when did state education stop being free? eh?????

[Clary]

DD has come home with a request for a voluntary contribution to school - for her art exercise book.

Yes it's only 50p, but I really really resent the idea of paying for her blimming exercise books.

We send her to school in uniform, with pens, pencils, calculator and PE kit; is it really too much to suppose the school will provide her with the paper to do her art work?

I said in a bit of a temper "well art is bobbins expecially at that school" (DS1 has had a difficult time of it with a very negative teacher) and DD rather upset said if she didn't take the money she wouldn't get the exercise book (so much for voluntary then!).

DH agreed with me and started going on about the thin end of an enormous wedge. School is an academy (as so many are) so is this the way it is going to go? This week 50p for an exercise book, next week £10 or we won't teach your child music?

I had a whine about this once to somebody I knew who worked at the school. She said in a snooty voice, Well it gives the children more opportunities. That was me told then wasn't it! I don't think I'd object to 50p though even if I was in one of my 'annoyed by everything' moods.

No motherinferior I was replying to your post saying that you pay for your child's education through tax. Which is not a correct statement and I dislike it intensely. Most people don't pay for their children education through their taxes and it sounds so entitled to be saying it in relation to not wanting to contribute to additional costs to help the school and your children.

Additional costs are not new and PTA's have fund raised for a very long time.

My parents had to pay for my own brushes and paints for O level art, nearly 30 years ago. However, I don't remember my parents paying any other, "voluntary contributions," to the school. My DD and DS are still at primary school and our "voluntary" contributions must total something approaching £200 annually. However, I'm pretty sure that many people don't pay them for either financial or moral reasons. 50p for an art book does seem to be moving towards the taking the p* end of the scale though.

Every teacher I know, and most Ts I know (myself included) spend their own money on school resources or make donations of resources. I often have taken in books, toys, games and DVDs that used to be DDs to add to school resources. I rarely print at school, esp colour printing. I provide exercises books and folders for me intervention groups fairly often, I've bought stuff in sales and charity shops for school....most school staff are like this in my experience. School budgets just can't cope without extras ime.

OK I contribute to their education. I expect other people to contribute as well. I think providing state education is important. Ditto health services. And benefits. And I will fork out 50p, if I have to, but I will still grumble about it.

motherinferior

YANBU - it's the principle and the school shouldn't be assuming that all children will have extras purchased for them because not everyone can afford it.

I have a lot of sympathy for the school (I also work in education and have to buy certain classroom objects out of my own money which is clearly wrong) but I don't think the answer is passing the costs on to students and/or parents.

There has to be a piont where people say 'no' and then the government has to revise its strategy of not paying and reorder its priorities so that money can be made available.

It cost me a fortune as a teacher supplying all the extras that I needed in the classroom. All teachers do the same-or at least the ones that I know-which is why you get a bit fed up when people moan about 50p for their own child.

I don't really have an issue with paying but it comes as a bit of a shock after primary school, although now our DD's primary school charges for just about all extra activities even when plays/musicians etc...are bought into the school.

It is just a shock and neither DW nor I can remember handing over much money at all for extras for our secondary education - but then neither of us did cookery nor cookery/art to exam level... Certainly have no recollection, in the 1970s, of having to share text books either....

I'd sooner pay for exercise books and art supplies than blooming school uniform! But I do agree that the 'hidden costs' of school are becoming a problem for families on low incomes.

Well yes, we are not a low income family but you do notice that these demands upon one's purse/wallet are suddenly non-stop. Our mortgage payments came down by £100 a month recently but finding that all that supposedly extra money seems to be absorbed by simultaneous extra financial requests from the schools!

exotic I sympathise with you and those seeing it from your side of the desk but the parents have a case here too, don't they? If they actually complained over 50p that would be pettiness but if underprivileged parents are sent letters and notes home with their several DCs at an alarming rate, asking for them to cough up a few quid at a time and they can't afford it, that isn't on.

My secondary in 80 made us share text books, asked every term for £10 of voluntary contributions not that they got all of that, expected us to buy pre G.C.S.E textile, cooking ingredients and metal, wood and some art supplies.

It was a bog standard secondary.

I've been taken back actually in Primary with my DC are that we don't have to provide pens and paper though first two years they do expect 50p a week for snack and extras.

We do have to save and get bit by bit the uniforms and its annoying that for some of it there is one supplier.

Having said that for 3 lots of trips, music lesson only not having to hire this year and one group, swimming lessons, plus two groups for another DC had set me back around £200 this month. I don't begrudge it but I do notice it.

I suspect it will only get worse - and yes I think academics may accelerate the process but if it was me I'd still find and send the 50 p.

I had my kids in a state school where the demands for supplementary funding grew ... and grew ... and grew ... eventually I was hit with a demand for £300 for a three-night residential 15 minutes' drive up the road at a cheapo youth hostel type place, and I put my foot down and said no, I am not paying and my child is not going. The school was shocked as they had been milking us for years.

One of the other parents did some investigation, and it was discovered that one half of the class were being charged a lot extra for everything, and the others were benefiting from a somewhat secretive bursary type system whereby our contributions were being top loaded so the other people wouldn't have to pay anything at all. No proper means testing took place, it was a certain group of parents perpetually pleading poverty because they knew they could get it all for free if they did so, no questions asked.

Ah, you think, this is great, the rich subsidising the poor and all that. Except it wasn't. It was a lot more crude than that, sloppy and lazy even, trying to say they were inclusive without giving much thought to what that meant to the parent body as a whole. And it had all got out of hand.

So I would regard any school that regularly approached parents for money with great suspicion, and take it to the governors if they did it too often, especially for basic things like exercise books. Can they not manage a budget properly? Are they not letting out school premises enough to raise extra funding? What is going on?

And the residential? DS2 went on the same one with a different school three years later, and it cost £150-ish, paid via instalments. Go figure.

I think I'll stop subsidising the kids I teach. I wonder how long it will take for the first complaint to come in when I don't lend a child a pen?

My friend took a job as a primary school teacher and was shocked at the lack of school resources.
She bought a lot from her own money including glue!

Perhaps you should be more angry OP at the fact that the education system is being destroyed by academy creation. The academy sponsor will welcome all those 50p's in lieu of books.

The Tories have already said that they are not opposed to the idea of academies being profit making.

Welcome to the future.

My dd has just started state elementary in Italy. We have to buy all excersise books and plastic covers about 8 to start off with. £12 . A box of maths stuff £7. An art pad £4.All pencils , pens etc . Glue - she has already gone through 2 sticks . We pay a contribution yearly of £25 to help towards material. We were also asked to provide a block of A4 paper, tissues 12pack , soap and paper towels. School meals are £2.75 each and are 3 course, freshly made , pasta, meat and side dish and fruit or yoghurt- with a bread roll. So advantages and disadvantages.......

I would have no problem paying 50p for my DC education.

Tbh I really prefer to put £20-£30 first term instead of going to the PTA fund raising ideas

at my school (I left school almost 20 years ago) it was the norm to have to buy your exercise books etc. They had to be bought from the school as they had the school logo on etc. I didn't know that this isn't the norm, I thought all schools did it.

We had to pay bloody £8 for a sodding "Art Pack"

As a primary school teacher I spend a small fortune during the year myself on things I need for the children in my class. Most of the other teachers I work with do the same. If I want to do anything beyond the basics I either fund it or don't do it! So far this year I have bought mixing bowls, flour, salt, blue tac,foil, grease proof paper etc and it is only September!

I best keep quiet about the iPad my nephews school guilted his
Mum into paying them £15/month for

There is only one point - schools don't have enough money. PTAs either raise it or parents pay. Perhaps those who are so rude about PTA members could be more grateful - otherwise you would be paying a lot more! Also you should be pleased that teachers are forking out so much of their own money.

We've just had a request for a voluntary contribution for cookery. Ds is at a special school with small classes (6 - 8 children) and they make one thing between them - so he will come home with for example one scone or flapjack. Last week it was a quarter of a toasted sandwich wrapped in a blue paper towel....
I will pay it as it's not a lot, but Tbh I would rather pay more so that he can make something properly rather than just have one stir of the communal bowl.