Schools - Christmas jumper day - wear an Xmas jumper and raise £1 for charity

I always bought DD's in charity shops. They are usually in excellent condition as they have only been worn a couple of times. Last one cost me £2 and she wore it 3 years in a row.

So it doesn't have to cost you £40. at all.

Our local primary also sells Christmas jumpers second hand, so perhaps you could suggest that at your primary or help set it up. The school makes a bit more money and people get cheap jumpers.

We've been running a donation only / Christmas jumper swap as part of the PTA thrift shop. It means that jumpers are reused without people having to spend money, and those who can, donate a wee bit to the PTA, which then gets spent on stuff for the school.
We also gave unwanted jumpers into the school office to pass to families they know are struggling.

This. While parents continue to comply with this nonsense, then why would anything change? By all means do the charity side of things, but the children should be encouraged to just add a bit of sparkle to their normal clothes, such as a bit of tinsel around their wrists, in their hair, sparkly nail varnish etc.

Posts like this make me so grateful our school (very mixed catchment) is sensible about this sort of thing. We have ‘winter jumper day’ instead so kids can wear any old jumper and there’s genuinely no expectation of donating money. The PTA also has Christmas jumpers in the uniform swap shop (which is made available free - donations optional).

Eh?! If you're that neurotic, you don't actually know where new stuff has 'been' either!!

Seems ridiculous. I'd buy a couple of cheap Christmassy badges and pin one on a regular jumper they already own. That way you can reuse it every year as they grow.

Normal jumper, sticky backed star stickers. Not perfect, but doesn't have to be. Child (now 22) normally went round giving everyone a gold star, sometimes even had some left by the end of the day... 😆 Same jumper with dot stickers for children in need etc.

It is the sense of belonging in an event and the pound for charity (if you can afford it) that count really. Some people will go expensive, some supermarket, some homemade and others will "forget" .

I'm a retired secondary school teacher.

I loathed all fundraising activities, whether end of term or otherwise. For the last 18 years of my career, I was a middle manager in a school where the catchment had "multiple indicators of deprivation".

Our last HT purported to be very religious and was rather performative - always looking to get the school into the local press for its charitable endeavours.

I recall seeing him haranguing pupils at assembly for failing to get enough sponsors from family and friends for an indoor rowing event for charity. We had to remind him that there was a reason why our previous HT had specifically selected a uniform which merely asked that parents dress their children in black and white.

One time, he demanded that children bring in cans of food to be donated to the elderly.

His cunning plan was to donate all the food to the local privately run old folks' home. God bless her, our Head Girl apparently told him that this was a mad idea - the school would simply be subsidising the owners who were already making a mint out of their clientele.

He persisted in his plan, however, but altered it to a donation of food to pensioners in a sheltered housing complex. He didn't get in enough donations. He'd already contacted the press.

In order to save face, he sent a couple of members of the office staff out to the local supermarket to buy more cans using the school fund.

Why £40?

Ask around. We often shared jumpers with cousins, got a second hand or Primark.

Asda have jumpers for £10 or look in charity shops.

It's been the norm for at least 20 years to do this and the price hasn't increased

Yes, it was a real pain when Christmas jumpers were a new thing. We stuck stickers on an existing top (usually drawings on sticky white address labels, like Santa hats or snowmen). It seems ridiculous to spend money on a novelty in order to donate a comparitively much smaller amount to charity. Now it's a bit easier as there are so many about secondhand. My kids have largely stopped growing and both have nordic-style pattern jumpers that they wear regularly in colder weather and which also seem to tick a "Christmas jumper" box when needed.

Can I add yellow clothing, charity event t-shirts (CIN being the most egregious), wearing nightwear to school and mis-matched socks to the bonfire of primary school charity fundraising efforts?

The other thing you can do is ask on a local FB page (or just to friends) to see if anyone has one you can borrow. Chances are there are people who have ones at home that are grown out of. People do that where I live.

Our school does this as part of our school uniform shop. All sorts of Christmas jumpers on the rail now and it's help yourself and make a donation (donations can be cash or into the bank account online so know one knows if you pay or not if you can't afford to)

Eh?
Have you heard of washing machines?

Charity shop?
Vinted?

I’d much rather it was party wear, or wear red/green, or something more likely to be in people’s wardrobes. Absolutely you can get a Christmas jumper for pennies if you plan ahead/live near a charity shop/use Vinted etc, but clearly many people go to Sainsburys, chuck one in the trolley and job done. Terrible for the environment and not doing anything for charity, if that’s the aim.

It really, you could get a jumper from a charity shop or vinted (or primark) for a lot less than £20, get it big enough to do next year too.
It's also not compulsory.... send them in uniform with no £1 or in own clothes and pay £1 anyway (my eldest DD doesn't want a Christmas jumper this year and is just wearing a green hoody she already has)

Our local primary has a collection point for outgrown Christmas jumper - I presume they sell them for 50p or something towards PTA funds. There have also been a fair number changing hands on Facebook, often free.
The secondary has "wear something Christmassy", which means that some tinsel will do - that seems more sensible.

My mother would have really struggled with kitting four of us out with Christmas jumpers, although after a while we'd have had hand-me-downs. At least now it's been going a while there are plenty of secondhand ones around. When schools first started doing it, that wasn't the case.

I think most people quite literally don’t care because it’s an item of clothing that has been or will be washed. You’d have to be pretty neurotic to think any deeper about it than that.

Take existing jumper/sweatshirt and wrap tinsel around cuffs. If you have time tack a couple of baubles on the front. Now you have a Christmas jumper.

My daughter hated wearing jumpers so usually wore a Christmas t-shirt instead. They cost very little.
Or as others have suggested - wrap a bit of tinsel around them and wear a £1 Santa hat.
If the school says anything just say "they don't own any Christmas jumpers".
The £1 donation won't be given by everyone. Several will forget. Several their parents will have no cash available. Several will lose the pound coin between home and school.

Don’t know where it’s been???? As in rubbed in dog poo?
people are so weird

Did they not do this last year?

YABU I got my dc on Vinted for £1 plus postage

It’s bloody stupid. The environmental / human labour cost of even a few people in the school buying a shitty, acrylic and glitter Christmas jumper for this purpose would immediately dwarf the few measly quid this will raise for charity. Schools should avoid fundraisers which require people to buy cheap, poor quality clothing or props as far as possible because they put people under financial pressure and do more harm than good.