How each fact reaches the table, and how it is checked

Where facts are read

For each provider we read its own website (for a municipal course, the council’s course page) and write down what it offers children: age range, weekly timetable, fees and the period each covers, teaching language, trial lessons, and whether parents have to stay during the lesson.

The Google Maps listing can also supply the address, the map point and the door hours; for some providers with no site of their own, that listing is the whole page, which then shows only the address and any hours. Membership of a sports federation can come from the club list that federation publishes.

We store every fact alongside the web address it came from, the reading date and a brief quotation kept in the page’s original language. Directory sites, news stories, course marketplaces, social media accounts and user reviews are never used as sources.

Source marks

Three marks tell the sources apart. “Published by the provider” covers its own website and a municipality’s page for a course it runs itself; “Google listing” is the provider’s Google Maps entry; “federation list” is the roll of member clubs that a sports federation publishes.

Beside every fact, the provider page prints the mark and the day of reading, so the origin and the age of the fact can be seen at a glance.

Facts we could not find

If no page we read carries a fact, the table prints a dash in its place and the provider page marks the fact as not published. That describes our sources; it says nothing about the provider.

Gaps are never filled by guesswork. Groups defined by school year or by year of birth are left as they are rather than converted to ages. Fees come with the period the provider names; the only computed figure is the ≈ per-lesson price, which divides a course or package total by its number of lessons.

Two kinds of time in the table

Times sit in two columns. The first, class days and times, carries the schedule a provider publishes, whether for lessons, for afternoon care or for a day at camp. The second, opening hours, is when the building itself is open, most often as given in the Google listing.

An open door does not mean a lesson: at a given hour there may be nothing for your child’s age. A row with opening hours and no timetable goes below the line, under a sub-heading saying exactly that.

The after-lessons pages examine weekdays from 15:00 to 18:30, a span that begins as full-day schools let out. A course qualifies if one of its groups starts within the span; a care programme qualifies if, with any extended-hours option, it fills the span from end to end. Pupils on a school’s afternoon shift can look for morning and weekend groups with the time filter.

What the directory does not measure

• Providers, teachers, coaches and programmes are not marked, scored or graded.
• Nobody visits or inspects the providers; all facts are taken from published sources.
• Whether the teaching, training or care is any good is not judged.
• Whether a group still has free places is not followed; check with the provider.
• Fees are reported as written, with the period and date they carry; the provider is not asked to confirm them.

A provider’s right to correct

Anyone who runs a listed provider and finds its page here wrong, incomplete or out of date can send the correction form; a link to the page where the right fact stands is enough.

When the provider’s own pages bear a correction out, it is applied at the next update and recorded under changes made. A provider that closes keeps its page, with a note about the closure, while its row leaves the tables.

You can also ask for your provider to disappear from the directory. On the correction form, choose “Remove a listed provider from the directory” and leave a way to reach you so we can confirm you speak for it; within a month its page and its entries in the data files are gone.

Dates and updates

Sources are read again before 6 months have passed since the last reading. A fee announced for a period that is already over remains on the provider page under that period, and the filters and summary line ignore it.

How the directory is funded

Listing is free for every provider. Money cannot add a row, remove one or move it up.

The only outside link a provider page can carry goes to Zartrace, and it is labelled as a service linked to this directory. Contact-button clicks are kept only as running totals; nothing about the person clicking is stored.

Open data

The whole directory can be downloaded as a JSON file with one record per provider, or a CSV file with one row per programme. Both files hold every source with its mark and date, and state their licence inside.

Semts, distances and the map

An area here is a semt, the neighbourhood name people in Izmir actually use: Alsancak, Göztepe, Bostanlı, Mavişehir, Şirinyer, Evka. Each semt is assembled from mahalleler, the official address units, and never crosses a district (ilçe) line; that is why Hatay is listed under Karabağlar, the district carved out of Konak that it now belongs to. Menemen, Urla, Torbalı, Kemalpaşa, Menderes and Seferihisar are separate towns, and a branch in one of them is filed under that district’s name.

Distances are as the crow flies: a straight line from the spot you pick to the provider’s closest branch, rounded in half-kilometre steps. Karşıyaka and Konak are close on that line, though the ferry or the coast road makes the trip longer; the difference is not counted. The browser is asked for your location only once you press the location button, and the position stays inside it.

Points placed on the map from a street address are only approximate. The map and the mahalle boundaries come from OpenStreetMap; © OpenStreetMap contributors.