Why do you hate the PTA?

I don't hate the PTA at all, they raise loads of money for the school and do a brilliant job. I'm very glad they exist.

However, I do dislike being made to feel guilty for not being extroverted and a 'joiner in'. They attract a certain type of person and I am not it. The idea of manning a stall or game at a fair fills me with horror. I'm also (like most people) at work during many school events and simply can't be there. I volunteer at one or two school events per year - sometimes PTA, sometimes class - and that's all I can manage.

I don’t hate the pta, but our pta equivalent are really cliquey. Once I volunteered to help with an activity which was (apparently) gratefully accepted but when I followed up a week or so later I was told I wasn’t needed any more and one of (insert nickname of pta) had availability after all and done it instead, but no one had bothered to tell me that, so I’ve never volunteered again

This was my experience also, although not everybody. Most of the women were in a clique and were the ones that would blow hot and cold at the school gates, sometimes talk to you and sonetimes blank you, which I just cba with. And if I volunteered for events, or to help, they would just gossip amongst themeselves and not really listen to anything anyone who wasnt in their cluque said, so I stopped volunteering.

I do think ours do a great job and grateful they can pay for things to help the school and kids.

but I also constantly feel guilty for not being able to help.

I did finally manage to offer some help recently. Often due to work it’s impossible - but this time I felt quite glad to help. Rushed around, finished work a bit early and arrived ready…..to find all had been done and I want needed. Then a few others of the usual helpers turned up, chatted and I kinda felt pushed out.

wish I hadn’t bothered!

Yes this is something i’ve always hated - buying something to donate to the fair or event where you could actually end up getting it back and have therefore paid for something twice. Not cost efficient and would rather just donate some money.

Schools do not have enough funding. They need the extra cash. Yes it's shit but it's also a reality. If your PTA is a charity and running as it should then it should have a constitution which explains how the money raised will be spent. At ours the teachers make requests for funding, which need to be of benefit to the whole school. This is why things like iPads are a popular request as the whole school can benefit rather than one year group or sub group.

People can choose to engage or not - completely your prerogative - but if, like ours, your PTA can raise £20k a year for the benefit of all the children in the school then that is a good thing.

This! If the aim is fundraising it is often very inefficient.

I very much empathise (working full time and chronically ill too). No judgment for me from those who can't help us. But it's a bit rich for them to judge those of us who do volunteer for what we do /do not manage to do with our own limited free time and skills.

Or they might not have been able to donate at all, but their child still got to enjoy a doughnut.

Not sure everyone does want a summer/winter fair though, I think it’s the people who join the PTA that likes these events…. I’d rather the school just ask for “X” amount of money per child per year to cover what they need.

Well yeah. Thats.what we find. Nearly all the requests for funds from the school are for tech.
So that taught me not to lay the criticism at the door of the PTA.

I was on the PTA for years. In our case, the chair was invariably a bossy-boots who no-one liked, so that didn’t help. On the whole, it was really well supported by parents. But I longed to introduce an ‘opt-out’ option whereby you could give £10 a month and be excused from all of the tedious events. Lots of parents agreed with me.

Oh and ours pester everyone to bake cakes for the fairs and loads dont sell & just get given to staff at the end or binned!!

It's not all PTAs. In fact, the PTA at my daughter's school are mostly quite nice.

However, the one at my SD's school, I avoided and I know others that have had similar experiences.

First off, they were cliquey and made it clear that I wasn't welcome when I tried to help out with events. There was an air of superiority- they were all wealthy SAHMs, some had quit high powered careers to bring up children, and I was the 20-something Stepmum- they clearly thought I didn't fit in amongst their Barbour jackets and Hunter wellies. They had a bit of an attitude towards working Mums as well, like, "Oh, that's sweet, you have a job, you know that you'll never get these precious moments back!"

Aside from that, I think people get a bit tired of the relentless rota of requests- children to wear pink on Tuesday and bring a donation for the summer fayre, please send child in with 50p to enter the talent contest, unopened toiletries to be dropped off at reception so the children can buy them back for you for Mother's Day, children to wear hats made out of a teapot and bring a tinned sponge on Friday, parents to stay afterwards and pay £5 for the family Bingo Disco which everyone will hate.

While the doughnuts may have been free at the point of delivery, presumably they were not paid for by the PTA but by families and others who had donated to the PTA. If you were from a poor family, however, donating for your child / children to have a doughnut would have taken up a larger percentage of your expendable income than that of wealthier families. For some families they may have donated money that should have paid for a meal.

I always find the lazy stereotypes about the PTA a bit frustrating.

My kids have left school now, but I was on the PTA throughout primary. Most of us, me included, had demanding jobs and busy family lives. We volunteered because we wanted to make the school experience better for all the children. The biggest fundraiser was the Christmas Fayre and it was always around my husband’s birthdays. Every year he’d come in late from his hospitality job, stay up til 2 am baking for the Fayre, and then be at the school for 8 am organising the catering for the Fayre. Including on his 40th birthday! No one does that just for their own self interest.

We organised events, raised funds, and spent countless hours planning things like the P7 leavers' celebrations. Including in years when none of us had children in P7, because it wasn't about our own kids.

The irony is that PTA members were often the ones making sure there couldn't even be the appearance of favouritism. I was usually the one rushing in at the last minute after escaping from work and sitting at the back of assemblies and shows. Our children certainly weren't given preferential treatment, picked for things, or handed prizes. If anything, we were extra careful to avoid even the suggestion of it.

So yes, the PTA. Those terrible women (and men!) giving up evenings and weekends, for free, to raise money and create experiences that every child got to enjoy.

I did join the pta and gave a view and got a sob story about funding shortages and how they desperately "need" the ipads.

This... will they please stop buying more fucking screens.

I'd rather they subsidised music lessons, or paid for a chess club or bought sports equipment or art supplies, the bits of a rounded curriculum that isnt in league tables so gets neglected.

So join the PTA and voice an opinion? I don't help with events (I am disabled) but I very much go to committee meetings and speak up about how funds are spent.

All the requests come from the school though. We don't initiate spending ideas. Or rather we occasionally float ideas past the head and he takes them back to the staff to consider

This is a really good post. And I don't hate the PTA, I just find it very hard to get involved in the way they seem to want people to get involved.

You need to be on the committee to know what is going on and when, or make any suggestions at all. But if you are in the PTA 'volunteer group' you just get pass ag messages about how its not fair to leave everything to members of the committee. When they have failed to fill the volunteer rota, because they changed the date of an event at the last minute. Again. (And when you do turn up there are plenty of people there helping out already!)

This point you made summarises this perfectly: "either you accept lots of people that can only come occasionally or you only take a few people who can commit to a lot. It's up to you." Our PTA just don't appreciate this tension.

Which brings me to my next point....

I strongly agree with this: 'They are all SAHMs and very competitive about who has the most children'

I was simply unaware of the school hierarchy that puts mums who had put the most children through the school being at the top. And I have an only... So there's not much I can do about it.

I get a bit cross because ours bully parents into giving them vast amounts of money by doing things like selling high priced tickets to see your own kids show or selling your own kids craft back to you, or running an event where you sponsor your kid (so you cant disappoint your kids by refusing to tip up the money).

Then they don't engage with parents about how the money is used & spend it on things like expensive tablets, when most parents want less screen time in school, not more.

I think it is because it is a special event at a special time of year and their children enjoy it, even if they don't.

Having worked in schools for a long time, I've seen some lovely, inclusive and welcoming PTA's who make a meaningful contribution to school life and work hard to put on events that the kids really love. I've also seen some PTA's that are just absolute magnets for drama and pettiness, where very little is achieved. The latter tend to attract women who complain that "it's always the same handful of people who volunteer" but then seem to go out of their way to be cold, unwelcoming and dismissive of anyone outside their own social circle who tries to get involved.

As a parent and a teacher for me it’s about the superior and cliquey attitude. On my dd first day of school I was able to pick out a PTA mum just by how she was acting. Sure enough she is the one on the WhatsApp who has regularly thrown grenades into the group then sat back and watched it all roll in.
As a teacher at my current school the PTA are a God send. They go all out for our children and do a fabulous job of making everyone feel included. I’m currently in a very small school so that may be why as previously I’ve felt as above even as a teacher in the school. Watching new parents being asked to join only to be left on the sidelines if they don’t match the criteria of the mean girl mummies.

You’ve said everything I wanted to say but better than I could.

Everything that the PTA organise takes time, and I do not HAVE time. I have money - when they had an open donation point on the school app, I gave generously and happily - but I do not have time to paint children’s faces or run a Tombola or sell sweets at an evening disco or stand outside the school selling cakes or ice creams or hot dogs or whatever else at 3:30, and I resent losing my precious weekend time - which is short, once we’ve factored in chores and kids’ hobbies - to shuffle round an overheated hall paying money to win back stuff that’s shitter than what I donated to the stall in the first place. I also am not prepared to use my precious annual leave up so that I can leave work early to help at evening events, many of which start before I’m even home.

In short: I don’t hate you, but please let me give you money and don’t expect me to do stuff.