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.

So people are complaining about leaflets in book bags, but they also expect schools to be able to conjure up funds out of nowhere in order to provide subsidised activities for low income families? Where is all this money supposed to come from then?

Another YABU here.

If financial circumstances are reduced by choice as in your case then you must accept that you cannot have everything that someone with a full time job is able to afford.

As you yourself said " we foolishly assumed that there would be a concessionary rate". Never assume anything especially as the result in this case was your DD became excited at the thought of joining the class and then you had to disapoint her.

I feel the same about any advertising being given to children in class by a teacher.

It's an enormous breach of trust that they would use their authority to give private companies privileged access to children.

A school might take a view on some community notices, such as brownies etc, but no advertising in class.

I'm surprised so many people are OK with this, given the support for banning advertising to children.

Letting out the premises to slimming clubs/zumba/martial arts etc for use of the general public is different to offering extra curricular activities to pupils. The school will profit from hiring itself out as a venue (but shouldn't really be promoting/ advertising). The school won't profit from offering external extra curricular activities as part of their after school offer, and are not "advertising" but are letting parents know what's available.

*in addition to my above post, i meant to say that the schools shouldn't be advertising. Maybe some are? And there are also less cynical and more efficient ways that schools should be letting parents and children know what their offer is. Schools who advertise are doing it wrong. I agree with SCOTT

I'll say again, if you withdraw all extracurrciular activities, trips, skiiing holidays and the like to be fair to all, parents will vote with their feet.

And if those better off parents leave the state sector in droves, it will suffer dramatically.

The pupils are not just members of the school, they are also members of the wider community. Children are also part of the general public. So why should community groups catering for children not be able to use the school premises? It would be silly if it was only available for hire to adult groups.
The advertising issue is a different one. I can't be arsed arguing about that any more. Some will think it's no biggie, obviously some people think it is scandalous.

Agree with SheCutOffTheirTails and InWithTheITCrowd. Advertising private businesses in school book bags / classrooms / via teachers is unethical. Yes, schools may need more money, and businesses may find it efffective from a marketing point of view but that doesn't make it OK. There are loads of other ways to advertise that don't involve exploiting small children.

Noblegiraffe, you have a very silly name.

How do you plan on schools getting the much needed extra funds if children aren't involved in some way?

So what do we do about exam boards then? They are private companies who 'have privileged access to children' and make a fortune from it, with the sale of textbooks, revision guides, teacher training and drawing their examiners from teachers who are evidently unethical in recommending say an Edexcel revision guide for GCSE as that is the syllabus being studied, and it may be studied as a twilight extra curricular course.

Others have already asked, but could somebody please identify examples of posters on this thread looking down on poor people?

Like SDTG, if I am going to get flamed I would rather be flamed for something I have actually said.

"So what do we do about exam boards then?"

I can't believe anyone lets you into a classroom if that is your attempt at a reasoned argument.

You think the relationship a school has with the companies it leases its rooms to is the same as the relationship it has with the exam boards it uses?

Really?

I mean, there probably is a useful discussion to be had about exam boards and their relationships with schools, but it has fuck all to do with what's at issue here, and if you don't know that there is something seriously wrong with your basic reasoning.

Here's just one of many examples from utah right at the start of the thread:

"But life is unfair I pay a fortune in after school clubs because as a family we have saved and work hard the idea being that we made sure that we were in a position to afford children before having them."

Poor people shouldn't have children, and it's their fault that they're poor.

Regarding only contacting parents by email or on the website; that assumes everyone at your school has the internet. That is certainly not the case at my school and my kids schools. We have had complaints about school messages only going on the website as the parents can't access them.

utah might think it - I don't know and neither do you, SCOTT. But she didn't say that poor people shouldn't have children - she says she and her partner waited until they could afford children. I'd have worded it differently - until we were comfortably off would have be better. Her post was a bit smug maybe, but you are reading far too much into it.

Presumably there were disadvantages for her in waiting; I'd have been 40 if we'd done the same - which would've been a bit of a gamble - and what if you never earn much money?

Swings and roundabouts really.

Polly - many children will be attending these clubs as a form of after-school childcare to make the school day fit in with parents' working days. Nothing wrong with that.

But you and your dp are in a position now to give your dd something many children can't have - quality parental time as school ends, assuming that you are not both in lectures when the bell goes. Picking her up and sitting down over a Spanish book will give her more than any half-assed Spanish club.

Sorry can't trawl through all the replies, many of teh afetrschool clubs at our school (usually the sports ones) are provided by an outside supplier and are not cheap, others are done by paretns and staff and are cheap. Those provided by the outside supplier are required by the school to have two free places for childrne who qualify for free school meals as part of their contract to provide the club. First come first served.

That seems fair to me.

While all children should not grow up feeling an "entitlement" to anything, surely most of us would not like to see some childrne go without something their peers get because of the choices their paretns made?

I'm not too clear why poorer children have to learn they aren't "entitled" to anything whilst better off families' childrne don't have to learn this (though it is equally true of any child as none of them earn any money).

I am totally fed up with the adverts put into my kids' bookbags each day. My kids don't always read them. The main thing which annoys me is that it is unsolicited junk which I have to dispose of.

Kew, I certainly wouldn't like any child to have to go without because of the choices their parents made...but I really don't think that in the case of 9 sessions of Primary School Spanish (which is what this is all about) it would really make a difference in this case - This is a fun class, not an educational class (and the participants are little kids, not GCSE/A Level Students). In fact an earlier poster (in the business) points out that at £7 a session this class is almost certainly heavily discounted.

As for your final sentence, no-one has said that. In fact many people (who could have afforded these sessions, and more) have said that they purposely say no to their children so that they don't grow up 'entitled'.

(as for the sentence that SCOTT pulls out from Utah: I refer to my post of 14:05 yesterday, SCOTT - you do seem to want to think the worst of people)

But it isn't fair if lower income families' kids never get to do any of the fun clubs. Yes I know life isn't fair but do you really want a 5-11 year old who has no choice in the matter to be never allowed to join in with any of the fun after school clubs? Why would you want that?

Don;t you think its nicer to do what our school does and make a condition of any private contract that there are 2 free places at each club?

I would be very impressed at any parent who has teh money to be telling their child that they can;t do a single after school club in order to teach them about a sense of entitlement! One parent I know in RL said to me last week "my children aren;t allowed to do more than three after schools clubs a week".

And yes actually plenty of posters have said its fine for OP's children to go without becasue they aren't entitled to anything.

If our after schools clubs run by businesses can afford to offer two free places per club then they all can. But the school needs to care and insist on it.

It is good that your school offers such a plan, but plenty others do not. As the earlier poster pointed out a private company putting on this service would normally charge more in the region of £35 per session, so for it to be offered at £7 a session is pretty fab. If this business had to offer 2 free places, then the cost of the other places would have to go up - and then even more children would be unable to attend.

How does your school provide the service for the children of the 'working poor'? Those that do not qualify for FSMs?

Where the OP is concerned her and her DP have returned to Uni to hopefully get degrees that will enhance their working and earning prospects - so her children may have to go without now, but will hopefully be able to attend later. Also she points out later on that her child does attend some extra-curricular activities, ones that are subsidised to children on FSMs, so its just this one course she cannot attend. What about all those children of the working poor that cannot afford to attend any because they cannot be subsidised?

I also think that plenty of posters have pointed out the no-one is entitled to anything be it Spanish Classes, Ballet Classes, X Boxes or Holidays. We'd all like these things, but shouldn't expect to have them.

I am actually not against having 2 free places, that sounds like a nice idea. Even if others had to pay a pound extra. After all, people who earn more pay more taxes. Some solidarity in society is important.

But, it's not fair as the poster above says, that none of this help goes to people who are the "working poor". That doesn't mean that people who are not working are lazy, just that when you go back to work, you lose the free school meals, the help with school uniform, the concessionary fees for activities, the help with school trips. So you could actually be worse off (the OP says she is now better off than when she was in full time work) and your kids would never get help with these things.

Oh for goodness sake most kids don't do these things.

We're on a middle income and I know anybody doing any of these language courses.I have 3 dc on a middle income with a mortgage to pay so obviously much as they'd love it they won't be doing it either.

Don't think there should be free places either.Kind of bugs me as everything these days is being geared to the rich and the poorest having everything.It's just a given that those on a squeezed middle income go without.

Sorry life can be galling ie the rich have the money to pay for everything they want for their kids,the rest of us don't,get over it.

YABU. if you think the after school classes should be free: why dont you go to the school & offer to run a class in something you can teach for for free?

Then the school can run the class for free.

Gotta agree there.

Especially as the kids that get so much free are often in families better off than those working.