Aibu to not want to fill a smarties tube with £1 coins

[Invisimamma]

This will be outing if any parents from my child's school are on here...

Both children came home from school and nursery today with a tube of smarties each as a gift from the PTA with instructions to eat them and fill the tube with £1 coins or 20p, letter specifically states not coppers or 5/10ps. Apparently the tube will hold £12 of 20pences.

There will be a prize for the class who brings back the most money.

Now I have a few issues with this:

1. my friends child has a diary allergy was really upset he can't eat his treat (she didn't know this was happening so couldn't provide an alternative)
2. we still have lots of Easter chocolate and don't need more
3. dp and I both work but childcare and other costs are crippling us at the moment and we're skint, an extra £24 is really beyond us just now
4. we've just paid £46 snack money to nursery and £12 for a school trip for one and £8 for a trip for another (amongst lots of other recent school costs)
5. does anyone even has coins lying around the house anymore? I use contactless payment for almost everything and don't draw out cash.

The children have been hyped up about it and both have said they need to raise money for the school. I guess I'm feeling guilty that we're not in a position to participate/it's a pain in the arse idea.

My child’s school has just done this, and has done for a few years. My kids know I’m not going to do it, they’ve worked out they can just dress in the bright colours on the returns day and hand a £1 in, or nothing, depends how they feel. They have always come out of school and said that the school gave them free smarties and happily eat them as they don’t have allergies, unlike some of their friends. Don’t get stressed, your life is too precious to waste on the perennial committee types!
As far as people saying can’t you just set a few chores for your child to do and give them 20p, mine have chores I expect them to do anyway because they live in a household with other people and should contribute especially as they already contribute to the mess, so should do their part without expecting to be paid!

120 pupils,...6 filled a tube 😂 pta made a very passive aggressive speech 😂😂😂

i think they spent more in smarties than they made.

My DC's school did this as well. I didn't like it at all, and it felt like the kids were pressured to fill up the tube.

Of course, if the government funded education properly, all of this nonsense wouldn't be needed.

Actually, the Smarties element annoyed me as well. My DC gets some treats, but I prefer to choose what these are and how often they get them. I think PTAs go for easy / cheap prizes / similar (i.e. sweets) too often.

Streamside - I’m selling/giving away most of DD’s baby clothes, but I’m definitely keeping her tiny knitted hat. She was wearing it the first time I saw her (post c-section) and it’s a lovely reminder of how small she was.

This is an old thread I know but my children's school have just came home with 2 tubes and the twee note.
There wasn't even a consultation with the parents. Not even a please or do you mind. Just fill the smarties tube to the top each child in the school. Tape it closed and put your name on it. I'm in NI and a few of us a large families. The cost of living has spiralled out of control and the kids are of course wanting to fill their tubes. I can't believe the bad taste pardon the pun as its smarties related this has left in my mouth.

I had this nearly 20 years ago, I had 3 kids in primary and was a single mum putting myself through University.
We were living on my part time job as a carer and student loan.
Didn't do it, felt far more angry than mean.

This has been going on for years. Just ignore.

Not unreasonable at all. If that money was a fundraiser to help people in Ukraine, I'd be more inclined to make more of an effort to do it. But just for the school? No way.

I had this a wee while ago. My dd ate the smarties and put the tube in the bin before the appeal came out.

I'm sorry but I need every penny for my kids.

I'd not only not do it, I'd write to the PTA, head teacher and school governors expressing why it's such a poor fundraising idea to pressurise children and demonise less affluent families.

Yeah. I don't get on board with this either.
Our PTA ask for very specific tombola donations eg y3 must bring a bottle of alcohol. Then they charge you to get into the xmas fair and spend more money on tat.
Cake sales are silly too. Precovid was all home baked and I absolutely didn't mind a quid for a slice of lovely homemade cake.
Now everyone buys cakes to donate, so you spend money buying and donating cakes, then another £4 buying a cupcake each that's very similar to what you donated yourself.
And mothers day coming up they've told the kids on school that they can buy presents for mummy, so now kids are pressuring their dads for cash to buy them. I know what the presents are, and it's just landfill fodder. I have told mine I just want them to draw me a nice card but they feel left out now because school announced it in class and now they feel left out.
Frankly I'd rather just give them a tenner per kid at start of the year and be done with all this fundraising stuff.

This is such bullshit! How thoughtless of them. Many families will struggle with this, and they should be doing all they can to level the playing field, not put some children/families in a position like this. Sounds like the PTA needs better representation and a dose of reality.

As a granny I provided the coins maybe a family whip round

Our school has raised zilch the last two years that's 14k down. That money helps a lot of children

Really strange idea...

It’s nothing new. It was around when I was at school the 1960s. Probably before that. Only we were specifically asked to fill them with thruppenny bits (each equivalent to 25p now).

There was an expectation that you would do odd jobs to earn the coins. Not everybody could fill the tubes up.

@beefcurry. Teach the kids some science... initially the tube was filled with smarties and air. Now you've taken the smarties out and disposed of them so it's got more room in it for extra air...

Used to always ignore this one. Mainly because the school would go on on about what was allowed in lunch boxes and then get involved in PTA events which encouraged the children to eat crap. Double standards

I'm still pissed off at the NSPCC giving out badges to kids for money collected. Not a hope of collecting even the first badge...

We had this with schools
They seemed to do a trip every week-£5/10,plus packed lunch-one time I ended up paying £40 for one to go to a jam factory-following year I paid it again,and the year after…
I got a jar of jam sent home with the child-40 fucking quids worth
Bake sales-£2 (and you where meant to buy cakes only to buy them back)
Fundraisers-£1-50 depending on what was on offer (overpriced books where a favourite)
Flapjack Friday-donate a box of flapjack and buy it back for 50p a piece every bloody Friday
Snack money-20p a day
Christmas-send In teatowels/tinsel/sheets and buy a ticket for £3 to watch your child/ren
Pj day/world book day/teddy bear picnic-£1 on top of the outfit but they did get a useless book token

I was a single mum of 6 kids so everything was x6 and I was on a bloody low income-I didn’t get a penny for them from their father-we didn’t live in a posh area either

Some schools are out of touch-I know they have to raise money but they seem to lose sight of what families can afford-one corker was asking for £200 to take one child on a 3 day trip
£200 was a fortnights food money!
They did back down and funded a lot of the kids but they still wanted £20/30 on top for dvds of the kids time away or a cheap shitty mug with the logo of the camp they stayed at

I’m still sore about this

Zombies are amongst us.

ZOMBIE THREAD

No need to say zombie thread when it's still happening right now.

This is bullshit. No one has cash any more and very few of us have money at all.

Fill the tube with smarties. And then eat them.

Oh. Zombie. Well fuck that shit.

It is is a bit cheeky telling you how much to give but its only £12 at the end of the day.