School chores?

[LyricalBoudicca]

At my daughter's school the y6 children have various jobs allocated to them on a rota. One of the jobs involves scraping all of the half-finished lunch plates of all the younger children into the bin. She is now looking for excuses not to go in on the day on which this job is allocated as it makes her feel sick. Pondering on this and assessing if she was being 'precious' I seem to remember picking up litter/tidying up the library as jobs I used to at primary school do but nothing as yukky as what her class is being made to do. Apparently, she is not the only child disgusted by this but she wouldn't want to be the only one to complain. Part of me thinks a few chores is a good training for life but there are yuk limits at that age. Is this fairly standard in schools or is her school asking a bit too much?

We had to do litter duty , my mum wrote to school and told them my child is not a womble and won't be doing it.

The children should be doing their own. Mine have done that at nursery and at our school from reception onwards. Don’t think it should be a job for the year 6s personally. And I can well believe some children do manage to make it all a bit grim.

@Flickeringgreenlight

I find it bizarre that the children are not expected to clear their own plates. YANBU

I agree. I think it's grim too. As for "having to do unpleasant jobs", that's what cleaners and husbands are for I don't put stuff in the compost heap because I don't like all the flies coming out at me when I take the lid off. DH said that the last time he did it there was a mouse looking at him. At least it wasn't a rat.

School chores should be things like taking messages round/helping in the library.

And the kids absolutely can scrape their own plates! It's not a job for an 11 year old to do everyone else's. What will the next thing be, making the kids clean the toilets to save money on a cleaner?

sometimes you needed to stack chairs/tidy gym equipment/stack plates and cups

all absolutely fine.

Scraping plates: not fine.

Give her face mask with some scent smelled on it and let her crack on

As for "having to do unpleasant jobs", that's what cleaners and husbands are for

This attitude gives me the shits. Its people like this that make it out like "I can't do that because I'm a girl" unless you are a cleaner and then it's alright to have to deal with crappy jobs.

My son is the coat monitor. He checks all pegs at the start and end of day

Right. I guess I’m in the minority then, I think my kids are as capable as cleaners or husbands and can scrape plates like anybody else.

Isn't this just teaching them life skills, provided she's not doing it every day of course.