Junk mail in reception child book bag

[ilovecats]

I probably am being unreasonable and precious, but I just wanted to know what happens at other schools.
DD started reception 3 weeks ago, she is my eldest so I have no experience with this. Every single day she has 'junk mail' in her book bag from the school. So far this week we have had leaflets for local activities, charity letters and advertising for local businesses. Yet I have not had any books, drawings, paintings or any notes in her book this week. As DD has only started full time school recently, I still get very excited when I pick her up to see what she has done in the day, and would love to see a little token now and again, although I understand this is not possible a lot of the time.
Is this normal? AIBU for finding this unacceptable? I work in marketing, and have done a lengthy stint in direct marketing, so my judgement might be clouded. Just wanted a view.

as a reception class TA I feel your pain as I am the poor bugger putting the crap in each bag!!!!!!

YANBU. Newsletters, drawings, occasional activity which school might be involved in are OK, the rest is just trash. However, the school may be earning money from it. Tell the teacher you don't want it?

Yes it's normal.

Will depend on your school, but DC's school used to bundle up their drawings/pictures etc and send it home in bulk rather than the odd bit every day.

It is annoying but quite common.

Ds school give a folder at the end of each term with bits and pieces of art work and poetry and stuff. This way stuff doesn't go astray and they put a lot of the kids work on the walls of classrooms and corridors.

It's normal. Schools often do stuff like this because companies will make a donation to the PTA, or give the children a free session doing something if the school publicise them.

Drawings and paintings may be on display or be being saved for the learning journal or assessment book - whatever your school uses.

Please don't ask if they can stop giving the junk mail to you, it just complicates a job that TAs already have to squish into two minutes at the end of the day when they are also trying to help children sort themselves out to go home.

It's normal. Annoying, questionable even, but normal.

I'm a bit split on this one, although i can see that it is annoying to have a bag full of junk.
I work at a spots centre and twice a term schools receive timetables for our half term/ holiday activities,these are distributed in book bags.
In return for this 'advertising' each school gets a free session either swimming roller skating etc.The schools usually use the sessions nearing the end of term.We also give pretty good prizes when the pta approach us at fair time.

I would suggest massively downgrading expectation of knowing what happens at school and of getting tokens home. After 5 years of can't remember and fine at the end of the day I have very little knowledge of how DD spends her day. If I am lucky a single piece of art comes home once a term.

Hmm. We are trying to recruit girls for Brownies as the pack has gone quite small. The Brownies do meet at the school but is it likely to piss parents off if we put flyers in book bags? We were planning on doing this but now I'm wondering if it would be a waste of time

worth noting that all this crap does cost, because the recycling costs come out of our council tax.

ask the school what they are getting out of this. If it is just 'local company asked us to distribute flyers' then they should stop.

The Brownie notices will be appreciated. It's begging letters/ads that annoy most people.

RE The brownies - I wouldn't mind, and I have a son! It might be worth adding a "please pass this leaflet on to anyone who may be interested" and add on information on waiting lists in case the boys have a younger sister who may be interested.

My son's school only have adverts for council related stuff, and anything directly or indirectly related to the school like Zumba classes that run from the school hall.

I work in a school office and it is really annoying! It generates a huge amount of work for the school, someone has to count them out into class sizes, theres quite often not quite enough so then you have to stop and think about any children who have siblings in the school so they don't get one and then the poor TA/LSA has to distribute them all into bookbags.

We don't do that many at the school I work and we only distribute leaflets for companies that make a donation to the PTA or donate a prize for summer/xmas fair etc.

We have had a parent complain once though that they didnt get a specific flyer, so some parents obviously do pay attention to them!

I put 9 different leaflets in a book bag two Fridays ago.

that's excluding the weekly school news round up.

I think its out of control now and parents just dump them all and so are in danger of reading letters that actually matter like consent forms.

Why not just take them out and put them straight in the bin at pick up time?

YANBU. It's a waste of staff time having to deal with flyers completely unrelated to education.

The advertisers are being cheapskates and taking advantage of this free/inexpensive distribution of their ads. The usual distribution costs are now effectively covered by school staff doing it for nothing I'm sure they'd have to pay far more (i.e. the going rate) for sending them out inside the local free newspaper, for example. A "sweetener" such as a small donation/gift to the school is really nothing compared to what they ought to be paying for such a service - and it's not a service that school staff should be asked to provide.

YANBU,

I think its great to want to know what they are up to. Mine were in reception last year we were very lucky as school is very IT literate - each class has a blog and we would get the most fantastic blog posts from their teacher - with pictures. It used to make me cry - but so great to see in the evening what they had done that day - with them smiling too. Helped us engage with what they were learning too. Why not ask for more feedback and news? Its worth telling them how you feel - reception teachers know what a special year this is for you all.

(As an aside no, the pics were never named, all parents were asked permission, also school runs classes for the parents on how to deal with the internet and kids - so they have their eyes open)

Our school doesn't irritate us with very many of these (phew). But we know the ones that do - maybe once or twice a term - have paid for the privilege. The time it takes to dump it in the recycling is my small donation to school funds!