aibu about the excessive amount of things to pay for at school!

[Chundle]

Ok at dds school there seems to be an extroadinary amount of trips/activities etc to pay for! It's literally a letter a week! 2 weeks ago they had letter about zoo trip cost 9 quid, last week a letter about craft activity with guest cost 3 quid, yesterday theatre workshop thing with dance lesson cost 5 quid!
Now whilst I love the experience all this stuff gives surely the cost of all this must add up especially for parents that have several kids at the school! Now they do say its voluntary contribution however if you don't pay on time you do get a reminder letter about paying!
It just seems that everytime I stick a fiver in my sparechange pot for holiday spending money I have to take it out again and give it to school!!
I've never known another school like it for letters every week!!

www.education.gov.uk/schools/adminandfinance/financialmanagement/goodpractice/b0011770/charging-school-activities/

The school should keep it confidential

YANBU. I've got to find £180 odd pounds for DD to go to Wales for two days. I don't think she will get a lot educationally out of it, but all the class are going and I don't want her to be the one left out.
I've just paid £70 something for her to go to a holiday club for half term.
We don't qualify for free school meals nor can I claim the holiday club money.
With regard to the Somme. We regularly visited Ypres and the Menin gate. At the weekends, you'd see exhausted children and equally tired teachers despondantly looking at war graves and the like having driven from goodness knows where in the UK, taken the ferry then on to the WW1 battlefields.
It didn't look like a lot of fun to me.

Crikey and there's me thinking that I'm going to save a load of brass ( currently nursery fees) when ds starts school in September. I'm pretty horrified at what some of you are paying. I had no idea.

kreecher that's it though, 'everyone else is going' so we feel we have to find the money for ours to go, even if we don't feel they will benefit much!

I was glad dd went to Aushwitz though, as it's not somewhere we could ever visit as a family, but she did get a lot from the trip.

"how do you let the school know"

I'm sure you could think of a way to communicate 'it's too expensive' without coming across either as a troublemaker or Baron Hardup. Just ask to see the head, make your point & leave it at that.

YABU. Simple answer....dont pay! End of problem. Stop whinging about something so trivial. Sick and tired of hearing parents whinging because schools dont do enough extra currcicular stuff OR do too much which requires financial input from parents. Sounds like there are some teachers working really hard to improve the experiences of the kids at that school.

Oh god. Now I am worrying about DTs going to school. It's not for a couple of years yet but maybe I should start putting a few pennies away every so often!

Military if only it was as simple as that. The school DD attends is in quite a deprived area and pretty hard up. I have already filled out a bank mandate to allow them to have £4 a month.
I can see the other side too, my DH is a teacher and works bloody hard. He seldom takes trips out though.

We do one school trip a year - maximum of £3 vol. con. rest subsidised by PTA. Two whole school charity events (non-uniform, etc.) for small change / coppers. Plus optional PTA events. We also ask for £1 voluntary contribution for Christmas play tickets to cover lighting and stage hire, performing rights licenses, etc.

We try to keep parental finances in mind. But then we get complaints that we are not supporting the various charities that are close to the heart of certain parents with children with serious conditions. We have over a dozen children diagnosed with a different condition, each with an associated charitie. They would all like us to run a charity day for their special cause and I understand how important it is to them, but if we did we would have about a dozen charity events every year and most parents would find that too much. Doesn't stop us getting grief from those parents despite explaining this.

Costs can mount up I know - and it does get worse. I feel that my DCs have been really lucky that the school has organized so many things, (particularly for my DS who finds classroom learning really difficult - the trips and other stuff have made it all come alive for him). My DD paid for more than half the ski trip out of her birthday and christmas money for two years. I'd rather spend on that sort of thing than stuff. Still very hard when money is tight but I'd be sad to see it go.

how about year 7 ski trip £900 for 7 nights by ferry and coach....luckily DD doesn't want to go!