You wouldn’t guess it to look at me now, but I was once a keen hockey player at school. It wasn’t a sport I even knew existed before that first experience in a PE lesson in year 8, but I quickly made the team and, when I moved schools later, even became captain. With hindsight, I think I liked running at others armed with a big heavy stick. The Department for Education’s Every Child Achieving and Thriving white paper asserts that enrichment is a central component of a “broad” education, not an optional add-on. The statement that “enrichment will be not just for those who can afford to pay, but a common entitlement for all” will be welcomed by the vast majority across the sector. Part of move from a “narrow to broad” curriculum, the white paper places enrichment on the same footing as breadth and inclusion, rather than as purely extracurricular provision dependent on family income or school resources. Without a doubt, enriching all children’s experience of and at school should never come with a price tag. I remember many times I didn’t even bother to bring letters home about potential school trips on offer because I knew there was no way that the family budget could ever stretch that far. Children start to deselect themselves very early. Shocking levels of poverty Universal entitlement to enrichment is presented as a lever to reduce structural disadvantage and prevent enrichment gaps becoming another driver of attainment gaps. Indeed, this aligns with the white paper’s ambition to halve the disadvantage gap and raise outcomes for all children simultaneously. There are still shockingly large numbers of children growing up in poverty. Yes, the removal of the two-child benefit cap will help, as will the extension of eligibility for free school meals to all families on universal credit. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation states that while 20 to 25 per cent of White British children are growing up in poverty, this rises to 45 to 50 per cent for those of Black African and Black Caribbean heritage, and to 61 to 67 per cent for those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent. This matters because the majority of colleagues working in schools are white and often from middle-class backgrounds. School leaders cannot rely on the goodwill of the many many staff who always go above and beyond for our young people to offer more of the same. Any approach to widening participation in enrichment for all young people will need to be through an equalities lens that considers ethnicity as central. Also essential to consider is gender, as teenage girls start to withdraw from sport in particular. We, as the professionals, must talk to the children and their families to identify – and then provide – what they want and need. Who will pay for it? While enrichment in schools should be free to access, there remains the perennial question about who will cover additional costs. One of the most affordable options is to embed enrichment into the curriculum time already on offer, meaning teachers have it as part of their 1,265 hours of directed time whether they want it or not. However, one school I worked at tried this over ten years ago. Attendance on that day was 10 per cent lower than any other day. There was a mass exodus of young people at lunchtime, jumping over the fence to go home rather than participate in “forced fun.” Trips, even during the confines of the school day, are now made almost impossible due to the atrocious cost of hiring a coach. For rural schools, there can be practically nothing on the doorstep and even geography fieldwork trips can seem prohibitively expensive. We can’t keep taking time from staff Providing a diverse range of high-quality and reliable activities before or after school is the most appealing option, but we can’t keep taking time from staff. Asking them to sacrifice more professional or family time while adding to workload while taking on added responsibility and accountability will not help us reframe the career as one that is enjoyable and sustainable. The DfE is consulting on the enrichment framework as part of wider school accountability reform. But it is expected to be in place by September, so we need to consider what is possible and affordable now. For the initiative to succeed for all pupils, we need generous support from government, charities and altruistically minded businesses. Schools in more affluent areas will not have as many problems realising their vision, nor those schools that are a part of large and wealthy trusts. We need a financial plan for those schools that, if they have not run out of money already, will do so very soon. For something meant to be joyful, let’s make sure all children can access what they really want.