Teachers asking for freebies on Facebook

[astersugar]

Forgive the provocative title. But can someone explain this? I'm part of a few community reuse sites which are wonderful. Great for finding new homes for things and picking up things for free. Over the past week I've seen about four or five different teachers asking for toys for their new classes in September. Is this really how it works? Is this normal across the country? Is it really the case that teachers either have to beg for hand me downs or dip into their own pockets to properly resource their classrooms? It's been quite eye opening this week. I know I could ask one of the teachers this but I don't want to cause offence and my instincts say they're doing the very best they can so I don't want to open a can of worms on their posts. But does anyone work in education here who can explain this? I naively thought that schools would have funding to purchase learning resources, toys etc or at least the PTA would cover this... Seems I was very wrong.

Yes totally normal, often because heads spend on the wrong things though!

My children were at school in the 90’s so no such thing as Facebook but the teachers regularly used to send out bulletins asking for supplies and donations as the school didn’t have any budget for anything other than the bare essentials.

Such as?

@Cliff1975 please give examples. There is very little budget to spend anything once staff and utilities are paid for, so not sure what they can splurge on the wrong thing

My DM is a teacher and is always buying things with her own money. I was helping to sort her classroom out the other day and at least half of the resources are her own, not to mention other things she buys through the year like stationary and ingredients. Dozens of her books are held together with sellotape.

Her school is starting the new academic year in an £9k deficit. There used to be budgets for things like buildings maintenance, that’s gone so the classrooms don’t get repainted now unless the teachers buy the paint and do it themselves.

It’s scandalous.

Very sorry to hear about your Grandmother op, I’m sure your aunts donation meant that many, many children benefited.

Schools also have ground force type days so volunteers can come in and do maintenance type tasks, which school can’t afford to do

School's electricity bill for one month was in the region of £20k. There is no money for extras.

Is it really the case that teachers either have to beg for hand me downs or dip into their own pockets to properly resource their classrooms?

Errr, yes. I taught secondary and if I wanted students to be able to write anything down in my lesson, I had to provide pens to as many as half the class in some cases.

Also bought my own highlighters, reading books for form time, sweets for small prizes, spare tights and sanpro and cereal bars for my desk drawer (if and when needed), playing cards for a lunchtime club. Anything I personally needed (for my job), for sure - Post-Its, notebooks, pens, posters for my classroom, blu-tak, whiteboard markers, any other fancy resource to catch the students' attention...

It's all very well for a PP to say teachers are mugs who do this, but my dept used to get one box of 50 Bics a year - for six teachers and many dozens of classes. Just not enough sadly.

I teach early years and have resources out on shelves for the children to access, many of the resources, all of the boxes they're kept in and some of the shelves have been bought or found by me over the years. When I was off on maternity I stored all of my stuff away, apart from the furniture which was too big, as I've not claimed back for it. The classroom looked so bare and I really felt for my cover who had to use a mismatch of broken baskets and containers from the junk modelling to have resources out on shelves but I wasn't willing to lend my stuff when I've spent a fortune on it. I'm especially glad I didn't as I've been back in to set my classroom up and the tea set, play dough toys and few boxes that weren't purchased by me have gone missing/been lent to other classes/thrown out because they got broken so I'm now looking on Facebook and Freegle for replacements. If I can't find any for free I'll no doubt end up buying some because really you can't have a play dough area (play dough ingredients bought by me throughout the year) with no cutters or a home corner with no cups and teapot.

@OhFatty I would happily take loads of that off your hands, especially the felt off-cuts, whereabouts in the country are you? 😆

I haven’t been a teacher for 5 years but I regularly bought resources including pencils for my classes in the 10 years I was teaching. It’s always been a thing as far as I am aware.

Yes, this has been the case for decades.

"Teaching: The only profession where you steal from home to take things into work" is an old saying now.

@teanbiscuitio you are vastly over estimating the budget of some families.
As a teacher even (so a salaried professional with a dh also in work) , when our dc were young, we didn't have £100 per term, per child 'spare' to shore up the school's budget. Very few of the families of the dc I taught have that kind of money to spend after paying for the necessities.

This Winter too many people will be making choices between food and heating.

I don't want to make it party political, as has gone on for decades, through both Tories and Labour being in power, but

Not really helped when you hear Rishi doing this....

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/05/video-emerges-of-rishi-sunak-admitting-to-taking-money-from-deprived-areas

This is the problem when you make something free, people get used to it then they think it's their right and refuse to pay ANYTHING.

There's no reason most people can't pay something towards their child's education. A bit like prescriptions. If i was in that position as a teacher I wouldn't be spending a penny of my own money if the parents weren't chipping in as well.

Yes, my DH is a teacher and is always buying things for school from our own money. Every time we're in a charity shop he's buying things for school. I find it really annoying but he says the alternative is a nearly empty school.

It depends on your school. I have been the teacher buying games and resources that will just add a little extra fun to lessons or my classroom. But I'm currently in a well-resourved school who have had bigger budgets due to the demographics.

I think in America it is worse, where teachers are poorly paid and it's nearly expected to buy stuff yourself.

I get very excited when my own kids outgrow books, games etc as I can put them into school.

I use the olio app to claim what I can when I can, I approached the local Tesco and they said they aren’t allowed to donate food that is past its use by, that included fruit and vegetables!

I strongly disagree with you there. Education absolutely should be free (paid for through tax) as it benefits the whole of society.

@Kite22 I think you might be underestimating the budget of MOST families. £300 per year (£3,300 over the school life of a child) is surely affordable to the vast majority of families. Granted, this may be the worst time to start such a scheme. But I find it a bit off to hear parents complaining about lack of funding at schools while not being willing to contribute anything at all.

Underfunding plus PTA unable to raise funds due to Covid.

You think £300 per child per year would be affordable to the vast majority of families?

Sadly, I think you have no idea how a lot of people live.

The electricity and water bill 🫣

In the school I volunteer in year groups have taken to locking away pencils, glue sticks, whiteboard pens, blank work books etc as stuff was going missing. Each year group had their own budget for these things and so the supplies belong to that year group but on an evening stuff was going missing. Hence now being locked in cabinets. Very sad. For Christmas I bought the class basic supplies.

Schools are woefully underfunded.

Oh, yes... pens, pencils, reading books, materials for after school clubs, sweets etc for small prizes...not to mention tights, socks, food, lending/giving money for bus fares...are things I buy monthly for students at school.

It's only going to get worse with the unfunded pay rises and the huge increase in fuel/heating costs.

My first school (a new build back in the 70s) had a beautiful library but very few books because no funds were available. We got the books other schools threw out or didn' t want - 6 copies of Bleak House for example. Somebody suggested we ask the parents to pay for a book at a book night. Some laughed at the very idea as the school was in a very deprived area. But parents turned out and handed us money to buy books. Their donations were amazing.
Might be worth trying in your schools if there is a shortage of materials.

Most students come from the same area. The school I work at the parents wouldn’t be able to afford it, but a school in a different area the majority may well be able to all afford it. If I didn’t pay for things myself my students wouldn’t get the experience and knowledge students in a more affluent area would, that’s not fair for those students and it reduces the opportunity of social mobility, purely because their parents can’t afford it or don’t want to pay for it.

Yes , my infant classrooms over the years were furnished with everything my own three grew out of, from spare clothes, PE plimsolls, lego, duplo, soft toys, books. We were expected to make our rooms look bright, attractive, inspiring and functional. But with no budget.
Over the 40 years of teaching I’ve bought glue, felt tips, fabric, cooking ingredients, Christmas cards and sweets, Easter mini eggs, and scavenged from shops for paper, card, junk material etc.
A few years before I retired it was decided that role play areas in early years should have “ real” objects. So China teapots and cups not plastic etc in a home corner for instance. No money provided though, so I was buying up stuff from charity shops regularly - to replace the inevitable daily breakages..
When year when I was divorced with three young children, I simply could not afford to buy the “ Christmas sweets” to give out on the last day before the holidays. There were several complaints from parents and I felt terrible.