Can't we just send our kids to school and not have constant events or texts to think about

[monotonousmum]

I probably am being a little unreasonable, but I can't be the only one who thinks like this.

Eldest started school in September....I say September but in reality it was a complicated mix of an hour one week, 2 hours the next, then a week of mornings (one day with lunch), finally starting full time first week of October. I was already wondering how anyone actually manages to work.

I work full time, as does my husband. 1 younger child in nursery. School only contact one parent for general day to day stuff, and that falls to me (which is another issue in itself).

So...each week I have anywhere between 5-20 texts from the school (don't park in the car park, don't forget it pj day next week, sponsorship money due yesterday, school photo day, school dinner reminder etc etc), a selection of emails (usually with attachments that are too long for text), some letters in the book bag, notes in the back or front of the reading record book.
Sometimes there is stuff on the school calendar which hasn't been mentioned elsewhere.

I'm totally overwhelmed. Some of the info is repeated in several places (e.g. text to tell us we've received an email about children in need), but just the amount of info was totally unexpected to me.

There's all sorts of sponsored events, dress up days, changes to snacks or schedules.

Can't I just drop my kid to school, they teach her to to read and write (among other things) and then I pick her up and ask her what she's had for lunch and what she learned?? (Not that she ever remembers either).

Is the school OTT or are they all like this? Am I the only one not coping?

If we don't do these things we also get complaints

We use more than one format - as parents complain if it's just the one

We have events in school as parents complain if we don't

We can't please everyone! So cover all bases - it's easier and we can't be accused of not letting parents know. It's easier.

I think it's because there were so many parents complaining that they didn't know what their little dears were doing at school. They also need to show to ofsted that they're communicating with parents and keeping them in the loop. It's annoying from the other side as well because there are a million other things I could be doing but no, I've got to keep posting on class dojo to update the parents!

I was thinking this today. It’s a full time job.

I’m constantly doing consent letters. We have class dojo app so it’s constantly pinging with messages about school lunches, parking, bring xyz for art. Sunday morning 8.30am it was pinging away. Year 6 here and it’s not got better. I live in fear of missing something vital among the insignificant stuff.

I don’t mind, but the last minute nature of it gets me. To fill a form or pay money and they give you 2 days notice it’s unreasonable. Most are crumpled notes.

OP I feel your pain. I'm 6 years in and have another eleventy billion to go. Our school is the same. We get term dates at the start of each term and then reminders and more reminders. Dress up days, photo days, bring £1 day, pyjamas day, crazy hair day, dress as a unicorn day. Then there's the admin for everything that you need to book/do. We have days we have to send them in pe kit, swimming days and alternative weeks for forest school. Sometimes things do get forgotten.

It's full on but you do get used to it. I use Trello to organise it all and it's much easier and quicker. I've got to say though, twice this term I have had to buy outfits for dress up days as they didn't have the appropriate clothes and twice they ended up needing pcr tests on those days. It was soul destroying, particularly as we couldn't actually afford to buy the outfits in the first place but didn't want them to be left out.

My Mum was horrified when I told her how much there is to do. She says when I was little we had photos and the occasional non uniform day and that was it.

YANBU we struggled with staggered start as we are both teachers & it was incredibly stressful.

We had a FB page for both which was really useful & was only used to remind people - there was no moaning. There's usually someone organised who remembers & updates FB page with a reminder.

By Year 3 DH went to teach in same school yet I was still always expected to fill in trip forms & remember all the stuff going on 🤷🏻‍♀️

@SickAndTiredAgain

Eldest started school in September....I say September but in reality it was a complicated mix of an hour one week, 2 hours the next, then a week of mornings (one day with lunch), finally starting full time first week of October. I was already wondering how anyone actually manages to work.

Not the main point of your post I know, but how is this reasonable? DD is at nursery and one of her friends there has two teachers as parents, they couldn’t take weeks off in September to facilitate something like this.

It's not reasonable and yet it's become much more of a thing since my DDs started school. They're now in secondary school but DH and I are both teachers and were grateful for the way our DDs' primary did things: a few children joined reception each day, starting with those who hadn't been at the school nursery. Once each child had started, they could attend full-time if parents wanted them to. Both DDs were among the later ones to start and were shipped off to stay with grandparents for the week we were teaching but they hadn't started school yet.

It’s a joke! First day back and there was 8 texts!! 8!!

I need an employee to deal with my kids school admin there’s that much!

I'm a single mum and so deal with everything.
Yes, it is a lot of work, and got worse with the ten months home schooling we did in lockdown.

I found a few things helped.

1. have a seperate email address labelled 'school'. I have seperate ones for shopping etc check them once a day and that's it. In holidays I don't bother.

2. Yes understand it is part of parenting. You and the school staff are hopefull on the same team. Most of the time I felt this was a help personally while it is a certain amount of admin it can also be a personal growth experience. Education is important.

3. Parentpay with us only came up with secondary school. I didn't like it at first but actually it does make certain things easier, flagging up when a school trip needs paying for etc.

4. We had the same with school start as you did. It makes sense in one way to get them used to longer days but doesn't make sense in others as those in full time employment will find it very difficult and I did too. Good point is if you invest when they first start school hopefully that is your routine and foundation for everything that comes later...

Also we have download this app and download that app to pay and this one to register and that one for attendance!! It’s a joke, my phone is full of school apps!

I was at school in the 70s and 80s.

You had a homework diary which you were solely responsible for - so if you didn't turn in your homework on time you couldn't blame your mum for not reminding you about it.

Notes were sent home on paper about the ( very few) events held like school trips, photo days and so on. Mostly they just told us stuff and relied on us to write it down somewhere and tell our parents.

I wouldn't mind if all this absolute bullshit was producing generation after generation of fantastically gifted children, but as far as I can see it's not made the slightest bit of difference apart from stressing absolutely everyone involved in the whole process out.

@Abraxan

If we don't do these things we also get complaints

We use more than one format - as parents complain if it's just the one

We have events in school as parents complain if we don't

We can't please everyone! So cover all bases - it's easier and we can't be accused of not letting parents know. It's easier.

Just wanted to say my DD now sixteen and I've been grateful for every single second of time that school staff had spent organising events outside of school etc.

It meant a lot to me being a single parent as I often felt supported at a distance.

DD wasn't the only one who found it sad to leave primary. To the parents people were so committed and lovely.

YANBU, it's ridiculous. I'm on my own with a DS aged 5 & try to filter most of it.

Pp mentioned box ticking exercise to show Ofsted they're communicating with parents which I guess is the thing nowadays.

My mother had none of this raising us as a single mum in the 80s / 90s, I'm sure she'd have had something to say about it if it was!

At secondary school, you get nothing

Your teenager will chuck any letters in the bin on the way home.

Communications are via apps installed on your kid’s personal phone.

I was at primary school from 1967. We rarely got a note to take home, once a month perhaps. And at secondary school from 1973, we were responsible for filling in homework diaries on the day. But then many mothers were stay-at-home and no one was driven to school, which meant information circulated without effort. Even so, I can't see the point of texting to say they've sent an email.

This is fairly normal and something you’ll eventually get used to. My older three are year 5, 6 and 7 now so I’m more than used to the constant demands and reminders. Recently in primary school we’ve had harvest festival performance, harvest donations, shoebox appeal donations, poppy appeal, end of half term party, a school trip, ‘bring a bottle to school day’ for the Christmas fair and there’s obviously children in need next week too. That plus the reminders about homework, spellings and reading- it can get a bit much.

DS is secondary and I barely hear from them so guessing it’s just a primary school thing. Only times I’ve heard from secondary are about raising sponsorship money for children in need tbh. He hasn’t had a non uniform day as yet nor has he had to take any money in.

I am now soooo relieved that I no longer have school aged children. My youngest is 19 and now at uni and it is absolute bliss from that point of view.

This bullshit was gathering pace while they were all still at school. It is complete overkill, and is as irritating as fuck. I managed to tune myself out of a lot of it as most of it was just a repetitive load of shit.

Teachers seem to be of the view that mums all stay at home and quite happily sort out all the pointless junk they send home. When DC school realised I worked full time they turned rather frosty towards me. Went from thinking they were the most undervalued and under appreciated work force to thinking they’re over paid arses who can’t just get on with their jobs without constant fuss.

Ours is the same but it's messages on the app. I've set it so I don't get messages that don't apply to me yet between ds1 (high school) and ds2 (primary) the send out around 6 messages a day. It's so bloody tedious. Then there's the football app. They also send out messages constantly!

No you're not the only one. Finally I see someone else say this. YANBU.

When mine were in school, I felt like I had gone back to school too. So many things I had to be involved in (besides what we were happily doing at home without the pressure of being expected to do it) and it affected my mental health badly. I always wondered how other parents seemed to be enjoying all of it.

I hated school growing up and it felt like I'd gone back. Maybe that's why.

Yes to this, it's madness. And yet I still somehow miss the only important nugget in the weekly deluge...

For example, they have "waste free snack day" once a week, so every week we get 2 messages to remind us that it's coming up and then that it's that day. Ffs, I get it, it happens every week!

We don’t get texts, only emails, thankfully. You can just remove yourself from the text service. And leave any WhatsApp groups.

And for reference, if you have a younger child, you can insist your child starts school full time from day one.

Oh yeah, forgot about Google classroom and class WhatsApp. And the noticeboard outside the school room.

I've no doubt the teachers are doing what's asked of them, but are parents the ones asking for it? Are kids??

I remember sometimes my Mum missing a crumpled letter at the bottom of my bag. But we had maybe one school trip a year, one non uniform day and a school photo.

I clearly need to organise my life better, as I struggle to fit in the reading with her (the school books - we already do bedtime books). But I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one.

@Indecisivelurcher

Yes to this, it's madness. And yet I still somehow miss the only important nugget in the weekly deluge...

That's because they send out so much pointless shit that you start to ignore them after a while.

I am grateful that my kids primary school is not too bad. They generally seem to dislike parent involvement and don’t have a lot of events to attend (which is fine by me)! The area is low income and the school seem to understand this and keep dress up days to a minimum. I used to be jealous of a friend whose kids are at a nice school in richer area but she is always so stressed with endless school commitments and PTA badgering!

The school have a paper and emailed newsletter once a week week which keeps everyone up to date. No annoying texts or WhatsApp groups!