AIBU - free school meals application against my wishes.

[GlitterSand]

Two years ago I became eligible to claim free school meals,
I do not need the assistance so declined the offer.
The local council sent me a silly amount of letters about being entitled to claim, I phoned them and asked them to stop, explained that I didn't need to claim and asked them to make a note on my 'file' not to contact me again.
However, within a few months it started again I ignored them until I received a letter that basically said 'you are entitled to claim this so we are going to put in a claim on your behalf'
This annoyed me and I sent them a letter telling them that I do not give them permission to ever make a claim for FSMs on my behalf, that I wanted it marked on my file that I never want a claim for FSMs to be made in my name.
Someone from the council called me and apologised he said he made a note on my file and I would not be contacted again.

My DC has just started secondary school and for the second day in a row, his student account was not charged for the meal he had.
I just called the school and they have told me that his account has not been charged because he is in receipt of FSM, I told her this is a mistake and she is going to look into it and call me back.

I'm currently on hold to the council.

I'm so angry, how dare they put in a claim without my knowledge or permission and against my explicit request not to.
AIBU to be so annoyed?

I'm just posting to vent really, to try to calm down before I speak to anyone, but I'm just so angry that they can go against my wishes and put in a claim for a benefit that I do not want.

Can anybody explain why OP is getting a FSM qualifying benefit while working?

I'm not attacking just very confused as when my partner was self employed low earnings he was automatically given working tax credit however if you get working tax credit you do not qualify for FSM.

I can't get my tired brain around this one.

The problem with donations, however generous, is that schools cannot rely on them. Any family’s circumstances can change in an instance, disease, death, moving house, redundancy and many other events could cause a family to be unable to donate anymore. Being pissed off with a class teacher might cause someone to stop donating.

Schools cannot employ a TA, arrange music lessons or book a residential trip based on “Oh, GlitterSand donated £10,000 last year”.

Weirdest thread I've read in a while!

Your son got a dinner that didn't take money off his account - no one knows it's credited with FSM money and you are a few quid richer - and school gets premium funding.

Yet that's made you angry?

I wish someone would help feed my teenage son - I'm single handedly responsible for half Aldi's yearly profits 😂

They have fucking great statistics on the noticeboard about what percentage of pupils are FSM. it goes on Ofsted gradings.

This is true. It is JUST a percentage, not names of children.

Those kids recieve separate letters to the rest of the school when they plan trips.

Not in any school I’ve worked at and it's my job to type those letters and process our FSM and PP (Pupil Premium) claims. Our children all get the same letters and 99% of families pay in full. In fact the ones who don’t are generally those NOT entitled to FSM.

EVERYONE in the school knows. The teachers, family support workers and office staff.

No, EVERYONE does not know. Office staff do yes, teachers know which pupils pupil premium but pupil premium children are also children with a parent in the armed forces, pupils who have EVER been “looked after” (so that child saved from abusive parents and adopted by the lawyer earning £200,000 per year.... the school gets pupil premium funding for them). Dinner ladies and kitchen staff? No they don’t know. In a primary school even the children themselves don’t know most of the time!

Parents put their NI Number on the admission form, I enter that on a website and it comes back with “entitled” or “not entitled”. If it comes back as “entitled” we ask the parent to sign a form and that’s it.

If you earn more than £16,190 then you are not entitled to FSM no matter what benefits you get so I’m not sure about OPs definition of large amounts of tax.....

What complete and utter bollocks. More holes in the OP's story than the six month old trainers...

And some of you guys send your kids to shit schools with shit people, they way they seem to work.

Ah the OP is bowing out now.. funny that.

Could be that she's referring to Corporation tax rather than income tax, but it seemed to be referring to her income tax on her tax return. Guess we'll never know!

I for one would love to get FSM, over £50pm back in my pocket.

I’d like to know what attitude you think I have one. You seem happy enough to throw around accusations but not so happy to clarify them when asked.

Working tax threshold is lower than child tax so you can be working, earning too much for working tax but still under £16k so get FSM

onetimeposter

There is so much wrong with that post i dont know where to start
YOU fund it if its so important to you

It’s really not that important to me 😂

OP is self employed. She can decide what salary to pay herself and any other money made sits in her business accounts and is taxed differently to income tax. So OPs declared income could be very low regardless of how much her business makes.

Not always - she says she's freelance. I am too. Most freelancers are set up as sole traders. There's no "business" to hide money into unless you've set yourself up as an employee of a limited company - this was the sort of arrangement which caused fuss at the BBC. SOle traders do tax returns, declare income and expenses, and HMRC can and do audit you to make sure you're declaring correctly.

But whatever your tax arrangements, it's impossible to pay "lots" of tax on a low salary.

I'm going to bow out of this thread now as I don't think anything productive can be gained from continuing it.

In other words, I've been caught out telling porkies.

ProseccoPoppy I work in secondary and children dont generally pick on each other for being poor. That would be considerwd a twatty thing to do. Perhaps the "affluence" of the area makes a difference or maybe you just had some shit friends.

But despite my lighthearted reply I actually totally see where you're coming from.

It seems like your against robbing Peter to feed Paul and I 100% agree no one should have applied on your behalf.

This is exactly my point, my DC is not in any way disadvantaged, which is the whole point of the pupil premium, the fact that also benefits the school is a happy coincidence, its main and original purpose was to give an advantage to disadvantaged children.

I'm mystified by the logic here. By definitely surely extra funding to the school does help disadvantaged pupils? Any extra funding helps all pupils. It's not like £900, or whatever it is, is earmarked specifically to be spent on one individual pupil.

By

By definition, that should say.

I hate my phone this evening.

He was top of the top set English and going off to do group work with the Senco ( probably at the expense of another child who actually needed it )

Did you ask what he was doing? One of my DCs was on FSM and did group work with other children from the top set to challenge them beyond what was possible in class. Not only PP/FSM children who are struggling academically have groups.

I suspect OP either didnt realise about the £950 to the school or thought we would say YANBU anyway. As so many people criticised her for not claiming she made up all this crap about ridiculous donations to the school and her maintenance and private school etc. Rather than just admit she was in the wrong.

Elkie why should govenors, who are basically nosy parents, be given access to FSM eligibility?
Why is everyone blaming the OP for not wanting to fund the school? Other peoples kids arent her concern?

Actually, governors don’t get told who is eligible, we get told the schools total entitlement for the year, then we have to allocate that for the year... so no, we are not nosy parents, must of us are co-opted, and sit on the board because of our relevant skills. There is also a legal factor in havingvthe parents we do have on the board and a very strict criteria that comes with the role and a vast amount of training to allow us to fulfil it.

They are also given different food on school trips.

Only if their parents don't send them with a packed lunch. What would you prefer the school to do if the parent doesn't send them with a packed lunch? If lunch is provided for all pupils on the trip then the FSM children have the same lunch as everybody else.

I'm entitled to claim tax credits, but I don't claim because I don't need to. There are thousands and thousands of people not claiming things they are entitled to for all kinds of reasons.

My personal reasons for not claiming are that I prefer to stand on my own two feet and be self-sufficient. Plus, when benefits are being cut for those that desperately depend on them - disabled people etc, then it would seem very selfish of me to take money that would just get wasted on holidays or expensive clothes. The pot of free money is only so big.

I don't blame anyone for not wanting to claim FSM. There has always been a stigma and there still is. It certainly has not gone away. I'm not entitled to FSM, but if I was I would never take them.

If your income is low enough to be eligible then surely it must be a help to have school meals costs provided.

I’d love to know how people who are entitled to tax credits but don’t claim them are managing. Do you have exceptionally cheap housing and no bills?

@therealimposter yes I clarified what the group sessions were for with the teacher. She again confirmed that he was included in them because he was on the PP register. The work they were covering was way below his ability. She said that he had to be included.because the school wouldn't be allowed to run the sessions without including all of the PP children. There were children in those groups who were not PP children but because it was the PP funding that paid for it they had to include the PP children ( whether they needed it or not!)

I have paid off my mortgage and have no housing costs. We have very low bills. We don't own a car, we cycle. I try to keep our carbon footprint down and don't buy things we don't need. I've organised our life so we can live very well with less.

Thanks for responding namechanger, no housing costs make it a shit tonne easier not to claim. Lots of us would also prefer to stand on our own two feet and be self sufficient like you but it’s not as simple as just deciding to be.