To think school are cheeky fuckers?

[sandpDy]

DS started school in September. Reception.

September - McMillan coffee morning. Donate £2 and wear something green

October - wear blue and donated £1 to sands, a still birth and neonatal death charity Halloween party - bring in cakes, a bottle of soft drink and something else of your choosing. Halloween coming up - £1 and you can wear your costume to school

November - children in need day. Wear something yellow and donated £2. Childrens fun day, bring in £5 to join in activities

December - Non uniform £1 donation. 15th December Christmas jumper day. Bring in £2.

In addition to this, they've asked for donations in his class for jumpers and socks, and spare clothes for spares. Also asking for a 'small contribution'
so they can buy some for the class

AIBU to think this is pretty wild?!

It's a few quid.

Wait til your child joins the rugby team in senior school and is invited to the rugby tour of Madagascar at the cost of £2700.

Maybe ask what your child's teacher has contributed to enable your child to be able to complete the curriculum at school and that might open your eyes. It'll be way more than £12 that is for sure but there will be no thanks for them contributing from their own wage to your child's education.

Forgot about the baking!
Yes wait until you have to bake cakes only for your dcs to buy back with the money you have given them 😆

Surely people don't expect school discos/parties to be free? Of course you need to pay for the DJ/lights etc.

There will also be people who can't afford things but that doesn't mean things shouldn't happen and its the reason why some things are subsidised (trips etc)

If you can't/don't want to pay fair enough or your kid doesn't want to go but I'd be happy to pay for my kid to have fun. Plus it's super cheap in comparison to other external activities.

All sounds pretty normal.

Whilst it has been standard- schools need to rethink this. So many people struggling just now and this is only adding to the pressure.

I wondered about the weird face for SANDS too....

Exactly. Teenagers are ridiculously expensive. Especially if they are any good at anything! I'm up at six tomorrow to drive a three hour round trip for my child to run 150m.

I'd rather give her £2 for Christmas jumper day.

I definitely think external charities should not be allowed to fundraise in this way. Schools are strapped for cash any fundraising from parents needs to be focussed on the school

Our infant school has made a conscious effort to cut back on all of this. They've done a handful of dress up days but always with the loosest of themes - wear something colourful etc so that nobody needs to buy and outfit and no donations collected.

However they really can't bloody win as so many parents complained they didn't do dress up for world book day or children in need.

I quite like the themed days and have a bit of time and money available to join in but on balance I'm glad they've cut back so that no children feel excluded.

Thankfully, our school did a parent survey and has massively reduced what they fund raise for this term.
my son is in yr 1, so I gave his hardly worn PE kit ( he had 2 sets in reception due to growth spurt) and his decent trousers for spares for reception class. No need for new parents in reception to buy spares - they can get spare uniform from older chikdren who have outgrown theirs!

You are actually quite fortunate believe it or not. I live in Ireland, my son is 5 and just started school. I spent €150 on books for him, then received an email 2 weeks into school for a fee of €40 for use of books and paper. Two school trips at €12 each, €5 donations for all the none uniform days etc and a school contribution fee that is compulsory. I don't mind as I only have 1 child in school at the moment, but I know some families with 3 or 4 children in the one school.

£12 is absolutely fine 🙂

Completely standard in primary school. Schools are on their knees financially which is why you get aggressive fundraising from PTA committees.

Yeah we get loads, it's relentless and yes the attitude is very much 'it's voluntary but if you don't then we will judge you deeply and look down on you as a parent'

It's Annoying AF, particularly when given no notice. I don't have spare pound coins, last week it was bring a bottle for uniform free day tomorrow, sent late afternoon. FFS, now I have to find a spare bottle or go shopping last minute 🤨.

It sounds normal for primary. Dcs old school really were bad at thos time of year. £20 for teacher gifts, £10 for a book by the school secretary, weekly donations to food bank, raffle ticket....it was the best part of £50

This. They seem to have no concept whatsoever that people have full time jobs of their own. I'd prefer an invoice for £50 at the start of the school year than the barrage of weekly request split across various forms of communication, almost all of which seem to be about them wanting money rather than anything educational.

And no, I am not carrying a collection of small change with me every time I do school pickup. 🙄

So school insists kids wear pointless uniform, makes parents waste money on it then begs them to donate it so they can have spares of clothes that they demand everyone wears.

If it's too expensive for them to afford their own spares then perhaps they shouldn't be making parents buy it, either.

They seem to have no concept whatsoever that people have full time jobs of their own.
Yeah because no person working in a school is working full time nor has children of their own.

Plus the cost of the different clothes we have to trawl the shops for. Multiplied by more kids, works out just too expensive to be reasonable. Would be happier just to donate what they ask and forget the non-uniform agenda.

When I started primary school aged 5, we bought our own pencils jotters, books and all school equipment. There was a deposit for books and returned to us when we handed in the books at the end of term. We wore a uniform with pride.
There was 1 raffle per year for fund raising and a penny (our own money, not parents)for the foreign missions. It wasn’t expensive and taught us to give appropriately to charity.

Some schools now have Missio red boxes for charity abroad.
We were taught in rows and had our own allocated desk. We sat in ability rows. Best in-class (the clever girl)was number 1 and the least achieving was 30. This encouraged us to work hard and it wasn’t cruel as we all happy and achieved.
When I say this to my friends, they think it was in the dark ages. It wasn’t.

My two are little and I'm already dreading world book day! Friends of mine were complaining just today about the expense of Christmas jumper day. It ends up just as expensive to get one from eBay or similar when you factor in postage. Easily £20 for a couple of kids for a seasonal item of clothing they'll outgrow by next year. It's quite literally crap and unsustainable.

If they get it then why do they bombard people with this pointless nonsense, instead of a single email on Sept 6th saying "this year please give us £50 and we will leave you alone"? Many parents would jump at that rather than all this nonsense!

And the appalling communication is beyond madness. Writing stuff in reading diaries, printing out letters, emailing, telling class reps and having them post on whatsapp, posting stuff on website, etc etc... and no summary of all requests in any single place. It's utterly bonkers, wastes their own time and resources, drives parents insane and also terrible for trees. It's like being in a time warp sometimes.

i was peeved to find that school pta money had paid for CPD ( continuing professional development) notebooks for teachers. More than happy to donate for table tennis gear, library books. Guess need to be on PTA or put up and shut up.