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?

I’ve got a new Year 8 (we’re in NI so the equivalent to English Year 7) and it’s also been relentless! My oldest child started in the middle of covid so there was barely anything, although I have to say I’m glad they’re doing things like schools trips again!

My youngest is P3 and also relentless. She’s my third though so I sign forms with my eyes closed now, and luckily everything can be paid online now! It eases up a bit, although the run up to Xmas can be intense…..just to warn you!

Basically it’s all relentless and I need a lot of gin to get me through some weeks 🤣

It’s hard when you don’t know lay of land to judge what you can ignore though.
So if every child has taken something in for harvest festival (some just a tin, some fancy baskets of fruit) you feel awful if you haven’t.
In Reception you don’t know pattern yet. I can remember them putting a slip in bag for an own clothes day the day after and DC’s friend crying in car park in her uniform (her mum was a working single mum and hadn’t seen the little slip) I went into school and explained and they didn’t do it like that again.
I also hated the don’t buy anything special, just wear brown/yellow/spots - invariably a colour they don’t have or just use some old clothes - not everyone has a sheet or old clothes to cut up - either financially or because they don’t like clutter and have donated it to charity shop.

An ongoing weekly donation request - this got ridiculous with my oldest, it seems they have cut back on the constant requests now.

Request to buy waterproofs (with 5 days notice of when needed) - we havent had this but it IS stuff kids need in general, I was reminded my DS needs a winter coat for when they are 'outside of class' because he forgot it one day

Non uniform day plus donation - we haven't had to pay for this, non uniform is either practical (sports day etc...) or a treat for the kids

Harvest festival donation - we havent had this request yet I dont think (unless I missed it)

School photos - standard annual thing, extorionate prices but its tradition

Request to go through books with no words on a night and write in communication dairy on a daily / weekly basic - thats just homework, will vary from school to school but not wildly unusual task

Harvest bag to fill with leaves and pinecones - yes we did this, it was great fun

Panto trip in december to pay for - we have this, been asked to donate towards our kids ticket price but no kid will be left behind if they can't pay.

Only thing I can think of that costs money is 'treat friday' where the older kids host a market and younger kids can buy sweets/cakes etc... everything is under £1 (it seems if something is a 25p chew bar they charge 50p etc... so they are clearly fundraising it but the kids love it and its still not a lot of money) I guess it the older kids learn a sort of job skill and the younger ones like picking out their own item.

My DD gets to choose the comment if I can’t think of anything, we write things like “well done you’re a reading machine” she is 6 though. There isn’t always something new to say.

"Perfect reading 'Child'dname'!
Please may we have a new book." ?

Oh thank God it's not just me completely overwhelmed by this.

We've had:
Waterproofs and wellies to be kept at school. That's £20 I'll never see again.
PE kit to be sent in week 1. So far they have not done PE. I'll probably need to buy new pumps without these ones ever being worn.
2 x PTA events - £3 for one, not doing the other one
2 x £1 charity donation days. They collect the quids at the door of the classroom so not sure how you're meant to get past that.
School photos (no proofs back yet so no idea how much that will cost)
1 mid afternoon assembly invite - 5 days notice
Open evening invite - 7 days notice
Homework we're already behind on
The books with no words that she doesn't want to look at because they are the dullest thing on earth. She's nearly 5, making a "moo" noise isn't interesting any more.

I think they presume there's a SAHP, the other parent is back at 4.30pm and there's no other children at home.

Yep, start thinking about your easter bonnet / egg decoration now if you don't like the short notice! And put children in need date in your diary, that's likely to be own clothes / silly hair of PJ day.

Yes, fairly standard. Autumn term is always busy because you are getting to know a new teacher, and there's harvest festival, fireworks night and Xmas coming up.

So far this term I've had:
Request re: Rotary Shoebox Xmas appeal
School photo
Harvest festival foodbank request
Fireworks event volunteering & ticket sales
School trip
Voluntary collection for a long-serving teacher, leaving at Xmas.

I don't mind, I like the community feel, and our school does a good job of keeping costs down.

Yes. I find it a bit of a nightmare to be honest, we don't actually end up doing half what they request.

Ha my recent favourite was a WW2 dress-up day, where they had to wear clothes AND bring in a toy that would have fitted in that time period.

Oh my goodness. Teddy?

Just wanted to say my son has just started on year 7 and we have hardly anything.

That seems like an awful lot! So far we've had school photos, a non uniform day and there's a Halloween disco coming up. That's it!

Ha ha, this could literally be my school. I get schools need additional funding but a majority of ours is charity based. I'm against neither of those but it's weekly and honestly there's more dress down days than unform days at this point. The school is making more work for itself than is necessary imo. I bet they'd get the same cash injection from parents if they paired back the themes and donation days. More £5 than £1's. Parents would be happier and kids might appreciate and enjoy dress down days more too

Yep it can get overwhelming on the issue of donations,I have tried to tell my kids to not worry about the money and just go in dressed for whatever day but no the school seems to have perfected the act of getting the kids to worry if their parent doesn’t contribute even though it’s meant to be optional.

people contribute to charities they want to when they can ,why must the school force parents (indirectly)to donate to charities?

yes we know the school needs to raise funds but the parent is not the answer. It is bullying.

The schools could try emailing us a list of things like pencils, whiteboard markers and be specific in their description so that parents who can genuinely afford it can send them into the school office.😓

We had a weekly donation request in reception, to pay for fruit for the kids

Why are they doing this? If teachers are so stretched why are they organising all these extra things and demanding homework which they then must review. Any primary teachers on here to shed light? I don't think we had even a fraction of this when I was at school or when I did PGCE 20 years ago

“Read well” to whoever they read to. I often roped in younger sister to help out too.

I hate donating to charities that the school choose too, I don’t like any charities, let them pay their own board members huge wages

For me it is not the amount of requests but the last minute aspect that was annoying.
I remember being told it was because if told too early some parents will forget but 1) the school could send a reminder, 2) doing it this way means penalizing the organized parents vs the ones who are not capable of setting a calendar reminder.

I hate to say it but since moving to private it is much better notice wise for some reason, ie there is a calendar at the beginning of each term with all the important dates (or if date TBD at least which week) and then a reminder closer to the date.

Yes similar situation here. The donations seem to be endless and I'm fed up of the teacher writing to me to say I need to do more work on Maths or English in dd's book. The work has to be done THAT night and I work nights so this makes life hard. No understanding that parents have stuff going on too!!

Yea totally normal. Our school did the weekly donation too (was 50p a week as small school didn't have much funding, your child wasn't excluded from activities if they didn't pay. I used to send it in half termly so only had to remember once a half term)

The autumn term is usually worst.... With Harvest festival, panto trips, Christmas shops, Christmas parties, Xmas jumper day, Xmas dinner day, Christmas fayre donations, etc

and re: the books/reading ...it's good to get Into the habit early. They have no words in as you discuss the pictures, ask questions (e.g can you see where floppy is? He is behind the tree. Why do you think he's behind the tree? He's playing hide and seek) which is great for starting comprehension. you don't have to write an essay each night or go through the whole book. E.g 10/10/22 discussed page 4-6,
11/10/22 Berty enjoyed discussing what floppy was doing on page 7,
12/10/22 looked at pages 8-9,
13/10/22 Berty laughed when floppy jumped out and scared chip.

It's normal yes. Possibly apart from the donation - but everything is so tight these days that the school are clearly desperate for basics. Most schools are desperate for basics, even private schools.

I used to write the book title + pages they read. No comment, except maybe if they struggled with a specific word.
Now year4 and they are supposed to write their own daily comments in the record… another level of fun…

I have been on both sides of this, as a teacher and a parent. The better, more organised schools give parents lots of notice for what they want. For instance, some expectations for reception: reading, snacks, waterproofs before they start. I do think it's got worse with emails and texts! The worse we had was for dd1 in ks2 for a concert, Friday told we needed black trousers and bright top for the Monday. Dd1 only had grey trousers, as uniform was black or grey trousers.