to be surprised that we are being charged per ticket to go and see our dc's primary school christmas play?

[molyholy]

Is this normal? It is due to 'production costs' apparently. Never happened before. Parents supply the costumes.

Normal in ours - about £2 a ticket

No, no charge for us.

Ours has always charged - usually £2. All funds go back into the school.

I always charge per ticket. The amount raised goes into School Funds and helps purchase any costumes, licenses for shows etc.

Totally normal if a token amount of a couple of quid.

Our school charges 50p (so not pricing anyone out) and puts half towards production costs and half to a charity chosen by the children.

At the school where I work there aren't any tickets, families can just turn up and watch if they want to.

On the way in there's an option to buy a raffle ticket for £1. Prize is a £20 shopping voucher.

Last years raffles made £400 for school funds!!

Normal at DS1 school. I think it's about £3/4 per ticket and there is a cap on how many tickets you can purchase. I have no problem with paying for them. The amount of effort staff put into the production is huge and I'm happy to help raise funds.

Ours charges, I think it's £1. We need to pay for the cost of the script (though we don't use a new one every year, we do reuse old scripts so buy a new one every other year or so). We also provide the costumes, again we reuse old ones and we also get parents, staff and volunteers sewing to make as many as possible. Any surplus goes into the PTA, they're the ones that replace things like the music player equipment when it becomes obsolete or broken beyond repair.

Tickets are also restricted to 2 per child for the first week of sales, then all remainders are put on sale on a first come, first served basis. We feel that's the fairest way, so one child doesn't get 8 members of extended family coming at the expense of another. But those that do have larger families- perhaps parents have separated and remarried, or grandparents who do a lot of the childcare want to come- do have chance of letting those 'extra' people come.

Yup. We got charged too. And limited numbers. And i think we were charged for the Xmas concert too, though we did get coffee and a mince pie ??

We tried not having tickets at all, but far, far too many people turned up and tried to squeeze in. It was a risk, if there was a fire we would have struggled to evacuate them all, and it would have invalidated the insurance. People were less than polite at being turned away. And it resulted in huge crowds and queues and people pushing at the door long before the performance was due to start because people were afraid of not getting in.

So now tickets are strictly enforced and it's a lot fairer!

Is it a play that is being performed at the end of term or is it a Nativity?

We've all gone to faith schools, so Nativity Play has always been part of the great round of events. Putting on hat of chair of PTA for four years, we funded a costume bank, which meant the horrendous 'could you send in a camel/angel/shepherd/star/whatever costume please?' situation was completely avoided. There was just one performance, in our associated church, and it was big enough to handle all the families - just. We reserved the first pew for the helpers whose mission was to sneak off during the last ten minutes and dish up the mince pies, mulled wine and mulled apple juice which would be handed round with a very obvious donation box afterwards, while the children were changing back into mufti. No actual charge or ticketing.

The Summer Play on the other hand took place in the (much smaller) School Hall, was performed at least three or four times, and was fully ticketed, usually £3.

Actually secondary school charged a substantial amount (£5+) for music evenings. And we had to pay for drinks there! Glad when both gave up choir!

far too many people turned up and tried to squeeze in. It was a risk, if there was a fire we would have struggled to evacuate them all, and it would have invalidated the insurance. People were less than polite at being turned away. And it resulted in huge crowds and queues and people pushing at the door long before the performance was due to start because people were afraid of not getting in.

It was similar at our school before the ticketing, which is why I agree with it.

£2.00 for a programme which also served as a raffle ticket and a bucket collection at the end at ours.

My kids primary school charges £2 per ticket with tickets limited to 2 per child per show. There's a lunch time & evening show of each play and there's 3 plays in all. This year I'll have 3 kids in 3 different shows.

I like it when events are ticketed, especially when you're also assigned a seat too (raffle tickets stuck to seats usually) as it stops so many damn arguments:o

We pay for cathedral, churches, music venues etc usually about £5 or £10
but concerts and gigs in school are free.
We reckon on about £50 each per year.

I would love to go back to the days when we paid £2.50 per year.

My dc nativity is in the church, so the vicar passes round the plate.

Always had to pay at ours, and it's never occurred to me to have a problem with it. All money goes towards the school fund, which subsidises school trips and stuff like that.
It's £2 a ticket and you can buy raffle tickets for some great local prizes too for a £1.
Nobody's ever complained as far as I know.

Never been charged at either school that my DSs attend. Tickets are limited to 4 per family. Kids bring their own costumes and usually 'paint the scenery' or use last years. They always sell raffle tickets and photos though and make money that way. I think there's something fundamentally wrong with paying to see your own child be a sheep although maybe the parents of Mary and Joseph should cough up

I would actually like to charge for our two biggest shows but the head of my school won't allow it as parents won't like it. So I guess YANBU.

My biggest show costs about £5000 to put on, all told. So, although I wouldn't expect to recoup a lot of it, it would make my budget a bit easier to manage.

Our seats are numbered too, it really helps!