To ask , as a parent , what are your pet peeves about school?

[SteveAs]

Inspired by the teacher and the school child thread

I will start

Schools closing at 2pm on Wednesday every week , such a pain

The lack of understanding for working parents. Drives me bloody mad.

It ties in to communication because the lack of notice for some things is crazy. e. g. Letter on Wed about bringing cakes for sale on the Friday. I do a weekly shop at the weekend so if I don't know in advance, tough luck. Also notices for class parties put on classroom door, which I never see cos they go to before/after school club

The idea that putting a meeting at 3.30pm means all parents can attend . The text messages on Thursday 4pm saying my child has an awards ceremony on Friday at 9am - but even more so that they won't listen when you question it.

Not having facility to pay for anything online or at least by card at school. Everything is cash at mines and I rarely have any cash

YY. And I’d love more email communication with teachers etc rather than have to trek in to have a ten second word about something!

We had a message last year stating that there must always be a parent or emergency contact within 10 minutes drive of the school at all times. Yeah, fuck off. I’m a sahm, my dm is our emergency contact, lives 100m from the school and is retired. Even we couldn’t do it.

Constant, Constant requests for money, whether from the PTA or charities, or God knows what else. His teachers are fantastic though so no complaints there at all

I truly can't complain about DDs school, the teachers work tirelessly, their enthusiasm is boundless and DD is so happy there.

We had a message last year stating that there must always be a parent or emergency contact within 10 minutes drive of the school at all times

That's insane.

Is it for real? Has anybody else had that?

Short notice for events.
Constantly wanting money which isn’t the schools fault, more the governments I know... I don’t just mean school trips, they’re always asking for money for various events throughout school and last year I had to pay for my son’s artwork .
Oh and sending my DS home sick, when he isn’t sick. I pointblank told them last week I wouldn’t collect him because he was feigning illness and they needed to recognise that. This is after he’d been sent home twice in the past two months because he ‘felt sick’ but when he got home he was fine! Low and behold he was fine last week too. They’ll then complain in his report about attendance, really irritating.

Communication here too. I'm pretty good at pre-empting stuff. I've made a note of which years do which "day" (Roman, Egyptian, ww2) and have outfit ideas for corresponding day so when they spring it on us with 2 days notice I'm prepared. However when a list of children's names and times went up no parent had any idea what it was about, apparently they all had to do a presentation.

Piss poor organisation. Texts about school events at the very last minute. Having a ridiculous paper-based sign-up system in the playground for parents evening slots or seats at school plays so every working parent that misses drop off and/or collection is simply fucked and either misses events because no fucking ticket or gets shafted with unworkable parents evening slots that no one else wanted.

Losing shit constantly and then blaming it on the children and parents. For example DS has now had four different spelling books because they go in with him ready for his test every Weds but rarely return when they ought to on Friday. Instead, next week's spellings are just stuffed any old how inside the satchel and when DS asks where the book has gone he's told (every single time!) that "mummy didn't send it in so it must still be at home". There's 30 kids in the class, one teacher and two TAs. I appreciate shit happens but goddamn, I'm responsible for 200 undergraduates and I don't lose shit or blame them when something does go awry.

Last week they text every parent in a school with 700 children and asked them to collect their child asap because snow, but didn't implement any sort of system for collection, so that there were crowds of us stood in the fucking snow for an hour (me) or more (loads of other parents) while some inept twunt with a broken loudhailer attempted to yell the name of the next child they'd pulled out of class in random order in the hopes that the parent would be i) present ii) able to hear the fucking name being called. Absolutely fucking ridiculous.

I like the school for many reasons. I am increasingly pissed off with shit like all that though. It's completely avoidable and boils my piss.

I am a secondary school teacher, and the high handed fucking ‘law unto themselves’ way my kids’ primary conducts themselves drives me spare

I recognise all the complaints here- if I did even a third of the things I’d be in the unemployment line

Shout out to my dd’s teacher who called me in for a special progress meeting then proceeded to not have any notes or clue about her progress AND who dumped a load of maths worksheets on her the next day because ‘your mummy thinks you struggle in maths’

Communication like everyone else said.

Schools stuck in the 1950s. Every child has a mummy at home who can pop into school with 5 minutes notice. All money to be paid in exactly the right amount, in cash, in an envelope. If you're desperate they might accept a cheque, but the people in the office will sigh at you. School doesn't do email, at all. All communication in person, or by letter (!).

Ridiculous over-complicated, time consuming, pointless homework for very young children.

Horrible attitudes to children with disabilities, and their parents (not everyone, but I have witnessed this from teaching assistants right up to headteachers).

Dismissive attitude to bullying: "there's no bullying in this school".

We had a message last year stating that there must always be a parent or emergency contact within 10 minutes drive of the school at all times.

I had a long running argument about this at the previous school. They couldn't seem to understand that school places were allocated based on your home address rather than your work address. Or that both parents might work FT. Or that all our friends might also work FT (funny that - working parents meet other working parents using breakfast club/after school club). Or that our nearest family might live 180 miles away.

Even when I was at school and my mum was a SAHP, she couldn't manage this - my dad used our only car to get to work and it took 15 min to walk to school. If she was out shopping, then she couldn't be contacted (no mobile phones - some people didn't have a home phone at all).

Tbf probably all schools but wtf is the deal with cursive writing? My 4 yr old is currently being encouraged to learn to write her name in cursive!
My DH doesn't write joined up - why do they waste time on this. My 7 yr old has only just managed to make hers legible. I would appreciate someone explaining to me WHY does it matter? What difference does it make to anything???

“Schools closing at 2pm on Wednesday every week , such a pain”

Is this in the UK @SteveAs ? I have never come across this.

The VLE system always requiring a password change during half term and school holidays, when it can only be changed at school
Not dealing with bullies effectively

Clearly, most of the posters on here are talking about primary school.
At secondary I very rarely get asked for money for things. Non uniform days maybe once or twice a year.

I had no issues at all with DD’s fantastic primary school

Parents evening not in the bloody evening.

Assuming you don’t work, can rustle up some craft project over a weekend cos you never have to go anywhere, can get to school to pick up I’ll child in 15 min, give 5 year olds homework

Communication is 50/50 - they're good at giving plenty of notice that 1st March is World Book Day, but there's no detail to flesh that out until the week before. Not a problem for WBD but a lot of others mean nothing to me as a Reception parent, they seem to forget I haven't done this before!

You couldn't pay me enough to be an infant school teacher. I think the school does a fab job overall.

I've got one in primary ( year 2 ) and one in secondary ( year 10 )

The secondary school is so much better at dealing with everything.

I would be here all night if I started about the primary school

DD's school are rubbish with communication as well. Short notice for things etc. The school itself is fantastic though, I love it.

When ds was at primary school it was the dressing up days. Most teachers have kids. They are working themselves. Why do they assume all mothers (and it is mothers) are skilled craftswomen and can put costumes together (or have the money to buy them?) DS' school did generally give plenty of notice, but that's not really the point if you lack the talent to put a costume together (I remember someone on MN saying that you were a bad mother if you couldn't cope with dressing up days - clearly far more talented than I am in the dressmaking (and virtue signalling) department!

Homework that is actually for the parents to do. Actually homework at all. We talk about a work life balance for adults, yet we expect kids to spend all day at school and then do homework as well.

Secondary is ok although they are a bit trigger happy with detentions.

We had a message last year stating that there must always be a parent or emergency contact within 10 minutes drive of the school at all times

Ha!

Bad luck if you have no relatives close by, then. And have to work for a living further away than 10 minutes. Seriously what planet are some schools on? And anyway some kids go to schools that are a lot further away than 10 minutes' drive!!!!

But this has come up on an MN thread before and some MNers seemed to genuinely think that you shouldn't have kids if you couldn't guarantee this (so all grandparents have to be local, fit and healthy and not die, or being a bit nicer, not ever go on holiday).

Using Comic Sans for any kind of official letters or paperwork. Who the heck uses Comic Sans in a professional environment?!

This made me

Moaning parents with unrealistic expectations about how much one teacher can do; how far school budgets will stretch and how hard the PTA volunteers work.

Wow, for that nice I’m glad we are in France. We have...

No assemblies / reading groups etc.
No parents evenings (except by appointment)
No ‘craft’ homework - ever
No phoning parents to bring Little Johnny’s violin / gym shoes / lunch money / homework... the kids just have to survive without.
One dressing-up day per year, it’s the same day every year and anything goes - no theme and shop bought costumes are the standard.
In the early years, parents are invited for coffee and croissants at the beginning / end of term, but it’s totally not obligatory - and it’s purely socializing.

On the other hand, they do make them start writing with fountain pens aged 7/8 - which seems medieval to me.

And as one of the only SAHMs in the entire school, I’ve ended up doing the lions share of volunteering to accompany the kids in swimming lessons / trips, despite there being 30 kids (and presumably around 60 parents) per class. The teachers know everyone else works, so they bother even asking.

Lack of notice for dress up days (in our school it's particularly the Reception classes that are bad for this) A week would be good, half a term would be fabulous. Telling us on a Friday for the Monday or the day before make it really tricky. I understand they'd rather costumes be homemade/or from things we already have but even so some time to make said costume would be nice.

Our school are really good though & that's my only real gripe.