Private companies running classes in state schools, DD can't go because we are poor, AIBU to complain??

[PollyPeppa]

We are below the poverty line as we have 3 DC's and DH and I are full time uni students. We worked in low paid jobs and decided enough was enough and are now hoping to get better ones after university.

DD's school had just started up after school Spanish club. We sent her along to the trial session and she loved it. We had foolishly assumed there would be a concessionary rate (as there usually is with after school clubs) but there is not as it is run by a private company so we can't afford for her to go again.

I feel this is very unfair to offer this as only children whose parents can afford to send them can go, I think it creates a divide in the 'state' system.

There are various ways that schools buildings are used. Schools have an obligation to provide what used to be called a "Varied Menu of Activities" which include after-school clubs. Most of these are/were run on good-will of staff. Private companies exist who specialise in running after-school clubs, to take the place of the staff member, who will have already done x amount of hours that week. If this is the case, then the school won't charge the company for the premises (as it is run by/through school) and will, no doubt, already be subsidising it, with the parents expected to pick up the remainder of the cost. Also, these companies are much cheaper than "private sector" companies, as they often work through the LA and obtain subsidy themselves, or can afford to drop their prices as they have no venue cost.
It sounds as though this Spanish Club forms part of the extra-curricular offer in OP's DD's school, rather than it being an external group who have just hired the venue.

As someone said further up, each school should have access to an Extended Services Coordinator who can help out with all sorts of things. There is a government-funded pot of money called "Pupil Premium" which is targeted at students who are eligible for free school meals or are Looked-After Children. Each of these students is entitled to a sum of money (£430 in my LA) which is specifically for extra-curricular activities/school trips etc.
Have a look at this, and see if it helps...
Pupil Premium

SardineQueen - I think I will talk to the school and ask that if they are going to use advertise on behalf of private companies and let them use the school grounds then they should be made to offer it to all pupils by way of a concessionary rate for the poorest families, not just those who can afford it

I'd be concerned about the teachers saying in language lessons things like "most of you will know this from Spanish..." or not including Spanish on the curriculum if they might otherwise have done so.

Meteorite, I would be surprised if many children do the Spanish, though. I think quite a lot of parents would find the cost excessive - and I doubt they learn much anyway. It just gives the school the opportunity to point out to Ofsted that these things are available.

But they are unlikely to be saying this! Honestly they are not going to be conversing in fluent Spanish by Christmas! They will have learnt to say hello, learnt a few numbers and whatnot and sung lots of songs and played games with beanbags and puppets. I am presuming this is in KS1 when I say this.
What they offer out of school makes no difference to what they are legally expected to offer within school. If it is KS1 then they are probably not having language lessons in school time. If it is KS2, then perhaps they are learning a different langugage such as French, so Spanish is just an extra?
I have no idea what is going on in that particular school, and I would tend to agree that schools should be careful in getting involved with actively promoting private companies excessively.
However, parents want schools to be open later and they want childcare after 3pm and they can't expect the school to provide all this for free.
The OP should get back to the school and see if they can help as suggested above in the post about pupil premium.

peppa I do think it is a good idea to talk to them about it. See what they say. Find out if they are planning on extending this model to other after school sessions and if they are have they thought about impact on students with lower income parents etc etc

I think you have to let the spanish thing go, but see if you can get them to have a think about the future. I am sure the governers are there for this sort of thing as well (not that au fait with school stuff!),

But yes having read kat's post it wouldn't do any harm to ask if there is any assitance available for the spanish and explain that it wasn't made clear that this particular course isn't subsidised and DD went to the taster and is dead keen etc see what they say

YABU
As so many other posters have already said, that's life. There are always some people who are better off than you and some who are worse off than you. The trick is to focus on what you have got and not constantly moan about what you haven't.

saggar

I don't think it depends on what's being advertised.

If the school are endorsing a class (along with any responsibility that comes from that endorsement) then they need to make sure all pupils can attend if they choose.

Otherwise they should not be using their students as a product to be sold to advertisers.

I don't give a fuck what they use the money on - pupils should have a right not to be subject to commercial message during school hours or using school channels.

The parents who can pay for all the extra curricular private classes presumably have the resources to do a little research if they want their children to do Spanish, or whatever.

There is NO reason for the school to be getting involved in handing out junk mail to children to whom they have a duty of care.

It's really shocking to me that this goes on and is accepted as normal practise. Thankfully I wasn't educated in this way and I hope to raise my children away from schooling like this, it is a dreadful way to treat children.

"Private companies exist who specialise in running after-school clubs, to take the place of the staff member, who will have already done x amount of hours that week. If this is the case, then the school won't charge the company for the premises (as it is run by/through school) and will, no doubt, already be subsidising it, with the parents expected to pick up the remainder of the cost."

That is shameful.

Children who have to go to schools like this are fucked.

Polly you said "and is likely getting free use of the room if not a discounted rate than if they ran it elsewhere" but you dont know that, and if it is anything like our school then the class holder pays the going rate - so much so that the ballet class DD attends is going to move to a different school after Xmas as it is cheaper than ours.

Our school does bloody well out of the extra-curriculars, and it needs to so it can subsidise the school trips that are a necessary part of the DCs education.

"if it is anything like our school then the class holder pays the going rate - so much so that the ballet class DD attends is going to move to a different school after Xmas as it is cheaper than ours."

That doesn't sound like "the going rate"

It sounds like various local schools competing in race to the bottom to see who can hire out their facilities for the least money so they can have these classes on their property.

Awful :(

Where would the cut off point be for the subsidy though? Where these subsidies are offered sometimes only the rich kids and the ones whose parents are on a really low income can afford to go. What about the ones in the middle or whose parents have a bloody huge mortgage to pay? Someone will always lose out surely?

I don't know as I agree it's shameful, SheCut. Schools budgets are so tight, and extra-curricular activities are the first and easiest thing to chop, but schools do still have targets to meet, and teaching staff don't have the time, energy and (often) the expertise to run these sessions. Some of the clubs that offer their services, I wouldn't touch with a barge-pole and some are very expensive, BUT some exist through the LA, and the school will already be subsidising them, before passing the rest of the cost on.

Schools do things so differently, and it must be galling for things to be "advertised" in school time, and then find out that there is a cost to continue - what the schools should be doing is a bit of market research, and finding out what the need and expectation is. But they can't keep offering something for nothing.

I'm an Extended Services Manager for ten schools, and I found funding for an after-school music club for one of my Primaries. The parents who I spoke to before putting the club on, were all interested, and it should have cost £4.50 per pupil per week (for 6 weeks). I managed to fund it completely so that it was free for each pupil, and had 30 places - but we had 2 students turn up, and had to cancel it. When I got feedback from the parents, I was told "We thought it would be crap because it was free"
Damned if you do...

Well we had better shut the schools at three o clock then and put a stop to all this.
I agree that the school should have a fund for less well off pupil. However it is important to realise that they have to use this fund so that those pupils don't have to pay to go on school trips during the school day.

If you want your children to still be in school after three o clock then you can't expect free childcare from their teachers every day of the week.

I would find it galling to have my children advertised to in that manner, regardless of my ability to pay.

Thanks InWith, that is useful.

It's certainly good to know that there is someone keeping an eye on how these courses are being run.

It's a nice little pot of public money going to these companies, though, isn't it?

Little subsidy from the LA, little kickback from the school, extra cash from the parents.

Quids in!

kat - the pupil premium can be used by schools according to their own specifications BUT they will all be held accountable as to how it has been spent.
In my secondary school, each Free School Meal child was interviewed (and there were bloody loads of them) to find out what their own personal goals were for the year ahead, and then the £431 was actually placed into a fund for that child with a schedule of the things that were coming up for them - trips/breakfast club etc. But my school is quite progressive, and I hold the budget for Pupil Premium, so I can allocate it as I see fit. Other schools will have the budget held in a central pot, so will be harder to access. However, there is NO harm in asking about it - it's supposed to be there for the child's benefit!

I think that a lot of primary afterschool clubs are ways of companies charging for things you can perfectly easily do for free with your own children. If schools get an income indirectly through roomhire from parents who are prepared to pay, then fair enough. But I don't think you can assume that these clubs are of great educational value, or something not to be missed.

IWTITC - that sounds great.

SCOTT: I dont think that's awful, I think that's business!

DD's dance teacher charges £X per class, by going to a cheaper hall she can make more money, pay herself a better wage.

As long as the schools are making money, does it matter how much (although the more the better of course) - something is better than nothing and something can go towards making services better for its pupils - it's sad that schools need to do this, sad that the government does not provide the money for all the things the school wants to do for its pupils, but it's not going to get any better any time soon. Better the schools make some money out of it than the halls being left empty from 1500 every day, and school trips being cancelled due to lack of funds.

SCOTT - my dd can't access Tennis Club due to health issues. Should school not endorse or offer Tennis Club to those who can? Or should we not offer any activity to children and leave it to parents to source them themselves?

Schools are hardly 'using their students as a product to be sold to advertisers'. They're passing on a leaflet offering an activity that they think parents may be interested in. Either you take it up or you don't.

OP - the post about Pupil Premium is excellent. Ask your school about how they are using theirs.

SheCut - it definitely depends on the provider. I believe that some are complete charlatans, and shouldn't be in "business" - but I have a couple that I use who are brilliant (these tend to be the cheapest or free ones, though). If the LA can sub them and they can get free venue from the school AND tick the Ofsted Box for Varied Menu, there are some companies who make enough to keep them going, who then won't charge further. They are the only clubs I will consider.
The one that I make exception for is the one that a local professional football club run. it's very expensive, and we can't afford to sub it in the holidays BUT we are already oversubscribed for next summer, as parents/kids are desperate to attend.
It's all about need and accessibility. "Disadvantaged" children are on the coalition radar, and money is being streamlined in this way, so schools SHOULD be promoting that, and if they are not, then parents have every right to go and find out why not

PollyPeppa, this is how it was all the way through primary for my dd too. There were loads of after school clubs using the school building, some of which dd would have liked to attend, but she couldn't because we had not got the money.

Our circumstances have changed a bit since then and now we could afford to send her to a few extra-curricular things if there were any near home, which there aren't (ain't it just the way?!).

You and your dh are at uni and broke right now, but you won't be for long, and pretty soon you'll be better off than a lot of other people and your dd will be able to take advantage of things like this. I don't know how old she is, but it won't do her any lasting harm to miss out for a few years.

YANBU OP. It is another way those on lower incomes are failed by our education system.

It the dim and distant past I went to what New Labour might have called a bog standard comprehensive. I spent pretty much every lunch hour and every evening after school taking part in school clubs. I qualified for free school meals so there's no way my mother would have been able to afford to pay for those types of activities if the school hadn't offered them for free. If my school had decided to try to maximise its revenue (or just offloaded the provision) by outsourcing clubs to companies that charged I would have had a much more impoverished youth. There was plenty else that was not so good about my school, but rich extra curricula provision helped widen my horizons and make my childhood a lot of fun. I think it was also instrumental in my getting into a good university.

I am surprised that so few people (not even a school governor [shocked] ) see any issue with State schools playing a role in deepening the divisions within our society between rich and poor children - it's no wonder our children's happiness is amoungst the worst in the developed world.

Do you really think that not being able to afford things your school is endorsing is the same as not being able to do them because of your health?

You see, to me, those are two entirely different situations.

We have 'outside providers' providing clubs in our school. They get no kick back from school funds and neither do we receive money for distributing leaflets.