THE idea of lengthening the school day to help working families is bound to have its critics.

Education Secretary, and Bolton West MP, Ruth Kelly has unveiled a £680 million scheme to keep schools open from 8am to 6pm, with under-14s offered supervised breakfasts and after-hours sport and art activities.

The official nickname is "Kelly Hours" - cue a further storm of criticism - and the arguments against include inadequate funding, insufficient teaching availability and concern about private sector involvement.

All of these arguments have merit (especially extra work for hard-pressed teachers) but surely there is the essence of an excellent scheme here?

At Johnson Fold Primary School they have run a successful Breakfast Club for the past couple of years. Indeed, Ruth Kelly visited the club when it first opened and was impressed, so perhaps it had some influence on her subsequent thinking.

There, seven or eight volunteers go in at 8am each schoolday to prepare breakfast for 30 to 40 pupils.

The atmosphere is good, school attendance generally is up, and individual childrens work has improved.

The school also runs a youth club on Mondays and another after-school session on Fridays, but without the schools excellent volunteers, headteacher Paul Smith says that none of this would be possible.

He generally welcomes the new scheme, but sensibly feels that teachers could not be expected to run this as well, and that cash to fund outside help would be vital.

Some children, Mr Smith explained, still come to school without having had breakfast and it makes a difference to their work.

People who say that the millions earmarked should be diverted to, for example, encouraging better levels of literacy and numeracy.

But there is a much stronger argument that any teaching loses value when childrens concentration is damaged by inadequate diet, and that helping the whole family is also very useful.

Many working parents could use a helping hand with constructive childcare to ease the burden at either end of the day.