Is this a normal amount of requests from the school - its non stop!

[SchoolRequests]

Dc started reception just over 5 weeks ago and already had

• An ongoing weekly donation request
• Request to buy waterproofs (with 5 days notice of when needed)
• Non uniform day plus donation
• Harvest festival donation
• School photos
• Request to go through books with no words on a night and write in communication dairy on a daily / weekly basic
• Harvest bag to fill with leaves and pinecones
• Panto trip in december to pay for

I'm dreading opening his school bag to find more letters requesting things. It is just constant requests for time and money. Is this a normal amount? Do schools think parents have lots of free time and money to get stuff with little notice constantly and don't have work or other children to look after?

What is it like at your kids school?

Yes our school has constant non uniform days for donations, bring in chocolates/wine for the school fair, it's never ending at our school x

It starts to abate a little after the first couple of weeks IIRC but yes, there is a ton of stuff, and never with very much notice - it would seem obvious that buying waterproofs etc might be something that you had to do on a weekend, but I've still had requests for things like that within the week.

I'm a teacher. I guarantee the staff don't want to do this and don't 'expect' you to do anything but the truth is budget cuts mean schools are absolutely desperate. We absolutely hate asking but we have to. Most don't just not have enough money to pay, but are actually in staggering debt. Pile onto that pressure from ofsted to have enough enrichment and parental engagements each term or risk failing an inspection. It's absolutely crazy. Many teachers are working full time mothers as well and no, they also aren't thrilled about a residential meetings, parents' evenings, sats evenings etc all the time. But we're not allowed to hold these things in the school day a. Because we don't have staff to supervise the children and b. Because if we do, we're said to be excluding working parents.
I don't have time to check reading records and mostly find them a pointless exercise, but I'll be pulled up on it in performance management if a child isn't making expected progress and I haven't made sure the parent is writing in the reading record 4 x a week. So yes, I send reminders because if I don't I'm seen to be failing.
At our last ofsted, parents said we didn't communicate with them enough and ofsted picked straight up on it. So now we send text, Facebook, parent mail reminders which is way too much but we're too scared not to. It's absolute madness!
I loathe asking and have real anxiety about it. I hate the thought of parents complaining to eachother/on mumsnet because of it and parents feeling pressure from the school which they normally put down to the teachers. I just want to tell them that I'm a mum too and I'm sorry.
If it makes you unhappy, let management know as they are the ones with the power and the teachers just have to to along with what they say!

@SchoolRequests

Yes that's what it's like. You need to have a fountain sprinkling 100s of pound coins, and a few money trees in the garden. And see if you can grab the end of a rainbow too!

Wait til the 'your child's poem has been picked to be published in a book' bollocks comes along when they're about 7 or 8. EVERY child in the school who has entered the 'competition' gets their poem in it, and you can buy the hardback book for just £30, and buy a few for the nanas and grandads and aunties too.

SUCH a rip off and a con, like the extortionately priced uniforms and PE kits, SOMEONE, somewhere is making a fortune from parents of young children (many of whom have very little surplus income...) And it's a disgrace!

As I say, the price of school uniforms/PE kits/sports kits etc etc etc is extortionate, and then you have day trips, and school plays, and everything related to every hobby they have. (At school AND outside it.) Everything costs a bastard fortune. And you aren't allowed 'cheap' shoes either. They MUST be the ones THEY insist on, and they usually cost £60 to £80!

Then you have mufti day, children in need, comic relief, money for cookery and baking and crafting etc etc etc........(On top of the uniforms, PE kits, school trips, etc.) Got on my tits it did! And we only had/have the one child too!!!

I love my DD (now mid 20s) more than anything in the world, but fuk me, I do NOT miss the school days! You needs a bottomless pit full of money!

Sounds normal apart from the weekly donation (ours asks for a yearly one but stresses it's optional).

Just sign it and comment every couple of weeks

Ours is fairly similar in Reception so far:

Request to send in wellies to live at school (with 2 days notice of when needed)
Non uniform day with donation of a tombola prize
Harvest festival donation
Order form for Christmas cards with DC 'artwork' on
Request to go through books with no words every night
Request for 10 minutes of reading to/with child per day in addition to the supplied reading book
Various phonics activities and handwriting homework
Tombola outside the school last Friday

(school photos are after half term apparently)

Thing is also, it was not like this when I was at school - late 1970s and early 1980s, so I don't know how or WHY this moneygrabbing shit started. I am sure some people will blame 'spending cuts.' But why the F should parents of young children - some who are on the bones of their arse and struggling financially anyway - have to cop the fall-out from it, by financially bolstering the school and the gap in their budget?!

Our school is the same at the moment. Constant non uniform days / wear something spotty/pjs.

Workshops requiring Donations.

Food bank donation
Classroom supply donations

Yup. These all go in the "life admin" pot - stuff that some people find overwhelming and others claim is Not Even A Thing.

My advice is make sure the load is split with your partner, if you have one. In our house one parent does financial stuff, one does practical stuff to take in and spellings, and we split the reading.

The reading is very important so you should do that.

If you can't afford to donate - don't. That includes the Harvest Festival and the non-uniform day. They can ask but if you can't afford it, there's nothing they can do about it.

School photos - you don't have to buy them if you can't afford them or you could buy the cheapest option, but don't feel like you have to do it every year. Might be nice this year as your child is in reception.

Oh yeah and school photos. Forgot about that. What a F-ing rip off! For the last 2-3 years DD was at school, we just took a pic of her (with our digital camera) in her uniform, against a magnolia wall in the back hall, and that was actually BETTER than the 'professional' school ones. They were shit! And cost a fortune!

That feels like a lot to me op.
Having said that, the Head at DS primary is pretty on the ball with things and has said from the start this year that they won’t be doing dress ups, trips will be as local as possible to reduce costs and the PTA have been told only 1 cake sale and 1 non uniform before Christmas.

Photos are once a year so it depends when that hits for you, but you don’t have to buy.
We were asked for a food bank donation for harvest but it wasn’t compulsory.
I will send DS with money for the cake sale but I don’t bake, no one would want to suffer that and it grinds my gears that they sell them for way less than it would cost to make.
Class trip - they only do one per year and tend to be in the nicer weather months, not this term.
Only reception and y6 do a performance - reception do a nativity and y6 something at the end of the year. DS isn’t in those years.
The only residential is in y6 and you can pay in instalments for about a year running up to it.
Did have to pay £90 for the bus for swimming for the term - that switches between years 3, 4 and 5 across the year.
Halloween disco is being paid for by the PTA. No requirement to dress up.

Reading daily and writing in the book is a thing, yes. On the occasions I ran out of time I just left the reading diary at home. DS was a free reader by y1 though and then they seemed to stop caring.

Secondary age DD has only needed £1 for one non uniform per term, and food tech payment of £1 for 6 weeks. School provide the ingredients. There is a residential in y8 but no idea how much it will be yet, all the other trips are optional. It’s a big school.

@SchoolRequests we had to do all that with our 2 dc from reception to primary including the weekly donation. This was scrapped when a new head came in a couple of yrs ago so not unheard of whilst may be unusual

It does feel relentless when you have a new reception child. Eventually you do get used to it. Try having three at three different schools

Just to add a viewpoint from a school office/admin perspective though, based on my experience of working in one. I do completely understand parental frustrations and agree that many schools don't get it right. But I can guarantee you that for almost every one of your points in your OP (except the weekly donation which does sound odd), the school would receive calls/emails from parents complaining if these things WEREN"T done.

no non uniform day - "oh why aren't we having mufti day, my DC loves it and it's such an easy way of earning money!"

no request for provision of waterproofs - "why weren't we asked to bring waterproofs in? Poor little Flossy Jo got wet!"

no school photos in autumn term - "why didn't we get a school photo this term? Totally gutted, we always use them as gifts for grandparents at Christmas! No good doing it next term!"

no Harvest festival donation - "why aren't we doing harvest, it's such a good thing to support the local community, I just think it's really poor that we didn't."

no communication diary - "communication at this school is awful, I have no idea what my DC are doing, you need to sort that out"

no request to go through books/words learnt - "I want to get involved in my DC's learning! Why aren't you sending books home? How are they going to learn to read if you never ask us to practise any words?"

no Panto or other trips - "Why aren't you running any trips this year? Such a shame, the DC love them!"

no PTA events - "why no disco/fireworks/Christmas fair for DC? I mean I can't volunteer but surely there must be others who can?"

etc etc etc etc etc.

I do hear you OP. Honestly. But to an extent schools are damned if they do and damned if they don't. I can assure you that for every parent who wants one thing, another will demand the precise opposite!

(I do love my job though. Despite all the above!!)

You don’t have to do anything for school photos
You don’t have to donate if you don’t want to.
They can’t afford a TA to read with your child every day. So yes, you have to.
if the school had no events, discos, fairs, whatever they would a) have less money, probably no laptops or any of the stuff PTAs buy and b) your kids would miss out on those experiences

Think yourself lucky you got 5 days notice for waterproofs! Our email came at 3pm for waterproof and wellies needed for the next morning. We've had other email requests sent out at 8pm on a Sunday night for bringing random stuff in on a Monday morning. Absolute joke. But yeah totally normal, worse when you got others at secondary school. Might as well just resign to getting nothing done other reading school emails.

Afraid so. Keeping up with Primary School events, donations, reading / homework is a full time job in itself!

Apart from the first one, yes was normal when dd was in reception 20 years ago

Pretty standard I think op. I find it bizarre that most of these requests come from working women who seem to assume that every other mother is a sahp with limitless time and financial resources.

buckle in for the next 6 years. It dies down in year 6

Should add, my children's school has drastically reduced the donations/fundraising this year in response to rise in cost of living, provide boxes of used uniform in reception for a tiny donation every day and have banned the buying of gifts for teachers and other staff to reduce the pressure on parents to buy Xmas gifts etc. Instead they've said they would welcome a hand written letter, drawing or card from the pupils at Xmas, Easter etc but no gifts...I LOVE them for this.

I thought at first that was all in a few days! In 5 weeks, that doesn't seem particularly much tbh. It's to be expected that parents support learning to read at home; pantos, harvest festivals, school photos are all nice things. One request for art/craft type materials in 5 weeks isn't very much, and presumably kids would have waterproofs anyway (agree should perhaps be in starting information). I do find non-uniform days and donations a bit pointless and irritating and thiink that asking people to set up a regular donation is a better plan (which is what they seem to be doing, but maybe not in a very efficient way). So I don't think there is a huge amount to complain about tbh and I think it would be a shame to drop at least some of these home-school links.

Primary school was horrendous. Seemed to be one receptionist in particular though who was constantly texting. Plus, we'd get texts for the year groups my dc weren't in which just added to the annoyance. Was slightly less but still full on when that receptionist finally left.

Totally normal. We have a reception weekly donation of £1 for play doh disco or baking or something.... I just count the weeks in the term and send in an envelope at the beginning of term with all the weeks in it. There is no way I'm remembering £1 every single week! We both work full time (NHS and teaching) and have no family locally so poor DC never have anyone at the random 'pop in x playdate or y assembly or parent mystery reader' because our jobs just aren't that flexible. I don't feel like schools have caught up with the modern life sometimes.

As I've said before on here, one of the best days of my life when all of mine finished school, & we could be left the feck alone!