School-age childcare ratios for before- and after-school programs

Start with what the federal government does not set.

The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) rules, administered by ACF, contain no numeric staff-to-child ratio for any age group.

What 45 CFR 98.41(d) requires instead is that each state describe its own group size limits and child-to-caregiver ratios by age in the CCDF Plan it files.

The ratio that governs your school-age room is therefore written by your state child care licensing agency — not by any federal table.

Two national tables give you reference points to read it against.

The first is Caring for Our Children (CFOC), standard 1.1.1.2 — a best-practice guideline from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association, not law.

Its center table splits school-age into two bands, with a third row that matters because a before- or after-school roster can include kindergartners:

Age group	CFOC recommended ratio	CFOC maximum group size
4- and 5-year-olds	8:1	16
6-8-year-olds	10:1	20
9-12-year-olds	12:1	24

The second is the ratio sheet NAEYC publishes for its accreditation program.

NAEYC keeps a single school-age row — a suggested 1:15 ratio with a maximum class of 30 — and a separate kindergarten row at 1:12 with a class of 24.

These are voluntary accreditation standards: NAEYC accredits programs and publishes the table as suggested best practice, and a program is rated against it only if it opts into accreditation.

The full sheet, band by band, is in our guide to NAEYC ratios and group sizes.

Watch the band line for kindergartners.

CFOC puts 4- and 5-year-olds at 8:1 with a group of 16 and moves to 10:1 at age 6; NAEYC splits kindergarten (1:12) from school-age (1:15).

The age lines differ between the two reference tables, and which band a kindergartner in your after-school room falls into for licensing is your state's call.

The younger bands are covered in our preschool and pre-K ratios guide.

Confirm before you schedule. Licensing agencies revise their ratio tables, and the number your rooms are regulated by is the one your state child care licensing agency currently publishes for school-age care in your setting.

Neither CFOC nor NAEYC tells you what your license requires — treat both as reference points to verify against your state's current rule.

Whether a before- or after-school program — including one operated by or inside a school — must hold a child care license at all is decided at the state level, by the same agency that writes the ratio table.

Federal CCDF rules set no numeric ratios of their own; they require each state to describe its own rules by age.

Our research for this page did not confirm a current national count of the programs states exempt from child care licensing, so treat exemption as a question to ask rather than an assumption to build a staffing plan on: the state child care licensing agency can tell you which rules apply to your program's ages, hours and funding.

One federal requirement follows a program even where a licensing exemption applies — as long as the program is paid with CCDF subsidy.

License-exempt providers who are paid with CCDF subsidy must still meet federal health, safety and background-check requirements — relatives specified in 98.42(c) are the main exception to the health and safety rules.

If your program enrolls children whose care is subsidized, participating in the subsidy system brings those federal requirements with it, alongside whatever your state's arrangement for exempt providers is.

For staffing, the practical point is that license-exempt is not the same as unregulated.

Which rules your program staffs under — the state's school-age table, the federal health, safety and background-check requirements that come with subsidy participation, or something else — depends on how your program is classified, and that classification is the licensing agency's to confirm.

Confirm it before you build a hiring plan around a ratio you have not verified.

Field trips and swim days change the staffing picture — and they are where the tables on this page stop.

The numbers above are the classroom ratios.

Our research for this page did not confirm a current national standard for field-trip or swimming staffing, and this page will not guess at one: where a state sets a separate number for off-site outings or water activities, it lives in the state's licensing rule, and that — not the regular classroom ratio — is the number that governs the day.

Two staffing notes hold regardless of the destination.

For programs in NAEYC accreditation, assessors rate ratios during all hours, indoors and outdoors — the ratio follows the day — though group size is not rated outdoors.

And arithmetically, an outing takes counted adults out of the building: the same roster now has to cover the trip and every room that stays behind, which is why trip days are scheduled rather than improvised.

Ask before the first trip. Whether your state sets a separate field-trip or swimming ratio, what water-supervision requirements attach to swim time, and how staff and children are counted off-site are all questions for your state child care licensing agency or your licensing consultant.

Get the current rule before the schedule depends on it.

A summer program runs the same school-age arithmetic across a full day instead of a before- and after-school window.

The reference numbers do not change with the season: CFOC's 10:1 with a group of 20 for the 6-8s and 12:1 with a group of 24 for the 9-12s, and NAEYC's 1:15 with a class of 30, are the same school-age benchmarks in July as in the school year.

The enforceable number is still your state's school-age licensing ratio, and the licensing agency can confirm it covers your summer operation — including any days the program runs longer hours or different age mixes than the school year.

Watch the band line, because summer enrollment spans it.

A program taking 6-year-olds through 12-year-olds is running across two CFOC bands at once, and the age line your state draws inside school-age is its own.

Mixed rooms add a layer: NAEYC rates mixed-age classes by the youngest age category present, so a younger child in the room pulls the whole room to the younger row.

How your state treats mixed-age school-age rooms is a licensing question, not an accreditation one — confirm the mixed-age rule with the agency before you assign rooms.

Seasonal hires change the roster, not the hiring sequence.

The background-check steps your state applies to any new staff member — including what may happen while results are pending — are covered in our guide to provisional hiring pending a background check, and who can hold a counted slot is covered in who counts in ratio.

The week-to-week version — breaks, transitions, the hole when one adult is out — is in daycare staff scheduling, and what candidates for the role see on the other side of the posting is at school-age teacher jobs.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. School-age ratio and group size rules are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency, the federal CCDF requirements by ACF, and accreditation standards by NAEYC — confirm the current numbers with the body that administers them before you build a staffing plan around any figure on this page.