To think school shouldn’t be charging for this?

[Indella]

Our school has a habit of expecting parental contributions for everything possible but the latest 2 things we’ve had letters about I don’t think falls under what a school can charge for.

The first one is my child has now started the compulsory school swimming lessons. These are part of the curriculum and so can’t be charged for. However parents have to pay £3 per child, per week for the transport to the swimming lessons. Is this not the school’s responsibility to fund as the swimming lessons are compulsory?

The second one is an “art and crafts day”. Letter says children will be spending the day, still in school, doing Christmas themed arts and crafts. They have asked for £12 per child for the materials. This is being held at school, in school hours and is instead of the normal lessons. I legally have to send my child to school so it’s compulsory. Letter doesn’t say voluntary contribution so I assume again we have no choice but to pay but surely the school can do arts and crafts with the children that don’t cost so much. 28 children in the class so £336 of art supplies! Sounds like they are using parents to re-stock supplies for the year.

I know they are not huge amounts but add that to the fact we paid £3 each entry to the school Christmas fair (including having to pay for the accompanying parent) and £10 each for tickets to watch the Christmas performance. Plus the never ending non-uniform days it’s really starting to add up and it feels like the school are simply using parental contributions to fund what should be covered by the school.

AIBU to think these things shouldn’t be charged for?

This is the response I got when I raised the fact that paying for the school play wasn’t acceptable. They openly admit its due to funding but like I said surely that’s masking the problem and not solving it.

Surely the swimming covers the costs for transport and the play is for school funds (more optional). It’s a shame schools don’t have adequate budgets. I have friends who are teachers who pay from their own money for classroom resources.
We pay for endless things in school time. I am fortunate I can afford it but to be honest I still wish at the beginning of the school year they’d just provide a list of items that will need paying for - trips, travelling drama groups, charity days etc. I’d rather just pay it all than be constantly chased for cash.

Vote Labour

Problem is, if schools don’t mask the problem with parental contributions, the current generation of children (i.e. yours) just won’t get an education. its a no win situation

Well on review of that response they need to reduce the number of classes - they simply can't afford to have the number of classes they have

I think Swimming although annoying is fair enough because it's a good price.

But £10 for the school play and £12 for crafts!!!! What about people that cant afford it!

Schools simply can’t afford to fund these things themselves.

Cant see the letter properly unless it is my eyes but it is blurry.🙈

Paying for the transport to swimming is fair enough. Unless it’s within a 5 minute walk then having to walk there and back all year round probably isn’t going to be feasible in most cases.

I have no issue with charging for tickets to the plays but £10 is rediculous

Yes but Leek, they DONT HAVE TO have a craft day.

You shouldn’t have to pay, but schools are so underfunded that sadly they have to ask for parental contributions or they wouldn’t be able to put on these activities.

@isnappedandsharted It basically says sorry were charging for tickets but our classes are too small, we shouldn’t have 7 classes as we only have enough children for 6 but we think 7 is better and so have to fund this ourselves. Then says because they have very few children on free school meals they get less funding than other schools and now all the equipment is old, broken and needs replacing hence they are charging parents to find this.

See if posting again clears up the blur. It’s not blurry on the original photo.

The coach for swimming is much less than I was asked for over 15 years ago. We were asked to make a voluntary contribution of £50 a term. Lots of parents refused as it was cheaper to enrol their children in private lessons, and some of us were already doing that anyway.

The school made such a loss on it that year that they stopped providing the lessons altogether.

I remember at the time moaning to my sister who paid much less (different area). Her child's school had got together with other local schools and they made much more efficient use of the coach as it made trips to 3 schools on the same afternoon so there was no wasted time and the cost was shared between them. Our coach made two trips of less than 2 miles each, with the driver just sitting waiting at the pool for an hour doing nothing while the children got changed and had their lesson.

*They shouldn’t be charging no. They SHOULD have been given enough funding by the govt to educate children adequately. They have not been.
*
This with bells on. However, they should've been able to come up with a much cheaper Arts and Crafts idea! £12 is loads, are they bringing in some pottery painter plus an artist???

Unforuntalely schools are desprately under funded and they are going to lose even more funding soon.

Schools can't charge for the swimming lessons but they can charge for the coach to get there.

A lot of schools seem to be doing this, I think it’s fair to have to pay for some things such as swimming (it saves you having to take them for lessons in your time). It does seem a lot for art supplies, maybe they are painting mugs or t-shirts rather than making Christmas cards?

My dd is at a sn school and the last few weeks have cost me a fortune, we had school fair which we had to make donations for (for the raffle prizes), several non uniform days, today dd went Christmas shopping for “life skills” and needed £10, next week her life skills group are going for a meal which is costing £15 (fish and chips and a drink), her school used to ask for money for swimming but people stopped paying so swimming was stopped, same with cookery classes (£3 each lesson).

The Christmas crafts are ridiculous. They should be doing something cheaper and paying from school supplies for that. The transport for the swimming I have more sympathy for but still you are right that these are things that should be funded. Schools are very under funded and we should all know who to blame for this.

We paid 15 years ago - school had a pool, they charged £1 per week. Paid for craft days too, about £5 maybe (long time ago).

We pay £5 per swimming lesson and the children walk! So it's just for the pool/teacher. It costs the same as leisure centre lessons.

I wouldn't pay £12 for an arts and crafts day though.

If the school is funded for 6 classes because of pupil numbers, but the school has decided to have 7 classes, it's hardly surprising that they are needing to make savings elsewhere.

How do you expect them to solve the problem though? Maybe asking for money from parents doesn’t just mask the problem, but would you rather current primary children simply didn’t get as good an education so that the school can prove a point to parents who already know and a government that doesn’t care?

It sounds like they’ve given you a good and truthful explanation of why they are struggling and asking for money, what more do you expect? I agree that £10 is far too much for a play ticket btw, but I don’t disagree with them charging altogether.

We pay £1.50 for the bus to swimming pool only 2 miles away, school concerts are free, and I think it was £1 each to get into school Xmas fair (kids free). Agree that the £12 for crafts is ridiculous! I can't see why it would cost that much

@Fifthtimelucky But surely the school should simply have 6 classes and stop expecting parents to fund their decision to have 6? I don’t think merging reception and year 1 for example would be detrimental and would stop all this.