Is it normal for primary schools to expect so many payments?

I agree. God forbid I should use old wellies again.

When you say music lesson…what do you mean? Music lesson as in a generic lesson where the class teacher is teaching them and they’re all banging about on xylophones and tambourines? Or music lesson as in learning an instrument with a qualified specialist music teacher?

You chose to pay for ice skating and it certainly would have been optional. Paying for forest school seems odd. Buying weather appropriate clothing not so much. The list of clothing giving by the school would have been a suggestion to keep your children warm and dry- it wasn’t a compulsory list and your children wouldn’t have been excluded for not having every item. Most would be items you already owned.

I have had children go through many different schools and I also worked in a number of schools and none of them charged or expected parents to pay that amount each term. If anything they all tried to keep costs low. So either you’re unlucky with your school or you’re taking them too literally and thinking the school expects you to do everything and pay excessively for all these things.

Those talking about the costs of secondary school – I accept that you don’t want your DC to miss out, but that being so, you cannot really complain about the costs.

Many if not most secondary school activities are very much optional. We used to run (when I taught in school) a trip to France and to Germany; we took about 70 DC in a 220 year intake, so clearly the majority did not go. It was not in any way an issue. We kept the costs low as well.

My DC all were able to go on an MFL trip at their school and I was grateful to the staff for organising it and taking them and glad that we could afford it. But again, most DC did not go.

With things like theatre trips for drama and English lit, well those are surely hugely beneficial. A good school will keep the cost down – a theatre local to me is staging Macbeth right now and tickets started at about £15. Well worth it for anyone studying the play, could really bring it alive and improve their grade.

Similarly for revision guides – these cost about a tenner and you can often find them secondhand or get a friend to pass on their child's (I have handed on numerous of these over the years).

Yes for sure if you choose to send your DC on the skiing trip and the Paris trip and the London theatre trip and the Iceland trip it will mount up. But most families pick and choose, maybe just doing one or two of those.

But children can't be excluded if the parents can't pay.

I do recall when DS started in reception, in 1999, that when I added up the incidentals: milk money, £1 a week for class supplies, red nose day, daffodils, bits and bobs, school photos, cake sales, etc, (excluding trips, etc) that it worked out at a fiver a week or a bit more. I wondered at the time how people on tight budgets did it.

You dont have to pay for everything. A lot is optional. I agree though, theres always something going on! I do the school trips, discos and mufti days and ignore everything else tbh.

£65 is outrageous for a class music lesson that should be free.
If it was a 1:1 instrument lesson that would be different.

Never paid anything like what you’re paying but probably because:

Ice skating is a treat at Xmas.
My kids are not musical.
Wouldn’t pay for Forest school as my kids are at school all day, after school sports clubs are free at school and we are outside tons (walks etc) at the weekend. Is forest school really needed?

We pay for the school trips (usually the most expensive in Primary is £20 but that’s very occasional) and end of year residentials.

The things that stand out there are forest school and ice skating.

Rest is either within the normal range of things like day trips and a residential, or optional. I would've expected to pay for the instrument lessons, albeit mine does choir free.

The only outrageously expensive trip my son's secondary school does is skiing, but that's in the holidays and of course only a small number of the more affluent pupils do that.

Otherwise the only trips were a weekend in Paris for French, a couple of day trips for geography and a reward trip to a theme park - total £500ish.

I agree. Really thoughtful.

Surely these are just suggestions?

The school would have still let your children take part if you had sent them in a coat and wellies. It's wet in January / February, but there's no need to wear thermal base layers and snow boots.

Music lessons for £65 per child is an absolute steal and must be highly subsidised. Fees where I work are £275 per term for one pupil.

The residential trips are very cheap, too.

I've just totted up the four trips ds went on in yrs 10-11 and it came to about £1,800. Three of those were for GCSEs. Plus ski clothes (thankfully by then he could use mine).

Even state education is expensive

Crazy that you would put that stuff on your children.

That is such a lovely thing to do.

Snow boots are also cheap used - on Vinted or Fb marketplace. Or new in Lidl/Aldi/Temu/Shein. Thermal layers in Decathlon. Now on sale I think! (Actually I’ll go check out Decathlon sale while we’re at it)

One thing we did when our DC left their local state primary school, because DH was shocked avout the individual cost of 1:1 music lessons and cost/hire of the instruments, was to fund lessons/instrument hire for three children each year who had aptitude but whose parents didn't have funds or wouldn't pay. Some years there have been fewer than three, other years more and it has balanced out and occasionally DH has funded a bit more.

DH did this because he was the poor bugger who didn't get lessons due to his parents being tight bastards and despite his father playing the organ. Because, of course, his father could teach him, but didn't and DH recalls being left out. Similarly trip letters stayed in his pockets because he knew what the answer would be.

In response to @ThisRealFawn I guess it feels bad because you have a double whammy with twins. I don't understand the forest school and ice skating. Also, I think if costumes are expensive and specific, there could be PTA involvement

I am intrigued about £100 of forest school
clothes. For my twins’ private school, I got them used wellies, about £1-£2 each and Temu padded jackets that I actually got for free because I ordered a couple of sizes, wanted to return one size and the Temu system said you can keep them all, here’s the full refund (???!!! £5-6 otherwise).

This. OP, prepare yourself for senior school because it is far more expensive.

I've paid for DS to go on a GCSE German exchange trip (and then you have to host his exchange partner for a week), a GCSE Biology field tri and GCSE Geography field trip, and a £550 ski trip. Then add in revision guides, text books, sports equipment (tennis raquet, hockey stick) and leasing a laptop. If you want them to have an equal chance of good grades they aren't really optional.
I scrapped our family holiday for 4 years.

Not sure she chose twins.

OP I would be raising this with the school. It seems like they are expecting those on mid to higher level incomes to pay a lot but those people (particularly mid income families) have little left as they get no help.

High school is gonna be a shocker @ThisRealFawn!

I’ve got one who went on a French trip last year, then changed languages and is going on a Spanish trip next year!
One going to Austria with the county music service. Also a number of trips for talented musicians - Royal Albert Hall, Royal Northern College Music. DS also went to Spain a couple of years ago.
Outdoor activity residentials for both that was Y7 or 8.
Even GCSE History squeezed in a long week end in London.
Umpteen theatre /concert trips & coaches for GCSE Music & English Lit!

None are compulsory but, as you say, you wouldn’t want your child to miss out.