Can a school fair make too much

[Bestbe]

My boys go to a school in a very mixed part of London. It’s not overly affluent and there is a real mix of kids. It’s a 3 form entry school.
The summer fair was last weekend and they have just announced they made £8400.
My reaction was to be appalled. It’s just exploiting parents.
They introduced a no cash policy so you had to buy tokens. But it wasn’t until you got in that you realised that all food and drink had to be paid for with cash. By the end of the fair everyone had tokens over but you couldn’t get them refunded.
The kids had to be involved in the stalls so you had to stay.
At the end there was a massive queue at some stalls because people were trying to get rid of all the spare tokens.
I just feel we’ve been exploited. We all pay taxes so why are we being made to pay again.

We all pay taxes so why are we being made to pay again

Your children’s teachers also pay taxes. I bet there isn’t t a classroom that isn’t in need of paper/more TA time/gluesticks/more reading books/resources for children who are struggling/pencils....in the whole country. Have you missed the persistent news items on reduced levels of funding in education? You are aware schools are covering PPA time with TAs and not qualified teachers? That staff have been unable to progress past a certain point on the pay scale because schools can’t afford it? That schools are reliant increasingly on NQTs? That TA time has been cut so teachers are no longer supported? (Not to mention the kids who need it). How far do you think £8.4k will go in plugging that gap in your children’s school?

Wow our school made £800 at their school fair and that's for about 240 pupils.
The token thing was bad but it will all go towards stuff for the children anyway.

Seriously? Yes the token thing seems a bit annoying but I have just started a thread tonight about school cuts after my DC’s school has had to get rid of lots of staff. I’d be thrilled if they could have fairs making so much money. Maybe some of the lovely TAs would still be in post.

How awful! Your kids might get extra playground games or classroom resources as a result, that's just terrible. Let's hope they make no money at all next year eh, and then your childrens education can be resourced on a shoestring again and you can rest easy.

Yabu. Schools are massively underfunded these days.
That money benefits the kids.

OP instead of posting here why not write to your MP to protest the appalling underfunding of our education system, this is why schools are so desperate to find other sources of funding.

As dottieRichardson writes, this.

Refunds should have been available for unused tokens, that was poorly thought through. Some people will see it as a donation to the school but for those on a tight budget who had to pay more for food than was intended and they had budgeted for, it's not on and I'm not surprised it has left a bitter feeling.

This also happened on The Simpsons, when they went to Itchy & Scratchy Land, were urged at the entrance that they would need plenty if I&S dollars and then, immediately on going in, every single stall had a huge sign saying "Itchy & Scratchy Dollars not accepted".

I agree with you, OP. It isn't, as PP have suggested, begrudging paying the money that goes towards positive school activities; it's just terribly misleading to advertise a 'no cash policy' (which seems quite pointless anyway) and then for cash to actually be required to buy food and drink - and then to not issue refunds, when they must have realised that people would have overbought tokens, to include food purchases.

Call me a cynic, if you will, but it almost sounds like this was their plan all along, in order to maximise takings.

Whether it was or not, it's absolutely not the way to keep parents on your side, nor to encourage them to bother coming along again next year.

We took 4.5k at ours and made 3.5k after expenses were accounted for. The money is going back into the school via playground equipment. What's the issue? I assume it's not being pocketed!

Do you know how many of your children's teachers dip into their OWN pockets out of their salaries for things that should be funded because funding for resources is that bad?

Honestly, I'm a PTA member and yes we do things to maximise profit. Nothing shitty and it's all made clear, but of course we are going to want to maximise profit as much as we can because we get a few opportunities a year to raise money and work our arses off organising these events for the good of everyone's children...

Keep the tokens for next year!

If it isn't a particularly affluent area chances are you aren't paying enough taxes to cover the services etc you receive from the government (the majority of British households are net beneficiaries of the state) so you aren't actually being made to pay again. If you truly couldn't afford to pay anything you didn't have to. If you Dan afford to pay you have a moral obligation to do so.

My DC school raised 10k, it is only 2 form entry, in not a particularly affluent area. Everyone worked very hard to maximise profit. We used match funding, spent hours badgering companies for freebies & sold unsold items on eBay. Everyone had a brilliant day.

Incidentally, I also teach at the school and still end up buying extra equipment for my pupils.

However, I do think to toke idea it terrible.

I think it is great that the school made so much money, which I am sure will benefit the children. Tokens sound like something that was badly thought out, and will hopefully not happen next year, Or at least let you spend them at the food stands. Please though, do tell your class rep, or somebody on the PTA, what you think. They may not be aware of the problem unless they get any feedback.

I think it does sound a lot but maybe some of the money came from sponsorship by local businesses etc.

However I think its a poor performance by the PTA to leave people feeling a bit ripped off by it by not refunding tokens etc. It will put people off coming in future and to my mind the point of the fair is twofold - raise money but also provide an enjoyable and affordable day out for school families.

Sometimes the second thing gets forgotten.

Also I think its rash to assume that all the money will be spent on great things for the school - PTAs are usually restricted on buying things deemed as extras which aren't required to be provided from the school budget. This requires judgement which is sometimes variable and can result in things being bought which are not much use to anyone.

I say this as a former PTA committee member.

At our primary school the money was spent on vanity projects that were of little benefit to the kids - consequently the school lost loads of support from parents and they had to fight hard to convince parents that they wouldn't waste valuable funds on needless projects. The PTA needs to keep parents on board.

It does sound like poor communication, if they said everything had to be paid for in tokens, and then wouldn't take the tokens for all the food and drink. I'd have gone back to where you bought the tokens, at that* point, and explained you have had been given wrong information and would like to get a refund on the tokens you had been planning to use for the food and drink.
Other than that, I don't really see the problem. Nobody had to go to the fair, nor buy tokens, presumably ? People chose to give this money to the school, so what is the issue ?

I think you're right that it should have been made clear what the tokens are for. But surely the money is a good thing - it will benefit your children. If you don't want to contribute - don't go to the school fair.

Saying don't go to the school fair is a bit much - lots of DCs want to go because their friends are going and its meant to be fun and a social event for DCs and their parents.

It should be affordable for all families - especially in a mixed area where everyone isn't flush with cash. Plus if your DCs friends are having an ice cream/ burger whatever - you don't want to be feeling that you have to say no because you can't afford it.

The op says the area is very mixed and not very affluent. Parents were told they had to buy tokens to use at the fair, so all the parents did this. They then couldn’t use the tokens on everything so people ended up with tokens left over and having to spend more money on buying food and drinks.

If parents are struggling, this won’t have helped and it doesn’t matter that the mn collective has decreed that it’s ok because you are fundraising for your school. The school/pta should have made it clearer what the token system was paying for and that extra cash would be needed for some of the stalls. Not everyone has lots of spare cash to donate for school and the school fairs should be transparent to try to make it more accessible to all.

Schools really can't win nowadays- there's complaints if they don't do something and complaints if they do.

No one was forced to attend the school fair. No one was forced to buy tokens. No one was forced to buy food and drink.

People voluntarily donated money to enhance their DC's school experience. Surely that should be applauded.

YABVU

OP is talking about the school my DC goes to. It was clearly communicated in advance (multiple times and in different formats - email, Facebook, leaflets!) that tokens will be used for stalls and money for food and drinks at the bar. Even prices for individual stalls were given, so you could estimate how many tokens to get. You could actually pay for drinks with tokens too. I did. You also didn't need to buy all tokens at once, they were being sold during the fair so you could buy more if needed. Money raised at these events has always been used very well (play equipment, library, online learning resources, etc). How can someone say that too much money was raised, that will benefit their kids, is beyond me.

Charley50. Yes really. They published a glossy rochure about it and sent it to all the alumni and parents. In fairness, he is wealthy and school is using it to fund places and opportunities for state school pupils to benefit.

englishbreakfast - That does change things somewhat with regard to how ethical or not the organisers were. But it does then beg the question: whatever was the point of the tokens at all? That must have cost a few quid printing or buying them in (not to mention the time spent publicising and selling them) that could just have gone straight to school funds.

It's a bit like when shops encourage you to exchange Bank of England gift vouchers, that never expire and can be spent anywhere, for vouchers that can only be spent in their shop and become worthless if not used in as little as one year. But at least everybody knows why shops do it and they don't ever pretend to be operating for charitable or benevolent purposes.

Meh. It’s pretty typical for primary schools here to do a massive fair every second year for fundraising plus numerous other fundraising activities during the year.

Not sure about other schools but our fair used to average £73K profit after currency conversion (Au$130k). I assume that’s typical for most schools in a big city here and that was also several years ago as mine have long graduated from primary. A huge chunk of that comes from rides which are pre-paid (get wrist band) and then a major raffle prize. Was always hell to organise, planning took 2 years which is why they are only every second year. Every stall, including food stalls which had to conform to public food safety standards were run and manned by parents. It was a massive effort and a shittingly long day.

The only thing I think you can complain about is the token business and the way this was done and what was not communicated. I think you are massively unreasonable to complain about the amount raised and gouging of tax payers. If you are anything like us, and I assume you are, public schools run on the smell of an oily rag with the measly $$ allocated to them from the public purse. If we didn’t fundraise then our kids would have no air conditioning in the classrooms (learning is difficult without when our summers average 35 degC with above 40 being common), limited learning resources, overcrowded classrooms (we funded additional staff), limited SN support etc. You need to lobby your government about school funding, not complain on a forum that your fair made too much profit!