To be fed up with supermarkets' "stuff for schools" vouchers?

[DevonCiderPunk]

Yes I know it's all in a good cause and helps supermarkets to feel they're supporting the communities that they beam down in, but there's got to be a better way than the paper voucher system?

I have quite enough to do, thank you very much, without auditing my purse every few days because it is full of pissing vouchers that need to be sorted and stored and bundled, that I need to remember the closing date for, nag the DC about and check their school bags to make sure they've been delivered. That the school then needs to count and fill out paperwork for. Really I'd rather just buy the school a bloody football once a year instead.

Why can't supermarkets come up with something that doesn't involve all those slips of paper? It's 2013, surely we can make this easier for customers?

I decline them sometimes if I am in a rush & the DC are fed up, as I am ready for the shopping to be over and don't want to open my purse again and fart about with a wodge of paper worth 0.75 pence. People react as though I've stolen a toddler's ice-cream. I'm all for schools getting free stuff, but why is it such a bloody faff?

I find it easy

Asda do the green buttons to choose which of 3 very local charities or groups to support.

I don't see the point of them because the sheer amount needed for the school to receive a tennis racket or a football is ridiculous.

I have never had a school to collect for before and now that DD1 has started I still won't be collecting. YANBU.

Spoilsports! They are great, my ds even knows which equipment the vouchers have bought!

YANBU. If you count up the cost of administering the voucher scheme, time taken, paper used etc. I don't think it really amounts to much. For every £10 of shopping you get 1 Active Kids voucher. Spend £90 (9 vouchers) and you get a wire cooling rack. Spend £1500 and you get a tennis racquet. The supermarkets do it as a feel-good factor to make people think they're interested in education and health, when in fact they still sell quite a lot of unhealthy foods.

I always collect them, it takes seconds to stuff them in my wallet and I hand them in as I collect dd as there is a box on display.Dd's average sized primary school (about 330 pupils) collected 37,000 Tesco vouchers last year and were able to renew PE equipment.

Yes I've seen the green buttons scheme in a couple of places. That's so much better - you can leave the shop knowing you don't have any outstanding tasks. If a school looked like it was lagging behind in buttons, I'm sure people without DCs at a local school would give their button to whichever school had the least.

YANBU. I'll tell you what gets on my nerves even more though - bloody WHSmith. With every transaction you get a money off voucher, even just for a magazine I have had a Grazebox voucher foisted on me, without a word. I always leave them behind, there are enough leaflets stuck inside the mags as it is, it pisses me off that I have to throw away so much paper. Such a waste.

I work in a school library. A small secondary. We got the points last year from all the Tesco vouchers. We bought well over 100 new fiction books for the library. They were extras - no way could we have afforded to buy that many books - worth over £600.

So yes, I think its badly administered. But like most schools, we have to take whatever we can get, regardless of the intentions behind it. There is no money for any extras, other than completely unnecessary extras like 'outside performance space' for which you can bid and receive loads of funding. Actually useful things like books, tennis rackets etc there is no money for. So I'm all for any scheme that gives money to schools.

Ah that's interesting vj32. I'll wind my neck in then :)

also, how naive of me... of COURSE the voucher system is favoured by the supermarkets. It's a neat way of getting their brand into schools in a way that the green button system wouldn't.