparound care running to 6pm is a different product and prices differently, at £6 to £18 a session. For context, Coram Family and Childcare's Childcare Survey 2026 puts a full week of after-school club at £69.38 in England, £71.08 in Scotland and £74.31 in Wales, ranging from £54.57 in the North West to £83.93 in the South East.

On the cost side, external coaching runs roughly £30 to £47 per coach-hour, or £150 to £200 for a bundled full day including PPA cover and a club. The National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour from April 2026 for those aged 21 and over. An enhanced DBS check is £49.50, but budget £63 to £71 once an umbrella body's admin fee is added, and the Update Service is £16 a year and free for volunteers.

At £4.50 a session, eleven or twelve paying children covers a £47 coach-hour. Everything above that is contribution to kit, admin and the next club you want to start.

That single line should shape the size of the room you book. If you can only fit eight, buy in a coach for a term and no longer. Our after school club business plan guide works the numbers through properly, and if the problem is bums on seats rather than maths, we have written about filling an after school club.

Matching ideas to the space and staff you actually have

Most club plans fail on logistics rather than enthusiasm.

Add one more filter before you publish the list: whether a child with additional needs could join every club on it. Only 23% of the English councils that responded to Coram's survey said they had enough school-age childcare for at least three-quarters of children with SEND. Small adaptations do most of the work, such as a quieter corner in a busy hall club, a visual timetable on the wall, and a maximum of two instructions at a time.

Keeping the admin off the club

The activity is the easy part. What eats the leader's week is registers, consent and medical forms, allergy notes, chasing the four families who have not paid, and working out who gets the last place when a club fills. We run bookings, registers and payments for after school clubs, hold a waiting list that fills cancelled places automatically, and support Tax-Free Childcare for registered provision, so the person leading the club can spend the hour leading it.

Pick the club your staff can lead in the space you actually have, cost the kit before you advertise it, and count how many activity types you are offering before the letter goes home. Get those three right and the club runs itself for a term.

Key takeaways

• Group your programme across the DfE's five enrichment categories to spot the gap in what you offer, rather than running three versions of the same thing.
• Dodgeball is wanted by 22% of pupils in the DfE's panel and offered almost nowhere, which makes it the cheapest way to differentiate.
• Seven of the twelve costed clubs start under £200. Board games is the cheapest at £75 to £190; photography is the most expensive at £800 to £1,600 unless you use tablets you already own.
• In England, offering more than two of the five listed activity types tips a club into compulsory Ofsted registration.
• At £4.50 a session, eleven or twelve children covers a £47 coach-hour.
• Build every half term towards something visible in week six, and keep two low-prep fallbacks in the cupboard.