Does your STATE school ask for a regular donation?

I would immediately on receiving such an envelope make a formal complaint to the chair of governors as to how this is being allowed to happen. It is bullying.

Yup, it's bullying. You choose your battles and await your youngest child to turn 11 with this school admissions . And. Keep. Thinking. Happy. Thoughts.

MarigoldLoveHotel. This is the post I made earlier:
There are Dept of Ed rules as to how a UK school should act in asking for donations, such as "The governing body or head teacher must make it clear to parents that there is no obligation to make any contribution". Also, "When making requests for voluntary contributions, parents must not be made to feel pressurised into paying as it is voluntary and not compulsory. Schools should avoid sending colour coded letters to parents as a reminder to make payments and direct debit or standing order mandates should not be sent to parents when requesting contributions." I complained to the Dept of Ed and got the direct debit forms posted to parents stopped."

Marigold - your school is not allowed to send reminders in this way. You can complain to the Dept of Ed, Ofsted and the EFSA. You can state that you wish to remain anonymous and they will speak to the school without using your name. In your position I'd do this, but don't tell the other parents, keep it to yourself. You'll be doing all the parents at that school a favour and the school will have to think of another way to raise funds that is within the rules.

@donquix precisely as @yvest said. Not to derail the thread but employees do pay 45% and to suggest the only way to fund public services are to increase this rate is simply picking on a small proportion of society, many of whom (not all by any means) make alot of sacrifices to enable this amount of gain. And their current higher rate is a significant proportion of the public purse.

I do think letters can put undue pressure on families that can't afford donations.

I say as a society we aim for higher wages and more people in work, to fund the quality of life we desire (excellent free education and health)

I suppose it's the office staff who produce the list of non-payers and stuff the envelopes Tiggy. I'd imagine the SMT and governors would have a list or how can they tell who has paid and who hasn't? There must be list of who has paid for class trips, isn't this similar?

The class teachers don't necessarily know what's in the envelopes. Although as it's been going on a whiles do some of the teachers and TAs are also parents at the school I think it's an open secret.

Tbh I was a but surprised at receiving the first "non-payment" letter. I suppose I'd assumed all the voluntary contributions would be anonymised-the school would know how much money they had but not who have it. I don't know why I thought that though.

That is so wrong and just shows how out of touch with reality some schools become.
I would immediately on receiving such an envelope make a formal complaint to the chair of governors as to how this is being allowed to happen. It is bullying.

When the parents don't pay the child gets handed an envelope with their name on to give to their parents. In that envelope is a reminder to pay the voluntary contribution. This happens each term.
I'd love to know how that complies with data protection
as teachers SHOULD NOT know about the finances of parents

I agree Teen.

When the parents don't pay the child gets handed an envelope with their name on to give to their parents. In that envelope is a reminder to pay the voluntary contribution. This happens each term.

The letter's are written to tug at our heart strings and the method of personal reminders is nigh on bullying to my mind. I'm sure some of them have been on different coloured paper, so "colour coded" which the admissions policy doesn't allow.

It's such a waste of admin time as of course these parents haven't forgotten, they are not paying for whatever reason. Everyone knows what these letters contain and most of them end up torn to pieces in the school bin.

It's really not a way to form a positive home-school partnership.

Sort your finances out, be less friendly with the (I consider to be ) money-grabbing church and show me you can understand the financial implications of various decisions and I would be more inclined to pay.

Type of school: secondary academy
Is school part of an academy: part of a small MAT
Type of area: prosperous London suburb
Contribution: They suggest £15pcm. We pay £30 pcm via DH's workplace giving scheme - but it comes out of his pre-tax income so it only actually costs us £18 pcm. Plus, his employer doubles any charitable contributions so the school end up getting £60 pcm! We'll double that when DS2 starts there.

They make it very clear what they spend the money on - extra-curricular stuff rather than core teaching. They have a good range of after-school activities and they're all free, whereas at other local schools most of the activities cost money if they're run by external providers.

Some other local schools ask for £30pcm, which they use to prop up the general budget, and one (super selective grammar) in the next borough asks for £45pcm.

Academy
Affluent area of London
Monthly donations by direct debit encouraged. Lowest suggested sum £5 and highest £75.
Not sure how many pay, I expect half. I don’t.

At the end of the day it's the governments job to fund schools, if not they soon find people will vote them out Not if they don't use those schools in the first place. And I wonder who many voters (with children beyond school education age) consider it when they're deciding who to vote for, even the socially aware ones?

Some asked if you can find out how schools spend it's income, think it used to be on Ofsted, especially PP premiums.
Interesting how schools in London with much higher income/pupil ask for highest donations.
Like I said above on first page, we don't get asked, too many parents fall into BlueDogLead's position.
But we do have to give £2 for bus travel to sports fixtures, buy revision guides and even pay for travel to GCSE/A level field day trip (even though the government says you shouldn't)
Many parents/students return revision guides back after exams, so the poor families can have them for free.
Like I said the school and it's students raise funds for two girls to attend secondary school in Africa, we get yearly updates, first two we met in 2012, DS1 yr8, are now training to be a doctor for her town and other is already teaching back at her school. They have also raised £10000 in a decade for Teenage Cancer trust, much happy to contribute to those funds.
At the end of the day it's the governments job to fund schools, if not they soon find people will vote them out

My DS attends a London junior non faith school in a very nice area which asks for a voluntary donation of approx £80 a year. This goes towards helping those that cant afford the various trips and music lessons etc which I think is money well spent and very happy to contribute. Would happily pay more if it helped those that cant afford it.

iwantawhippet

Our primary gets about £2.7 K per child. Every year we've managed to balance our budget or get a small surplus. We've manage to fund improvements to the fabric of the school through applying for grants (which take a long time rather than asking parents). We've always struggled financially and always cut our cloth accordingly. It's ridiculous in our area that many schools cannot afford their own headteacher but have to share with a partner school. It does not make for a better more efficient primary. It makes for worse results.

Faith primary

Asks for contribution of £15 per child per year

If only! When You’re on PAYE you pay the full rate of tax same as everyone else

Yes, I know. My point was:

1. Most rich people do not pay 45% of their whole income .
2. For very rich people who have such a big income (millions) that their rate should effectively be 45% a very large proportion make sure they are not on PAYE for the whole amount e.g. setting self up as company. Obviously some people pay almost 45% on their whole income.

Secondary comprehensive in rural market town - mostly students from "naice" areas

Last two ofsted reports were Good

Over 80% 5 A* - C including English and maths GCSE results

Extremely underfunded until very recently - a concerted fairer funding campaign from the parents, SLT, local MP, being featured on local and national TV has resulted in more funds being allocated to the school

The school has never asked for donations from any parent (while DD has been there anyway)

No PTA and no other fundraising for the school by parents has taken place while DD has been there

Obviously school trips have to be paid for by the parents, but that is normal

Admission. Thank you for your post., I completely agree with you. In my opinion our school had poor financial management over a long period and refused to consider making changes to the extremely high, over 90%, costs of staffing. Parents' donations do hide the real problems beneath the surface in some cases. However many schools are well run and are desperate for extra funds, although I notice locally that these are the schools asking for lower amounts.

Bluedoglead. Thank you for your input and for adding balance to this discussion. I wholeheartedly agree with you that the letters should not be sent.

The school I'm hoping for on 1 March asks for £50 pa
2000 kids = £100K extra a year

Fuel in the car. Every ten miles costs me roughly £1. Maybe £1.10. Can you imagine how that feels? Before you decide if you’re going somewhere you factor in the fuel cost and if you can afford the extra £2.20 on top of your weekly budget.

This is a good month. I get paid tomorrow and I have £32.33 left in my bank account, about £25 in my purse and I don’t need any groceries.

Where am I magicking extra money from? The demands are DESIGNED to tug the heart strings. To make people donate. That’s the point of them.

Think about it.

Your budget is done to the PENNY. a request for £1 for a non-uniform day has you panicking. Needing a specific gcse calculator at £12 means you have to figure out what’s being cut elsewhere.

But you want a different life for your kids. And one has been lucky enough to get to the grammar. And you desperately want him to fit in and make the most of his opportunity so you want him to be the same as everyone else.

But some of his friends won’t come round because council house. And he gets bullied for the wrong bag. And Lidl lunch box stuff.

And then you get a letter asking for £££ a month. And here’s what all we do with it - like it or not you will put pressure on people like me.

Filling in tne donation form was in the Induction booklet that Dc worked through with a teacher as part of the Induction Interview.

I would have felt IMMENSE pressure to contribute, or intense anxiety at the idea of Dc going into that interview with the ‘no donation’ box ticked.

Though I would perhaps have ticked the ‘donation made online ‘ box as a lie if we couldn’t have afforded it.

Informal means testing or making donations look in any way ‘opt out’ rather than ‘opt in’ is shocking.

The very purpose of our state education system is to ensure an educated society, regardless of individual circumstances.