Childcare Services — Cambridge IELTS 17 Academic 2022 TEST 3 — IELTS Test

Cambridge IELTS 17 Academic 2022 TEST 3

Childcare Services

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(0:00) Part 2. You will hear the manager of a child care service at a primary school talking to parents (0:07) at an open day about the school's child care service offered before and after school. (0:14) First you have some time to look at questions 11 to 15. Now listen carefully and answer questions (0:56) 11 to 15.

Good afternoon, my name's Mrs Carter and I run the before and after school extended (1:07) hours child care service. I hope you've had a chance to have a good look around the school (1:12) and talk to staff and pupils. I know that many of you are interested in using our child care service (1:19) when your child joins the school and perhaps you already know something about it but for those that (1:26) don't I'll go through the main details now.

We offer child care for children from the ages of (1:32) 4 to 11 both before and after school. I know that many parents who work find this service invaluable. (1:41) You can leave your child with us safe in the knowledge that they will be extremely well cared (1:47) for.

We are ensured to provide care for up to 70 children although we rarely have this many (1:54) attending at any one session. I think we generally expect around 50 to 60 children for the afternoon (2:02) sessions and about half that number for the breakfast sessions. Although we currently do (2:09) have 70 children registered with us not all of these attend every day.

It's 10 years since we (2:16) began offering an extended hours service and we've come a long way during that time. When we first (2:23) opened we only had about 20 children attending regularly. We try to keep our costs as low as we (2:30) can and we think we provide very good value for money.

For the afternoon sessions which run from (2:37) 3.30 until 6pm it's £7.20 but if you prefer you can pay for one hour only which costs £3.50 (2:48) or two hours which costs £5.70. The cost of the child care includes food and snacks. They'll be (2:56) breakfast in the morning and in the afternoon a healthy snack as soon as they finish school. (3:03) At 5pm children are given something more substantial such as pasta or a casserole.

(3:11) Please inform us of any allergies that your child might have and we'll make sure they're (3:16) offered a suitable alternative. As you may know the child care service runs through the school (3:23) holidays from 8am to 6pm. We offer a really varied and exciting programme to keep the children (3:31) entertained.

We don't want them to feel as if they are still at school. It will also feel different (3:37) because they'll get the chance to make new friends with children from other schools. Spaces are (3:43) available for them because a lot of our term time children don't always attend during the holiday.

(3:49) In the past parents have asked if children over the age of 11 are allowed to come with their (3:55) younger brothers and sisters but I'm afraid we're unable to do this because of the type of insurance (4:02) we have. Before you hear the rest of the talk you have some time to look at questions 16 to 20. (4:38) Now listen and answer questions 16 to 20.

So now let me tell you about some of the activities that (4:48) your child can do during the after school sessions. As well as being able to use the (4:54) playground equipment, computers and the library there is usually at least one special activity (5:00) that children can do each day. For example Spanish.

We have a specialist teacher coming in (5:07) every Thursday to give a basic introduction to the language through games and songs. (5:13) She does two sessions, one for the over eights and one for the younger children. (5:19) This is the only activity which we have to make an extra charge for but it's well worth it.

(5:26) Once a week the children have the opportunity to do some music. We're very lucky that one of our (5:32) staff is a member of a folk band. On Mondays she teaches singing and percussion to groups of (5:39) children.

We do rely on parental support for this so if any of you sing or play an instrument (5:46) and would be prepared to help out at these sessions we'd be delighted. Painting continues (5:53) to be one of the most popular activities. To begin with we weren't keen on offering this because of (5:59) the extra mess involved but children kept asking if they could do some art and so we finally gave (6:06) in.

Art is great for helping the children to relax after working hard at school all day. (6:14) Yoga is something that we've been meaning to introduce for some time but haven't been able to (6:19) find anyone available to teach it, until now that is, so we'll see how this goes. Hopefully children (6:27) will benefit in all sorts of ways from this.

Cooking is another popular activity. They make a (6:34) sort of cake or pizza or bread each week. Although the younger children love doing it we found that (6:41) the mess was just too much so we've decided to restrict this to the over eights as they are better (6:48) able to clean up after themselves.

That is the end of part two. You now have half a minute to (6:58) check your answers to part two.

Part 2 of 4

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