Hi,
My kids secondary school have employed a new headmaster who in his first year has made changes which seem unnecessary but always sees the parents out of pocket. We've had the re-introduction of skirts, but just their skirt, at £20 each (I have 3 girls 🙁). A total rehaul of the PE kit, decided 2 months after my daughter started in September and we'd already bought the now-soon-to-be-defunct old kit, which she can't use after this July, that's going to set us back £160 for three kits, we have to buy it all online through a specific company. No going to supermarket for skorts etc., everything has to match.
Now, they have decided to replace coat pegs with lockers, even though there isn't the room or enough for every child. But since they can't justify using school money for them, they're going to charge the parents rental in order to do it. No debate, no consultation, just dictating. The skirt was pitched as "optional", but when all the girls get them, it doesn't feel optional to make your kids the only girls in trousers. The PE kit is compulsory. I assume the lockers will be optional too, but again, if all their friends get lockers, it's hard to make yours have to use whatever coat pegs remain in a different area away from their mates. But I don't see the necessity for such a thing, just because the head asked the kids when he started "what would you like most", and they came back with skirts and lockers. And I'm pissed off at being squeezed all the time for more money, God knows it's hard enough to start with, we have to pay for the materials for DT, food tech (I totally understand this), every other week the homework seems to consist of making something which usually has to involve a very costly trip to Hobbycraft, this week it was a wind turbine, we've had beast masks, comedy masks, entire castles, a gingerbread mosque, a kaleidoscope, Stonehenge in a shoebox, miniature gallows, the list is endless. Now this. I would love to know, Does anyone else's school charge rental for lockers????