Have the school done the right thing even though it punishes the wrong set of people ?

I'm actually pretty sure that in my child's class, if one child had been left off the hoodies then the other children wouldn't have wanted to wear the hoodies as, by year 6, they had the empathy to consider how shitty it would make them feel if the tables were turned. And they cared more about their classmates wellbeing and their friendships. Even for the children who they weren't particularly friends with I think they'd do this, because they'd realise that deliberately wearing such a hoody with one name only missing would be a cruel act.

Sounds like in this case at first no-one noticed, but now they have I can't imagine children wanting to be so deliberately exclusionary to a classmate.

when was doing the year 6 organising I was working a full time job. I did it all in my evenings and weekends for free. You got the communication in a manner that worked for me, sending it out at whatever time worked for me. Or the children didn’t get a yearbook or a hoodie at all as there would be no one to do it. I wasn’t there just to serve all the people who couldn’t be bothered. I was doing it for the kids. This is why i did it for both my children in when year 6 and then I said never again! No snobby cliques but just overworked mums who wanted to give the kids a good send off

Year 6 are not full swing in celebrations. They are working hard as normal and will continue to do so til they leave. We do do not write off 2 months of learning time!

whatsapp groups can be muted, that's the beauty of them.

And funnily enough, it's always parents complaining about the drama who ARE the drama!

The payment is a total red herring. The issue is that this parent has taken it upon herself to erase the existence of a child in the class from what is a form of public record of the leavers class.

Imagine how that child must feel seeing those hoodies? It must be so distressing to that child, especially if they've been in that class for years. I don't care whatever disagreement there is between parents, you just don't do something so hideously cruel to a child.

why snobby? Because I am pointing out that YOU want emails, other parents do not want to communicate their email address, or do not want them flooded by class info, other parents want Facebook groups...

Whatsapp is a perfectly normal and accepted mean of communication.

Once your child leaves primary you may well realise this.
get off your high horse, since when you being precious about emails means the rest is "a clique".

Wow, it's one thing to not order a hoodie for a particular child if the parents don't want to pay or have an argument about payment, it's quite another thing to erase that child's existence from the class for everyone else on their leavers hoodies. Especially bad if only one child is excluded.

When my child was in year 6 there was a boy who'd only joined for the final term, his name was on the hoodie despite the fact that - unsurprisingly - he didn't order one. Leaving someone off who's been in the class for years presumably is just plain bullying. Good on the school for banning examples of such bullying.

No it's not special treatment. Just simply that many of us use perfectly normal and accepted means of communication. eg email. Normal - in business, professional and personal communications. Luckily for me I am no longer involved in snobby cliques at schools. Once your child leaves primary you may well realise this.

There’s another principle at play though, which is if you screw something up you should try to smooth it over with reasonably good grace. This was someone who actually should not have VAT levied on them, asking for some time to pay.

(Interesting off-topic debate about whether the rep is an agent or a reseller. VAT isn’t something you can just decide to vary because you feel it would be fairer if the rates were different).

again, volunteer yourself!

You are BU to expect a volunteer to put every detail to the vote, or to prioritise one thing over another. If you don't agree, get involved and put your opinion forward. As a non-volunteer, you don't get to dictate the way they manage their tasks.

You are also conveniently forgetting that half the parents will complain about too many discussions because they just want to pay and not hear a word.

Parents complain about emails sent by the school! So let's be realistic how much discussion and feedbacks parents are happy to give.

Why on earth would she get the blame?! The blame lies firmly with the nasty parent bullying her child!

The school is right. The adult/parent who purposely left this name off is a bully and should be ashamed of themselves.

And we wonder why people don’t want to volunteer to be reps or the PTA.. it honestly is the world’s most thankless task.

I wasn't there either, I am just replying to your post.

Being the only person to volunteer doesn't mean you can do a bad job.
they're not trying to do a bad job, but if they do -volunteer is not synonym of being a specialist or even efficient - you can't complain!

You know I wasn't actually there, right?

And that you go around charging people for things they didn't agree to pay.

Stupid class rep should have offered adults to pay for adult vat items or cancelled the order. Could have considered speaking to PTA or school about pupil premium top ups, or just not organised it.

Being the only person to volunteer doesn't mean you can do a bad job.

but you expect special treatment from a volunteer already giving away far too much time, and expect them to waste even more time to write you an email when everybody else is on the whatsapp group. (or vice-versa).

It's very annoying. They are doing YOU a favour, not the other way round.

No she wasn’t. It is hard enough collecting the money for 60 children, let alone trying to get them to pay different prices. All the children get a hoodie and they should pay the same price. I don’t know about other children’s schools but we had a very mixed demographic and so some children could never have afforded to pay £30 for one so we basically spread the cost of those children over all the other hoodies. No one had any complaint about this. Ultimately everyone paid about £30 for their hoodies whatever the size and honestly I don’t think that was an unreasonable price.

to be fair, I am pretty sure at least 50% ( and frankly a lot more) don't give a monkey about the whole name situation. If the child was a popular one, and a friend of their child, parents will have an opinion.

Otherwise, they really won't care.