Are school out of order or am IBU?

[ontheedgeofnewdawn]

School are having a non uniform day tomorrow to raise funds for children in the borough in poverty to have Christmas gifts. Great cause.

However the year head has said today than any child who comes in their own clothes but doesn't bring a donation will spend the day in isolation.

So if you are too poor to afford the donation you have to come in uniform so everybody knows your too poor, give money you cannot afford so your kids aren't embarrassed (some people have multiple children in school) or spend the day in isolation because you are too poor to pay the donation to another child in poverty?

I can pay the donation personally but I am feeling rather angry about it.

A 'couple of quid' is too much. My friend has 4 kids at our school. A voluntary donation should be discretely given.

Any update OP?

Hopefully the head is just making the point strongly to encourage the bringing in of the pound. I worked in schools for years and on mufti days, we only collected donations from half the class. Those that didn't pay were not 'poor' in my opinion.
As is always the case at school, if parent has financial difficulty they need to speak to the head and in those circumstances of course the child/family would be exempt.

As a pp said, what I hate more is Christmas jumper day at school. You try finding one for less than £8! Then they would be asked to pay £1 for the privilege of wearing it. Would rather pay £1 for mufti any day.

Of course i would try fashioning a Christmas jumper by tacking tinsel onto a regular jumper but my DDs were having none of it!

Year head was not in today so I was unable to clarify however I have left my issue with another year head to look into.
There were children in school uniform.

DDS school always ask for a donation of a silver coin. Could be just twenty pence. Most of the pupils are pupil premium though so they know not to ask a lot.

That is not right.

Sometimes on non-uniform days children don't contribute but enjoy all the benefits, (and the school will know those who genuinely can't afford it.)

But to put them in isolation all day is unjustified; it is a voluntary school activity during the school day, and children cannot be excluded.

Ring the school and ask for clarification.

Well it gets better. In the middle of waiting for a reply in regards to the first matter.
Last year everyone got a selection box. This year we have a different year head. (the same one as the other incidents above) She has decided and told them in assembly that those who get a reward can have a selection box. Fair enough you might say. Only the reward system changed a few months ago to include points earned not only on behaviour, effort and attendance but also aptitude. Lots of children dropped from top to low reward as a result and some got no award at all because while they tried their very hardest their aptitude scores were low and it knocked points down.

So the boy with significant sen who has a full time carer in school but has missed lots of time due to hospital appointments did not qualify and had to sit there while selection boxes were handed to all apart from the children who had been in isolation for bad behaviour. Apparently other children who were in that form all shared theirs with him.

I'm actually not entirely sure schools do know who genuinely cannot afford though Goblin. Many of those who really struggle are those in low income working families who are not on fsm so might not be obvious.

Good grief.

I was going to suggest that you could have some fun with this - asking the school if there was a sliding scale so you could pay £1 and be in isolation half a day, or 25p to wear one Christmas sock.

But I think your school is beyond a joke.

I've just fired off an email to the head teacher. No one is in school now until January but hopefully they will pick up the message.

I'm presuming the form teacher didn't know what was going to happen or I'm pretty sure she would have give him one on the quiet. I'm going to send dc in with one next year to bloody give him if he doesn't get one.

The other kids were really upset over it.
How very flipping Christmassy.

So the boy with significant sen who has a full time carer in school but has missed lots of time due to hospital appointments did not qualify and had to sit there while selection boxes were handed to all apart from the children who had been in isolation for bad behaviour.

That is blatant disability discrimination. If you know his parents, you might like to suggest they get advice from IPSEA or SOS SEN about taking that further. This school seems totally unaware of disability equality duties, as demonstrated by their attitude to the Tangles. Is it an academy?

I don't know the parents sadly. Thankfully from what I can gather he ended up with a fair bit from the other kids who think a lot of him.

Yes an academy.

Depending on the response from the head I will be going further with this.

The 'naughty' kids and those who didn't scrape an award (and this was nearly the case for one of my dc despite excellent behaviour and effort) had already missed out on the reward trip so missing a selection box was double punishment surely?

I don't think its so much the school as the year head. They seem to go off on a tangent and don't seem to have a clue about sen and discrimination. We had none of this under the old year head.

Why does it not surprise me that this is an academy? Some of them really seem to think they are exempt from the law. I think you should raise the whole reward system with whoever is the equivalent of the chair of governors.

Get the whole school to turn up without donations.

The logistics of putting every child in isolation will be amusing!

Sounds wrong to me. Teacher used to have a pot, for a suggested donation of a quid per child.

Some put fivers in, if they were fans of the cause. Others put coppers in, so they had donated. Some didn't put anything in at all.

Nobody minded. The charity still got a donation.