If you are comfortably-off and have state educated children, do you donate money to their school?

[LabradorsByTheSea]

A friend, whose business has done extremely well (now a household name) has recently donated money for a beautiful new sensory room at her kids’ state school. They are multi millionaires but will never privately educate as a principle. They’ve got great kids who attend lovely non-selective state schools. And we’ve always sent a fair sized cheque at bonus time to our son’s school, and pay for two spaces on any trips/ residentials.

We’ve got one in private and one in a lovely village school ( he will move to independent for secondary, but DD also attended a prep school so suez had a much costlier education), and it seems fair to give something, considering we could easily afford fees but DS is getting a fantastic, free education. We cannot fault his school, he’s had an amazing experience there. The HT always sends a thank you card and lets us know what the money has been spent on, so I assume it’s appreciated. And it always feels more worthwhile than our respective Oxford colleges who endlessly press us for cash.

I was just wondering how usual this is. And also, weather we should thinking about matching donations to a school in a less affluent area, as DS’s school has a very enterprising PTA, who already pay for great activities and facilities and I’m aware schools just down the road don’t have this. I’m not quite sure how to make an approach about that without sounding patronising or a bit odd.

So how much more should be allocated to the Department of Education, and where is that funding coming from ?. I pay nearly 60% of my salary in taxation, are you suggesting I pay more and how much more 70% , 75% , 80% ???.

Check out givewell.org for charity evaluations. I donate to a malaria charity and a schistosomiasis charity they recommend - both are more effective at getting kids in the developing world an education than donating books, because they reduce common ill health reasons for kids to not be in school iyswim. If you’re interested in how to make your donations effective I’d definitely recommend the books Doing Good Better by William McAskill and The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer.

@GobbieMaggie How do you manage to pay 60% tax on your income? That's well above the max? The U.K. could choose to raise corporation tax or look at the budge as a whole and invest more in education than other place like perhaps millions for PPE that never materialised.....there are lots of places to look for that money.

Well you can rejig how existing funds are spent without taxing more. Things could have been managed so interest payments on the national debt were so high. Didnt truss cost us 30bn?

Also are you sure 60% of your whole salary goes on tax. There us that bit between 100 and 125 which works out at 60% but the rest isnt.

This may be controversial but I'm not sure how I feel about big chunks of money being donated to schools. Doesn't this just let the government off lightly?

The total that the government takes from me in direct and indirect taxation amounts to just short of 60%.

We already have a high rate of corporation tax which is making us uncompetitive in the global market. That will cost jobs and investment. We no longer buy PPE other than through the usual NHS procurement channels so that is a totally spurious argument. Energy companies SHELL, BP etc, are already diverting investment and laying off staff in the UK. And if you clobber the NonDoms, they will just leave. So at best, it's a one off hit.

The reality of it is : you cannot just keep increasing taxation. Eventually you'll hit a tipping point where it starts to have a negative affect on the economy. Business de-invests, unemployment rises, taxation declines. You have less money to fund education, not to mention health and UC.

"And so I will resist pointing out the irony of you managing a grammatical error in your own 12-word post."

You didn't 🤣🤣

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/covid-19-ppe-storage-still-costs-taxpayers-580-000-a-day-new-figures-reveal-12859148

Unfortunately PPE costs are horrendous.

Thank you for these ideas. Really interesting. I’ll definitely check them out. I’d be especially interested in donating to charities supporting women and girls, and disability charities in the developing world.

Xenia has also privately educated all of her children. Her choice, I started off doing the same too.

id now like to help others.

Not as yet, although DH and I have talked about making a one-off donation as DS transitions to secondary as a thank you - something that could fund a sensory room, or a garden, or buy music/sports equipment etc....

Really don't know why someone so all knowledgeable couldn't have answered these very basic questions themselves

And just for Xenia's info, a sensory room is mostly used for children with autism or other neurodiversities. It can be the difference between them staying in school or not.

Yeah she doesn't care.

The point above that a big donation might be regarded as a kind of corruption is interesting. Some rich people have tried to get children into very academically selective private schools by big donations and failed. The US has a sports scholarships scandal for university I think it was.

In pure socialism everyone would earn the same and the state would provide the schooling and the giving of extra donations might land you in jail.

I agree we have a hybrid system however. I also agree that individuals often ensure their own m oney is better spent than just handing it to a huge state or institution to spend as it sees fit so the lower the taxes we can get the more money is left for tax payers to give through their individual philanthropy.

The school I was a governor at spent years fund raising for a sensory room and this year should be able to complete it. It’s very sad that’s it’s not standard as it could have helped so many more children.

One of the reasons I chose my DC's school was that it has a sensory room! It's a tiny school and the fact that they had prioritised that told me that this was a nurturing and caring place. Most of the kids use it at one time or another, not just those with ASN. (I realise in a larger school this wouldn't be possible and it would need to be prioritised for those really needing it - but I love that all the kids know that it's there in case they're feeling sad/overwhelmed/in need of peace/tired/whatever...)

Brilliant - wish all schools were like that