to think tesco ad's in home/school diary are wrong.

[jollyma]

Ds, y3, came home today with a home/school diary full of tesco, stabilo, nintendo, x-box, etc ads. Its obviously done to save money but I just think its wrong. AIBU?

I have no doubt the school budget will be stretched as tightly as it possibly can be in this climate.

All publicly funded organisations use sponsorship etc to make ends meet.

If you don`t like it, get out there and be pro-active!!

It may help your negative feelings towards the school too if you get more involved with the school or PTA. Then everyone`s a winner!

ah, its Business School, not Academy - but its still a whole school,actually named after a shop!

see here

spiritmum - you are allowed to see the minutes but I'd be surprised if they have much detail as they will tend just to cover the bare bones of the subjects discussed and the decisions reached. Freedom of information request might be possible - interesting thought.

I don't know about all schools but I do know that at my local primary school which doesn't have its own kitchen there is no cost or benefit to the school for lunch money - it is all handled by the local authority. It may well be diferent for schools which employ their own staff and have large kitchens.

profit made on school meals? i very much doubt it! of the £2 a lunch costs here only abouy 40p per head is spent on food, the rest is on wages, equipment etc. And becasue the kitchen is now a proper "business" - they have just started having to pay towards the schools electricity bills too

No, perpetually annoyed, schools must not take all the money they can get. Would you have them sponsored by an undertaker? Or a drugs company? Or McDonalds? Where's your moral line? Cos mine happens to be right about at Tescos.
Schools are educating children. So school endorsements carry weight, with children and adults. It's no use saying that Tesco are "daft" - clearly they aren't. If this didn't work, they would't do it.

Cripsroll, genuine question - why have a home-school diary at all when other schools manage without?

And I can't seriously believe that an overprinted one is cheaper than a plain exercise book even if it does have sponsorship.

Sorry i keep double posting, my phone seems to be playing up.

Dh and I have both been v involved at school the last 3 years on pa and helping w reading etc. We have decided to take a step back this year as its not good for us!

And some school meals are contracted out to caterers like Sodexho where you can be sure that profit is being made. Again, they're not daft, they wouldn't do it.

tesco etc do it because they THINK it makes them look good, but to anyone with a bit of sense who can see through them, its not going to affect their views. Noone is going to change where they shop cos of an ad in a school diary.

what about all the £1000s of sports and computer equipment that has gone into our schools through voucher offers from the various supermarkets. I'm on our PTA so i know just how much we have had "free" - stuff that otherwise would not be there, benefitting the kids day in day out. and we have had large one off donations from individuals and companies - whats wrong with that?

It is the diary we record reading in as well as homework and non urgent comments.

point taken about contract caterers making a profit, most schools round here do their own meals, in their own kitchens from fresh local ingredients - not all this shipped around the place to be reheated junk

Tescos know it makes them look good. Maybe not to you or anyone with any cop on but they will have done their market research and focus group stuff before committing a penny.

The sports equipment highlights the difference.
Free Nike or unbranded whoever football given free by Morrisons = good.
Football with Morrisons "buy spuds from us" logo on = bad.

Schools are in a position of power. What kind of fucked up world is it that the BBC cannot mention brand names but your local primary school can?

Thanks everyone. I'll speak to head tomorrow.

Dont want to hijack ur thread jollyma but ds5yo came home with school diary and local pub advert in it offering money off vouchers
just dont think its right myself .

Ah, we have a reading diary for the dc which is just a bound book made up from photocopied pages. No homework diary until yr 5.

It isn't the parents that the ads are aimed at though, is it? It's the children. They know they are creating brand awareness and brand loyalty in the consumers of tomorrow, for whom collecting 'Tesco vouchers' will have a rosy glow of nostalgia.

Patience, I'm in two minds about your local pub advertising. If it is an independent pub that is family-friendly, stamps on troublemakers and does good food then you could argue that you are supporting a facility for your community - our village pub is vital as a meeting place, venue, Father Christmas has his grotto there, they cook meals for some of the older people and drop them off. If OTOH it's part of a faceless chain or the pub gets a lot of trouble which it doesn't deal with - or serves underage drinkers - then I agree with you.

I also have mixed feelings about the local pub advert. If it is an integral part of the book then its just as wrong. If its a removable voucher page directly aimed at the parents as a thanks for contributing to printing costs then maybe its not so bad. I think the bit that made me so angry was the way wii ads appear to be placed on pages of the year to coincide with new releases. If this isn't to encourage pester power what is!

There seems to be a new push for these this year. The dcs (at different primary schools) have always had some sort of homework diary, but this year have come home with snazzy spiral bound diaries with loads of extra bits put in including timetables, school rules ( or the X school way), and French vocal etc. Ds2's is covered in the same sort of advertising as the OPs. Ds1's doesn't have any advertising. So it must have been possible to get the no-advertising version.

Are they produced by the same company ladymuck? It would be fascinating to know the rationale of the heads of both schools about why they chose the version they did.

The one with advertising is the Boomerang one. I can't see the publisher on the other one at all.

Doubtless were I to ask, the one without advertising would be perturbed that he could have sourced the same goods for less!

Ladymuck, maybe they weren't for less? Who knows...

Spiritmum, I have no strong feelings about home/school diaries either way.

Sorry, I just wanted to say that I thought that many schools were struggling in this financial climate and as a result may turn more to sponsorship and advertising to help with this.

I dont think its right or wrong, just something that could be the case.

No, I agree with you, crisproll. I was trying to find out whether our dc' sschool is unusual.

Mind you, given that we get charged a fiver for a fountain pen when the dc's achieve the required level in handwriting, if we did have a home/school diary I bet we'd have to pay for it.

YANBU. It's not the time or place for advertising, and school staff should be spending their time in other ways instead of distributing ads.

Schools seem to be so different in England spiritmum. We are in Scotland and the primary school my DS attends asks for money for school trips and fund raising but not anything else.
It may change when he goes to secondary school though.
Am definitely not having a go at English schools BTW!!! It`s just sometimes I read things and I have no idea what they are about - a bit worrying, I am a teacher!!!