To think this is a ridiculous reason for requesting a voluntary payment

[NeedsAsockamnesty]

A school local to me has been in te local paper because it is requesting a voluntary contribution towards GCSE exams the suggested donation is £40 something pounds per exam or the average cost of a child's exams.

It's a grammar school.
The head is quoted in the paper as saying "we receive next to no pupil premium or additional learning support funds like other schools do"

Then going on to explain that because they don't have this they are on a tighter budget than other schools.

The only 'additional learning support funds' I can think of are SEN/ECHP funds and my understanding of PP funding is that if you have the kids who qualify then you get it (same as the ECHP funding).

It seams very silly that a educated headmaster would not realise that if he does not get the funding this means he does not have the kids who qualify in his school and then winge about it.

If he did have it would he use it to fund the GCSEs and then the kids who need it would not have it used for them?

"Lots of grammar schools now give top priority to PP pupils. But they still have to pass the 11+. They can't change the pass mark due to the laws around grammar schools."

It's not enough to reach the pass mark for the eleven plus in most areas. Getting a place is a competition which pupil premium kids have no hope of competiting. There is a huge tutition industry that helps rich kids get the best marks. Working class or kids on benefits are not on an even footing.

Perhaps the most challenging obstacle is that many pupil premium kids and working class kids in general don't sit the eleven plus in the first place. Their parents don't see the eleven plus as for the likes of them. They have no means to pay for the uniform or the bus fares. Sometimes the child themselves wants to go to the local sink school with their siblings and friends.

However keeping out the rift raff suits most grammar schools.

I'm not paid much and my income is topped up by benefits.
My dd is at a grammar.
Even if she could get FSM and then let the school qualify for funding I wouldn't go for it as rather than her dinner money account being automatically tipped up each day/week or a marker put on which is there for the cashier's it's not done like that. They send a bag of tokens to the classroom for the term and hand them over in front of the entire class. Bearing in mind there's kids there say 'Get it right we don't live in a mansion we live in a manor house (direct quote)' there's no way on God's earth I'd have my daughter singled out like that. Maybe the schools should look to see how they do things before they moan about accessing funding.

And she got in without tuition - and you can tell the kids that were

ReallyTired - lots of grammars PP children only have to get the pass mark. Same as children with a statement.

Then the rest of the places are done in grade order. So in my DSs school PP pupils could get in with a mark of 111. Whereas everyone else needed 124+

This arrangement is now common. 111 is scaled so it's the top 25% (I think) so it isn't hard for PP pupils to get accepted.

Uniform is no more expensive. Is the same as all the other local schools.

You want to make out that grammar schools are deliberately keeping out PP pupils. But it's just not true.

Parmitars is our nearest selective school and it makes no allowances for disadvantaged kids, but I believe they are considering changing their admissions.
Even the grammar heads realise that their present admissions make it harder for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. There are issues like the cost of transport.

It would be interesting to know if parmitars has any free school meal kids who got a place on musical ablity.

Their uniform is more expensive than some of the low performing comprehensives near by. I agree that their uniform is on a par in costs with the comprehensives in leafy areas.

OK. Parental poverty is an excellent marker for underachievement at school. there are many reasons for this. One of those reasons might be that poor people are less clever than better off people. But I wouldn't bank on that one. Better reasons can be found in a list of the things that, for example, my privileged child has that many of his classmates don't.

A safe secure warm dry home.

Good food

A quiet place to work

Parents who have not been driven to the end of their physical and emotional resources by the struggle to make ends meet. Or who are not alcohol or drug dependent or who are unable/unwilling to provide even the most basic care.

Parents who have the self confidence and knowledge to engage with the education system and if necessary, advocate on their child's behalf.

Parents who value education and see it as a good thing.

Parents who have the education and language skills to support learning.

Parents who have time left over from the daily struggle for existence to support learning.

I could go on, but I am sure you get the idea.

I'm in Scotland but this would cause a riot here as the main reason for the existence of a school is seen as being getting the children qualifications to support future employment during their senior phase (could argue about that one too but it's not the point)

So if schools in England aren't there to get children qualifications what are they FOR exactly?

This HT's comments reminds me of those people that complain that there is no White History Month, no Mens' Hour on Radio 4, and no cemeteries for alive people.

You want to make out that grammar schools are deliberately keeping out PP pupils. But it's just not true.

They don't need to do it deliberately, it's what happens with any selective education system - they are socially selective. Plenty of international research to back this up.

That's very shocking. PP is awarded based on parental income, nothing to do with SEN. If there is a state school that selects on ability statistically a proportion of the children should be those from homes that qualify. Where that is not the case something has gone very wrong and it is up to the schools to fix this.

I went to a grammar school. Every child in the county took the test then (now they have to be entered) and results were "adjusted" to account for age. The test changed each year but was essentially the same test in style. There was no tutoring or hot-housing paid for by the parents, no taking test papers in advance and you went to the school you were in catchment for and there were enough grammar school places for everyone who passed the test. A representative proportion of the students at my school qualified for FSM because a representative proportion of the local population passed the exam and went to the school.

That is no longer the case. The middle classes have bought places with tutoring and moving for school places and this has pushed poorer but able children out. It is not a fair system and schools have done nothing about it.

To then complain that the system you have helped create (as this head has done) is not delivering enough cash because poorer children are unable to get places at your school is disgusting.

I agree with everything you say ReallyTired and you must live quite near to where I did as a child.

OP, YANBU btw. I think it was fine to ask but their reasons would have pissed me off.

I think a lot of it is to do with genetic influences on how the brain works. If we decide "cleverness" on maths tests, then my children will be in the top sets. If we were to stream in terms of swimming ability, or some other athletic ability, then they would be needing special help.

Still same supportive family, taken to lessons etc.

Somehow academic ability seems to have become the holy grail, yet there is so much other stuff that could be considered. Emotional intelligence for example.

"You want to make out that grammar schools are deliberately keeping out PP pupils. But it's just not true."

They don't have to do it deliberately. It just happens if you have selection. Any oversubscribed school which selects on anything but proximity will have fewer pupil premium children than they should.

Somebody actually me under a long ago name introduced the concept of a school which required parents and children to be able to juggle to get a place. This lead to a booming trade for juggling tutors, and in a very short time the juggling school became incredibly desirable and get significantly better results. Because the parents who had the understanding and the time and the money to facilitate the juggling were the sort of parents who also support their children's education.

I'm absolutely not saying paying for exams is a good thing- I think they should be free for under 18s- but I didn't know that in some schools you don't have to pay.

Really?

Think about it, benefits are for the bare minimum living, how would you expect someone on £50 pw to pay £hundreds?

I'm not arguing for a second against the free meals, but why should the school get an extra £2k for a pupils' education because of the parents' financial situation? It costs the same to teach them.

No it often costs more because often this isn't 'just' a poor child, it is a child carer, or a child arriving having not eaten since lunch the day before, or a hundred other things.

I do understand the head's pissed-offness though. I teach in an exceptionally high-attaining comp (not grammar) and teach in an ancient, leaky, asbestos-ridden pit. The schools that have crap results get the funding. Also within my school my department gets the best results and has the crappest facilities. We get the results, so where is the incentive to give us more money?

It's not just about PP. Really crap schools get shut down, turned into academies, then they get the new builds and so on. Why would they spend that money and effort on a school getting excellent results?

Pupil premium is there to level the playing field; to makes the system fairer. To then complain that the playing field you've rigged to make it substantially more favourable to more affluent families is not getting the benefit of the funding available for poor families is perverse.

Actually now I've written that I can sort of see the head's point a bit more if it's one of "look you've already gamed the system to work to your personal advantage and that has consequences including less funding. You've invested in your child's education with personal tutors and moving house but it's still not enough. We need more money. Now pay up.".

Asking for this money is a direct acknowledgement of the inequality in the system.

I agree to a point there bertrand but there is some component I believe of how your brain works.

Thee is certainly a social strata in terms of academic ability, but it puzzles me which came first. Academic parents equals academic children? Is it the home environment or is it the way the brain works? In truth I think it's a bit of both.

Our local superselective grammar school reserves some of its places (30 I think) for children in receipt of FSM. The places go to the FSM pupils with the highest pass marks - they must still have reached the minimum pass mark.

If fewer than 30 FSM pupils pass the exam, the unfilled places go to the category reserved for children living within a local defined area.

For pupils on FSM starting year 7, they are given a £300 grant to pay for their school uniform, further grants are available on application as they grow. Each FSM pupil can call on a maximum of £800 per school year to fund school-related costs - trips, extra-curriculars, uniform, etc.

I've been looking into it recently, as DD gets FSM and appears to be of selective ability, but we can't easily pay to tutor her and the reserved places is designed to get round that issue to a large extent.

That's a good way of doing it Rue. It's not perfect but it's better than ignoring the problem.

The problem of FSM children being pushed out I mean.

chalk

I thought I made it quite clear I had no issue with voluntary donations at all.

My issue is his school does not have pupils who are eligible for a perticular type of funding yet he was using the lack of that funding (that he does not need because he has no pupils to use it on) as a reason.

Sorry chalk I hadn't realised there was another page on the thread.

Talking about this grammer school.

This grammer school does have an incrediblly expensive uniform in comparasion to the other local state schools.

Two of my children's private school uniforms are less expensive than the grammer schools.

This grammer school did prohibit the use of scribes (where use of scribes is named on a statement and was used for all other exams) for at least two special needs exam pupils (I witnessed this with my own eyes)

Oh and you don't have to be in reciept of FSM to obtain the PP you just have to be eligible to be having them, nobody is going to force you to have them.

A state school should never suggest specific donation amounts for perfectly ordinary things, such as sitting exams.

PTSs, fundraising - they are all good. Parents can contribute or not as they please. But it's becoming more and more common for state schools (sparked off by Toby Young and his fucking awful free school) to put lots of pressure on parents for specific amounts in direct donations. It's dangerous, and unfair, and it's wrong.

And frankly, if a head teacher doesn't understand what the Pupil Premium is for, and cannot be bothered to google it, then he has no business being a head teacher.

It will become more and more common for state schools to ask for donations as the education funding cuts become even more dire in the next few years.