‘School Prom’ for 11 year olds - ridiculous or not?

[Keeponkeepigon]

Hello everyone, looking for some perspective.
My child is in year 6 and a group of parents have started to plan a party/prom for later on in the year. They have predicted the party will cost £3000! With a ticket cost of £30 and any shortfall to be made up by fundraising at our school. Selling ice creams to other children when the weather improves. It has been suggested that this prom should be very special and ‘a coming of age event’. The parents are trying to organise a disco with sit down meal for 75 children with perhaps a surf simulator at a hotel. Any criticism of, or suggestions for the event have been met with passive aggressive retorts i.e ‘well, what would your sons idea of a good evening be’. Do you think this event and the cost is unreasonable or is this event similar to anything your child has attended when leaving school? Thanks in advance

I blame instagram

I blame toddlers and tiaras.

The "graduation" idea has been introduced in some deprived areas as a motivator to normalise the idea of educational success/ achievement/ going to university to families who traditionally wouldn't have expected a child to "graduate".

They do this near me, I live on a council estàte in a deprived area.

The kids come out of school wearing a black bin bag and a cardboard mortar board.

sashh I didn't say it works ...

I'm not sure the dress up is necessary! If so the school should provide something a bit less silly to avoid it being counterproductive!

Some mums. The queen bee types love this type of event to show off their own style and popularity. Total waste of time and money.
This is what I suggested and it was shat on by the queen bee committee (yes it soured my view) .
Ask the kids!
Put a few ideas to their vote.

It’s always parents who go OTT and ruin stuff like this.

ItWillBeBetterinAugust

Well I don't think it does any harm.

They also do a sleep over in the uni library. Not sure that works either but these are cheap initiatives and might just influence some children.

They do look very proud of their 'gowns'.

We’re having disco, sweets and limo ride. It was cost £25 each. Food pushed the price up too much.

'coming of age'??? As in 'ready to go to work and able to shag legally?'

not at 11, I don't think!

leave instamum and bozodad to get on with it. You have a life.

This sounds way OTT. My eldest is only in yr 4 so I have all this to look forward to. But I agree with a poster up thread about about all the pressure & emotional intensity that events like this seem to add to. I saw yr 6s last year leaving the school in floods of tears during the last week of term and my dd (in year 4) reported that children of all ages were hooting and howling during school assemblies that week because yr 6 were leaving. I couldn’t believe how overwrought some families seemed to be with several parents hugging the teachers and crying in the playground.

YANBU. It sounds tacky, over-hyped, and an imposition of some parents’ ambitions.

Get the head involved before this gets out of hand.
At our school it is a party in the hall but the kids decide everything.
The kids pick the theme and fundraise themselves.
A group of mums and dad - which the school sends out a request for and is different to the pta helps them with the organisation (making sure there are special touches)
Yes there are some prom dresses and fancy cars but it's not everyone and it works well.
It is free.

My sympathies OP.

My dcs are both well into Secondary now, but I went through 2 of these 'proms'. It was an insane time but wasn't quite as costly as your Prom seems to be.

I think ours cost £10. Basically a buffet and disco. With my DD's 'Prom' there was lots of passive aggression. The Prom organisers eventually fell out and seemed to split into two groups. This started because a small group of them started booking expensive limos for their own children and the other parents were trying to bag places in their cars. The rest of the PP booked a couple of mini vans and charged the kids £3 each to drive around the village playing disco music. Bit weird, but ok.

On the night, none of the limos showed up and parents ended up driving car loads of kids to the venue anyway.

Some parents (surprisingly mostly parents of the boys) pushed hard for a dress code of posh dresses/suits. But we pushed back and said the code was 'anything that makes you comfortable'. In the end we had dcs in football kits and some girls in virtual wedding dresses!

The second Prom was similar, although this time no-one booked limos. The parents who stayed to 'help' got pissed on Prosecco and gin in the kitchen of the disco and the Prom organiser Whatapped the rest of the Parents to come and pick up the kids and as she closing the party early because the kids were throwing food around and she couldn't control them on her own. Nightmare.

In general there was lots of misty eyed weeping about "loosing their little babies" and walking to school together one last time and "letting them go" and cooing over baby pictures. In general, very much a competition over who loved their child more.

Bloody ridiculous.

Ridiculous idea in my opinion. Coming of age? They're 11! Then another prom at year 11 and another year 13.
Let kids be kids.

Remind them of how many children have parents who struggle to afford to feed them in school holidays, or use food banks. There may and indeed I hope there are none at your school, but still a point worth making.

Cost is unreasonable, and a prom is a US tradition that we should do without. Perhaps you should be talking to the school about not supporting the event.

Our year 6s had a 'sit down meal' of pizza and chips, they were served by the teachers and it was held in the decorated school, they had a disco afterwards. We didn't have to pay for tickets.

Totally over the top, we arrange a leavers party where it costs £15 per family includes food (hot beef sandwich for adults and sausage sandwich for kids) and a party bag for every child

Nothing extravagant but a nice way to finish primary school without breaking the bank

Thank you so much to everyone who has replied. This is my first time posting and the advice and responses have been fantastic. Have a lovely weekend X

Year 6 leavers is usually organised by parents, last year my school did a full on prom, prom dresses, suits, red carpet, limos etc, really formal, it looked beautiful but it was very grown up and expensive..

This year the group of us that volunteered to organise it decided that was silly coz they are 10/11, so we've gone for a party at £10 a head, which includes a party bag, subsidised by the PTA (leavers hoody, year book, pen and keyring) photo booth, bbq, disco and a few fair ground type games, maybe a water fight weather dependant. We've discussed with the school and agreed any parents who cant pay to let school know and leavers group/PTA will fund it between us without knowing who needs it.

Just daft. Why can we not accept that children need to learn to wait for some things? The year 11 prom is bad enough but at primary age?
A church or school hall. Organised games and a few disco songs with scripted dances suffices and avoids any great expenditure or competitiveness.

Crazy! My 11 year old prom was a festival type thing in the school field with face painting, music and bouncy castles. Absolutely free and much more fun!

7 years ago ds's leavers disco was £20 so similar price. No sit down meal though so yours seems a bargain in comparison tbh.

Round here, most of the schools seem to have a slightly fancier disco and buffet for the Primary 7 leavers, even if they do call it a prom. Suits/kilts and party dresses. The other thing is that the local paper takes a formal photo in uniform of each Primary 7 class in the area and publishes them in the paper.

@toomanypaws that sounds very similar to when Ds1 had his p7 leavers’ do! I still have the lovely pictures of him in his kilt, posing with his mates outside our house.. I think some groups might have done limos or whatever, but they just walked, and all the kids had a really good night.
A sit down meal just sounds really ill thought out for that age group. And £30 (especially before food, transport, etc) is way too much money.

*before clothes that should say.

I'm surprised that a picture in the local paper, identifying by their uniform the school attended, is still allowed (child protection).
But back to the prom; I agree that the schools keeping it simple, child-friendly and affordable have the right idea. They've got a whole lot of adulting to come; let them be children for a bit longer.