to think if the letter says a voluntary contribution of £x then you don't HAVE to pay

[PMDD]

I have 3 children at the same primary school. Since coming back to school in January the school have asked me for a VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTION of £14 for DD, £7.50 for DS1 and £5.00 for DS2 (school trips linked to their term topic). They have also asked for £1 for each child for 'arts week' and they have asked for £1 for each child for this Friday's mufti, which is followed by the school valentine disco of £2.50 per child.

That is £40!!!!

Other than mufti and the school disco, which they children don't have to do (although they will be very left out if they come in school uniform), the payment is voluntary. So would I be unreasonable to say that I will give them £5 per child for all the school activities.

I would like to add that my DS1 (year 6) and DS2 (year 4) are both going on school trips in May which cost £350 and £280 respectively, which I am paying £50 a month for since Sept last year!

Wantsunshine"I really don't think they have asked you for much of a contribution when it is for your three children going on trips. It has been the same for the past forty years that you pay for your child to go on trips so it's not as if you didn't expect it as a cost of having children."

Really? When I was in primary 40 years ago we went one one day school trip - nothing else. No educationals, no residentials.

I too was at school forty years ago and there was nothing to pay for.
I don't understand why schools have so many charity days and none school uniform. This adds up over the year and can make a huge significance to other things you may choose for your dc.
We always used to save for trips but found the charity/none school uniform days excessive and I think they are wrong. Charity begins at home and we should have the right to give to those we agree with.
We don't have this anymore, but it used to drive me mad. Every week they wanted money for something.
No such thing as a free education.

Don't pay and then don't do the activities..

The charity and non-uniform days add up to max 6 a year (and that's on the generous side). Even if you have 3 kids, that's only £18 for the year.

In the 70's we had quite a few school trips and residential ones. I just phoned my mum to check I haven't imagined all this and she complained about how it was always a last minute letter with requests for money that she would have to scrape together. I am one of 3 and so she then went into complaining about how much it all cost and I had to divert her off the subject!

I taught before voluntary contributions were introduced , parents either paid for school trips or their children couldn't go. They all paid and they all went. (I didn't teach in a wealthy area.) Once schools were only able to ask for voluntary contributions it became so much harder to organise day trips out. Many parents seem to not to want to pay for some sort of principle. ( Yes of course I realise that there are some parents who would really find it hard to pay- you always have to add that on here!)

If our families didn't pay towards trips we just couldn't go. Budgets are so tight now that we barely have enough money for books. Speak to the school if you are struggling. You can often pay things up.

It's a voluntary contribution. Parents can refuse to pay due to having to resole their shoes with diamonds and the school cannot refuse their child a place on the trip, as long as it take place during school hours. Parents are under no obligation to share their financial circumstances with the school.

Schools wouldn't have to ask for anything if they were adequately funded.

You get different types of school trips though some of ours are compulsory and request a voluntary donation others are optional and have a cost, it's very clear from the letters which are which. For example the swimming it is a compulsory trip, you don't have the right to withdraw your child so you are left with having no real choice but to pay but why should parents be put in that position. Why should any parent be charged for the school to deliver what it exists to do and should be funded to do via the tax system.

If a trip takes place during school hours, the school can only request voluntary contributions.

Schools are not supposed to charge for swimming

I must be the only one here who didn't consider the cost of school trips when deciding to keep the unplanned child I found myself pregnant with!

Schools are permitted to request a donation towards transport for swimming.

My daughter's old school frequently did trips to places like alton towers but only took those children who were paid for wouldn't surprise me if they were acting unlawfully in that. Mine never went on principal as the trip was used as part of a reward process that I didn't agree with, you also got at the most a weeks notice to pay if your child qualified for a place and at £25 it wasn't cheap.

No, they definitely shouldn't be charging for swimming - schools get funding specifically to pay for swimming.

It's a voluntary contribution so no you don't have to pay. However, if everyone takes that view - or even a sizeable number of parents - then the school will have to cancel the trip. School budgets are extremely tight at the moment, it's very unlikely that the school can afford to subsidise the trip.

I think OP..You lose your argument because you have 3 children, should we give a discount for 3 childrens school dinners...

I think it seems you don't want your children to miss out but are happy others might if you don't pay...

They make it quite clear they're not charging for the swimming lessons, just the costs of transport to get to the pool and back.

HappyMummyofOne - there are other contributors to this thread agreeing that voluntary contributions should be optional and they therefore should be able to choose how they spend their money, who when you review their other posts are being so cheeky considering what else they do spend their money on. There's also no consideration of teachers going the extra mile to give their child interesting additional learning experiences.

If we all follow the example/thought processes of certain posters and decide that we'll not bother with school trips/additional small extra charge in-school activities because we all wanted to be in control of what we funded for our own child and we'd do it ourselves in our own time, then who would suffer in the long run ? (Because ultimately if we all follow suit the trips will cease altogether) Oh, just the children of the most genuinely hard-up parents and the children of parents who for whatever reason are unlikely to get round to or bother doing such extra activities with their dc. Now do people get it ?

If these trips/activities are so essential to children's school learning/experience that they must be paid for and go ahead regardless otherwise it'd be a travesty for kids to miss out, rather than being nice additions to school, then surely that's even more reason for the school to be funding them out of it's budget (or whatever it can raise from PTA etc)? If it's fair to charge parents for something 'essential' then why stop at trips, why not have a 'voluntary' contribution for books and if not enough parents pay the kids don't get any more? Why not make the whole school system PAYG? Wait, there is that option - it's private school.

State schools are funded for a reason and IMO parents shouldn't have to pay an extra penny for anything that is deemed necessary for being at school (excluding school uniform/PE kit and lunches from this as parents have a responsibility to clothe and feed their kids and having a uniform makes more sense than 'own' clothes for a multitude of reasons). If schools aren't funded enough for this take it up with the government!

The less well-off kids are going to lose out one way or another with the 'pay or we all don't go' system so that's a ridiculous argument - either they lose out financially or lose out on the trip, I'd argue missing the trip would always be the lesser of the two evils.

And when I was a kid we very rarely went on trips, certainly in primary school (not just my memory, my mum's commented on it before in relation to the number of trips and activities now), and I've managed to gain a fairly rounded education nevertheless. The odd trip was organised where 5 or 6 kids would go somewhere in one of the teachers large cars or an organised minibus and, shock horror, the rest of us stayed at school and listened to them report back when they returned. We managed without actually going on every trip ourselves.

Again, little, it is not for you to decide whether other people's spending priorities are right or wrong.

And I don't agree that I should have to pay for things I don't want, for the sake of other people's children. My responsibility is to my own children - to ensure they have the things that I deem to be valuable. That will include some school trips but not necessarily everything the school asks me to pay money for.

As has been said, taxation exists in order to give everyone the same basics.

By your logic, if I am responsible for enabling other people's children to go on school trips, can someone rich please pay for mine to go to on lots of holidays. After all, they are educational and its only fair that my dc get the same as theirs!

Thud Thud Thud......

Sound of head banging against the brick wall.

Why do they have to have so many school trips? Most seem to be at a cost of about 15-20 pounds.
Seem to have one termly.
And why do we have to have mufti days, at another cost of 2 pounds, what seems like termly?

I'm sure I only had one or do mufti days in the whole of my school life. And the very occasional school trip.
Instead it's almost 66 pounds , fir 3 mufti, 3 trips.
2 kids = 132 pounds per year.
Seems excessive.

Very constructive post little

Oblomov- 3 trips a year does sound excessive, we stick to one main one a year, and in between times we fit in things like walks to the local church or another local school, or have groups visit the school. Mufti is officially £1 but any donation is accepted (we just have a box and children pop their money in).

If it's an issue for you, instead of moaning on here, speak to the school about it! If no one says anything, then the school will assume you all like the frequency of trips (after all, we get parents moaning that we don't do enough trips, but we know if we do them more often people won't pay and we'll have to cancel).

And finally, if anyone (looking at you, louise) has a moral objection to school trips and being asked for money, don't give your child permission to go. If you don't deem trips to be valuable, you won't mind your DC not going on them. Though it seems Louise doesn't have a moral objection to being asked to spend money, her objection is that the school has different priorities (of course they do, they have several hundred other children to consider, not just Louise's little darlings).

PS no one said that trips are essential. Think of them as the icing on the cake (the cake being the rest of your child's education). So why should the whole school be denied icing, because a few parents don't want to pay for it? (To reiterate, I am not talking about parents who really can't afford it, schools will always make allowances for those, I'm talking about the ones who have admitted they could afford it, but would rather spend the money elsewhere or who object to the school asking, or who simply think 'well, it's voluntary so I won't pay and they can't make me. The latter do exist as we've heard them talking on the school playground)

For the record, I don't object to all trips - I just want to be able to select for myself without having letters from the school implying that I must partake and pay for the privilege!

Also, I do not expect my children to attend off site activities if I haven't been willing to pay for them. What I do expect, is for my child to continue to be educated during the time that the trip takes place.

Yes schools do have to think about the whole, rather than the specific requirements of individuals, but as the mother of my children I only need to think about what I want for them and therefore wish to be able to do so without guilt tripping from the school.

I did not hand over my autonomy when my dc crossed the school threshold and I do not accept that what they choose to spend other people's money on, should take absolute priority over what I choose to spend money on. Sometimes our wishes will coincide, other times they won't.

I don't refuse to pay for everything and I don't get a delight in ducking as much as possible. I am very much an involved parent at my children's school in terms of giving my time and financial support to school fetes etc. However, I will continue to determine for myself what I want to pay for.

What happens when the planned trip, for example a trip to a travelling exhibition about Vikings, is the basis for class work for the next 2 days? If you choose for your child not to go what happens the next day when they can't write about it when they make a leaflet about the museum/ draw and label the diagram of the helmet/ etc? We do have termly trips at our school. None of them are jollies. They are all linked to the curriculum. They may be fun but that doesn't mean they ate not educational.

I find it interesting that in discussions about whether children should be taken out of school for family holidays, people often say education is not just confined within the walls of schools. However, when the school applies the same logic, taking the children somewhere to enrich their education, it is not on/ thoughtless/ shouldn't happen