That bloody school is make life hard at this time of year

Our school are putting on a Christmas event during school hours and it's £5 for parents to contribute. They put in a letter the usual 'it's not mandatory to pay but if enough people don't pay it won't go ahead'. All good.

Then they put a slip at the bottom with your child's name which said ' I have / have not (delete as appropriate) paid for this trip' and you also had to put your name on it. Thought that was a bit mean. Some people genuinely are going to struggle financially at this time of year.

And yes, the communications from school are endless. It's actually a bit overwhelming.

Honestly, I've lost track with all the Christmas school stuff for my 2 kids in a primary. There are like 2 emails everyday each + PDFs + 10 WhatsUp messages. I grew up in another country in Europe and it was not like this - we didn't have all this parents' involvement in everything. School was there to teach, kids to study and parents to provide books/notebooks/stationary and that's it. Maybe two events a year when parents were expected to come + two parent-teacher conferences. Here we are expected to volunteer during school hours every month. Sometimes for half a day and sometimes for a day. I just got an email where we have to pay 15+ quid for some special event day next month, provide special clothes for kids on that day and they still need 8 parents to volunteer on that day. What is the money then for, as we are already expected to provide the clothes and workforce for it, I have no idea, as it was not explained.

Ha yanbu, completely agree myself and a couple of other teachers have DC in our own school and we are constantly vetoing some of the stupid shit that gets floated at meetings that just loads onto parents..

Dress as a Christmas book character...nope
Make a Christmas headband at home.. fuck that..
Wear something that represents your favorite Christmas movie..are you shitting me
etc etc

Wow we don’t have anything like what you’re describing. Have children in y6 and y3. Have to remember to book dinners but that’s the same every week, and Christmas jumper day but no events to go to unless you have a child in reception doing a nativity.

I think the school are sensible to have a training day this late in the longest term - gives the children a much needed 3 days weekend and if parents let them have some down time they may just manage to get through to the last day!

You can probably insist your child stays in school if you need to. Most parents probably didn't want to come back again.

And inset days are a set number a year so it's not random just where the school wanted to put it.

Honestly schools can't win!

Being on the pta is a bloody thankless job involving trying to plug the gaps in school funding. You don't have to actually engage if you don't want to.

The class rep, unless they are actually harassing, is just trying to make people's lives easier by organising a collection. Again ignore if you want to.

The lunch thing is annoying but we had exactly the same thing and it took about 2 minutes to sort out.

So yep you are being a bit ott about normal school things.

Haha, like the dad who asked me for the 'executive summary' last year. That was the executive summary. It enabled him to talk to his child about the week without wading through word salad.

The reason dates etc are at the bottom is to ensure you read the whole email. The important bit, the learning, is at the top.

My daughter's school decided that they would go home straight after the nativity play as they'd be tired. It was half an hour long and they had about 2 lines each. They're also off on Friday for a random training day.

Wondering if you’re a parent at my kid’s school because we had the exact same situation and email 🤣 or if it’s a fun catering / Scopay glitch 🤣

I think the date of Christmas was known about in 1752, when Great Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar. So about 270 years notice is not enough for the school then.

I agree about telling parents though, in case they want to choose a packed lunch. Could have been done about a month ago though.

You’d think we do all the Christmas stuff for our own benefit! (Fellow teacher here)

No it isn’t.

What on earth are you on about?

I had this crap with 6 children too

lol at the idea I am getting hassled for baking donations for the PTA’s stand at the Xmas show as a kind of stealth safeguarding approach.

@Roobixcy I don’t know whether that’s just your experience but it couldn’t be further from the truth!

You think schools make the lead up to Christmas stressful to scrutinise / check 'higher risk' (aka particularly stressed) families are still capable of engaging even when it's even more stressful? Like a stress test?

I really hated the Christmas period at primary school. My two are now a late teen and young adult, so those years are far behind me, but I clearly remember the endless letters asking for donations and Christmas lunch choices and Christmas jumper days and fill a shoebox with gifts and bring a plate to the class party and bake a cake for the cake sale and come to this assembly and that nativity but don't forget to get tickets, and buy these Christmas cards designed by the kids....
🤯
Loved their teachers, no blame on them at all. But fuck me, it was a lot.

It’s pretty standard school dynamics, they ramp up pressures at specific times but usually it’s towards the mid-higher risk parents/families, the safe parents don’t get subjected to the same scrutiny.. it’s to keep parents engaged during stressful/busy periods.

I’m an ex-teacher so I do understand it from both sides. It’s so overwhelming as a parent to juggle all the different messages. Some of the emails randomly go to my junk as well (not the school’s fault I know).

As a school, it’s hard to please everyone. Some people want only emails, some want only letters. They don’t have the budget to endlessly print letters so they email and put it on the school website and social media pages but someone will always want it done differently.

As both a parent trying to do it all around work and an ex-teacher, I can acknowledge that it’s both incredibly stressful and incredibly lovely to do the nativity and the other Christmas events with the children.

I'm so glad I don't have to deal with primary schools any more since ds3 moved up to year 7.

I'd have liked it, just for once, to get a clear, straight-forward communication. Insead you'd get some word salad, passive sentence, garbled nonsense that you'd have to trawl through just to get to the one or two bits of pertinent information.

People who do school emails please, please put important date changes or requests at the top of emails, not burried halfway through the text after listing the whys and the wherefores. The "whats" go at the TOP, and then you can go into explaining the whys and the hows.

It will take seconds to rebook it. It's probably the catering provider that has messed up rather than the school. Frustrating, but hardly that big a deal.

If you don't want to give a gift to your child's teacher, tell the class rep to sod off.
If you don't want to donate to the raffle (which presumably is raising money for the school) don't bother.
If you don't want to negotiate time off to see your child perform, don't.

And as teachers, we won't bother putting on a nativity, doing a carol service, Christmas lunch, party etc etc to make those magical primary school memories...whilst also juggling all the same shit that you are. We'll just attempt to do maths, English and all the usual lessons right up until the last day of term, with 30 odd kids who have had chocolate for breakfast and come in every day wanting to tell us what their bloody elf has done.

Maybe think of it from both sides...?

You are busy because you want to make a nice Christmas for your children. The school is doing exactly the same thing. YABU.

It will be the catering company that has asked this for the Christmas dinners change anyway, not the school.

I hear you! I love my ds's primary school and communication was actually worse at his sister’s school. But i wish someone would invent a better means of communicating than attaching a school newsletter, so you have to download a pdf and scroll down four pages of nice photos and updates about recycling awards or class/sports events to find the calendar updates, which are listed so you can’t even cut and paste them to a calendar entry and you have to fish out the ones that are relevant (no, I don’t care if Y6 have a theatre trip next week!)

And then you get told a month in advance you have to book Christmas dinner on one platform before 5th December; you get a slip of paper in the School Bookbag saying you must bring in a costume for School nativity by 10th but no reminders for that ; and a separate letter is emailed in November telling you that tickets for the nativity will only be on a first-come-first-served basis and you have to magically remember to log into a different online booking system no earlier than 7pm on 28th November.

I forgot about odd socks for anti-bullying day.

Raffle tickets for the Christmas fair were due in two weeks ago - I didn’t bother, we never win because it’s rigged, so I just dumped £20 in the PTA kitty and saved myself the bother of writing my address 20 times on all the ticket stubs

Absolutely no one knows if there is a Christmas postbox or when it opens and closes. Most of the mums are by this stage slightly hysterical and the dads are so disengaged they might as well all be high on weed.

I’ve contributed to four out of five giftrounds in the WhatsApp group. The one I didn’t contribute to is Reception Staff because frankly they do NOT make my life easier. I wish them a merry Christmas but no present for them this year!