How this site reads and dates its facts

Where the facts come from

We read each place’s pages and note what they say about its offer for children: ages, days and times of groups, prices with their period, languages, trial sessions, and whether a parent stays during the activity.

Addresses, map pins and opening times can also be taken from the place’s Google Maps entry. A sports club’s federation membership may be confirmed from the club directory the federation itself publishes. Where a place has no site of its own, its Google entry alone can get it listed, provided the entry says it is for children; its page then carries just the address and the opening times.

Alongside each fact we keep three things: the URL it came from, when we read it and a short extract in that page’s language. We never rely on outing guides, newspapers, booking sites, social networks or reviews.

The three source labels

Each source is tagged in one of three ways: published by the place (from its own site), Google listing (from Google Maps) or federation list (from a sports federation’s club directory).

Next to each fact on a place’s page you will find its label and its date, which tell you at a glance where it came from and when.

What is not published

If our sources are silent on something, the place’s page reads “not published” and the table shows a dash. It tells you about what we read, not about the place.

We never guess to fill a gap. A school year a place names is read as its usual age (grande section at five, CP at six), but a swimming badge, a judo belt or a grade in music theory is never turned into an age. Prices keep whatever period the place states; the one figure we compute is the ≈ per-session price, a block or course fee shared out over its sessions.

Group times and opening hours

Two columns deal with time. Days and times: when a class, a day club session or a course day happens, as the place writes it. Opening hours: when the place opens its doors, often from its Google listing.

Doors may be open at a time when nothing runs for your child’s age group. Rows with only opening hours go below the dividing line, beneath a heading explaining the reason.

The after-school window covers 13:30 to 18:00, Monday to Friday. It takes in the whole of Wednesday afternoon, when Marseille’s schools are shut, and the end of the day on the other four, once lessons stop at half past four. A class qualifies if any of its groups begins inside that window, and a day club if its hours span the entire window on one day or more.

What we do not assess

• We hand out no marks of any kind, whether to places, teachers, coaches or programmes.
• Nobody from the site visits a place; each fact stands on something published.
• The quality of a class, a training session or the supervision is not judged here.
• Free spaces and waiting lists are not tracked: ask the place.
• Prices appear as published, with their period and date, without confirmation from the place.

Right of reply

Do you work at a place on the list and find a fact wrong, missing or out of date? Send the right version through the correction form, with a link to the page that gives it.

Once the place’s pages back up a correction, it lands in the next update and is logged in the update history. If a place shuts, its page stays up with a “closed” label while it drops out of all the tables.

You can also have your own place taken off the list. In the form, choose “Remove a place” and add a contact that proves you represent it. Inside a month we delete the place, its page and every row it has in the data files.

Dates and updates

Each place’s sources are read again at least every 6 months. A price whose period has passed stays on its page with that period, but the filters and the summary figures stop using it.

How the site is paid for

Being on the list costs a place nothing, and no payment alters a row or its position, which depends on the same rules for every place, given in the key to each table.

Some place pages show a link to Zartrace, a service tied to this list and labelled that way. We count presses of the contact buttons in aggregate, never with anything personal attached.

Open data

Download the full list as JSON, with a record for every place, or as CSV, with a row for every programme. Each file carries every source, label and date, plus a note of its licence.

Areas, distances and the map

Areas follow the sixteen arrondissements, named as parents name them, “Marseille” and the number, rather than a district name alone. Mid-sized arrondissements stay whole; the two smallest join a neighbour, the second with the third and the sixteenth with the fifteenth, as their town halls do; the three most populous, the eighth, ninth and thirteenth, are split in two along their districts. Two district names follow each number to place the area: Périer and the Prado for one half of the eighth, Bonneveine and Pointe-Rouge for the other. Around the city come Allauch and Plan-de-Cuques, joined as one area, Septèmes-les-Vallons and Les Pennes-Mirabeau; Aubagne and La Penne-sur-Huveaune get a page only when they hold enough places. An address goes in the area whose boundary contains it.

Distance is a straight line from the chosen point to the nearest address, rounded to the half kilometre. Only a press of the location button makes the site ask where you are, and the answer stays in your browser.

A position estimated from an address is approximate. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors; the boundaries of the arrondissements, their districts and the towns also come from OpenStreetMap.