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?!

DSs school are obsessed with 'pick & wraps' for every occasion. This entails:

1. Donating a gift to be sold on the pick & wrap

1. Donating gift wrap

1. Giving child money to then buy a gift to give back to me. They all go discreetly in the bin as soon as possible.

The last one was a bottle of shower gel that smelled like 2005. The one before that was a dented, scratched & grimy compact mirror.

School sent out a message saying after conversations with some parents they've cancelled the xmas pick & wrap so I can only assume complaints have been made this time, thank god.

My son's school for the last week are doing an excursion each day. £90 plus spending money.

No idea how many parents won't be able to fork that out, we'll find out the week of. We're lucky we can afford it, but when I was a kid there is no way my parents would have had a spare hundred for that.

Oh God. 😆😣🤮 This was a stall at our school's Christmas Fair this week that DC really wanted to find but couldn't. Sounds like I had a lucky escape. 🤣

Wait to you get to the Year 11 farce that is the school Prom / Leavers' Assembly /£40 Leavers' Hoody/ £20 Year Book .
What a carryon!

The £28 for single photos and another £28 for photos with sibling was bad enough! Hope the PTA has creamed a good profit off that to "benefit the children" and would love to know what "enriching" activities it's been spent on. Sadly they don't share this with us mere mortals. 🤣🤣🤣

I understand the point of fundraising days, but despise the World book day competition. Where parents spend a fortune dressing their kids up , that money could be spent on so much in a school rather than a tacky costume

If it’s an English state school it is against government regulations for them to require a “donation” to allow your child to participate in things like mufty days or other activities in school time (except musical instrument tuition, for some reason). They can ask for a donation but they have to let your child participate whether you donate or not. They can’t require you to pay to dress up or for transport to swimming lessons, or materials for activities like craft or cooking lessons. The school must provide the materials unless you want your child to bring whatever they’ve made home. And they are not allowed to have a two tier lesson where those that pay get to do, for instance, individual projects, while those that don’t have to do a group project.

Education in English state schools is free at point of access and the school can’t bring in charges, either directly or by the back door in the form of required donations, in order to participate.

I don’t think it’s cheeky of the school to fund raise (except, perhaps, the pick & wraps that MonkeyToez describes ) as their budgets are frightening at the moment. And I think it’s good for your children if you can donate what you reasonably can to the school because it makes some great activities available. Though whether or not you want to donate to their charity drives for Red Nose Day, etc. I think is entirely up to you. Personally I choose who I want to donate to myself and I’m not interested in having my giving directed to other people’s favourite causes, but some people like the community sense of joining in giving with others or the ease of having someone else choose a worthy cause.

Making kids feel left out in order to raise money for charities as many of the Mufty days do, is bloody appalling.

We’re expected to volunteer 30 hours a year, donate £1000 on top of tuition, £20 for gingerbread house and wreath making, £100 for teacher gifts, do class laundry and grocery shopping and on and on and on and on. Private preschool. We’re already paying £22k for tuition (including wraparound). I honestly want to tell them to fuck off. Have refused to donate and can’t be bothered to volunteer (work full time). Unfortunately where we live, this is just what childcare costs but it winds me up massively. My friend with DC at state primary said they asked all parents to donate several hundred pounds for the annual fund.

You are literally so clueless. You think the PTA take school photos?! 🤣 Most school photos are taken by professional photographers and the school again gain no profit or loss! Parents also have option to buy these photos or not. It’s not like the old days when a school photo was one of only a handful of photos taken each year of a child. Many parents taken constant photos of their kids - so choose to opt out of buying them. Honestly…🤦🏻‍♀️

I remember the primary school days with horror for this very reson.
Ours got so bad that, when an much needed extension was proposed and a % needed to be raised (CoE, self funded) all hell broke loose. We received a letter from the governors about how little we care for our DC education and that we should be supporting the school in improving the facilities.

That was towards the end of the year after raising 1000's for several charities and other gimmick days.

I don't think schools are cheeky. I think schools are currently desperate.

If you think many parents would donate a set amount at the beginning of the year, you are beyond deluded. They just won't. The fact that parents are complaining about paying £3 for a disco - likely 90mins of free childcare in effect - is testament to that. The staff will then need to find 90mins of their own time at the weekend most likely to get their school work done, thus not spending time with their own children, to facilitate the disco happening.

And if you don't have a £1 coin (which you absolutely don't need to donate anyway) clearly the school will be able to give you change on a day when a couple of hundred kids are all also bringing in a pound, so that's a silly argument.

No one replied to my comment 9 or so pages ago about the fact spare clothes are for children who have soiled themselves/got very wet or muddy. Parents virtually never return these. Do you want the cost coming out of school funds? Most of our spare clothes are either bought by staff (who will be contributing at least as much in cash in a year as you are for various things) or the hand-me-downs of staff's children.

As per the PP above - schools aren't CFs, they're desperate.

Those complaining should join the PTA and suggest other ways the school can afford theatre trips/ pencils/ sports kit for those kids who don’t have any etc. I don’t think a few £ per term is too much.

I’m not one of the ones complaining but yes, we offered to do just this this week so others can go on a certain trip. Haven’t heard back yet though!

Some of the perceptions of PTAs here make me sad. PTAs have nothing to do with photos or Christmas cards. Coffers are low due to restrictions on events over the last few years.

Ours is made up largely of working parents, there's no glory in it. We have worked hard getting raffle prizes etc for Christmas. Things we pay for from the money raised include library books, coaches for trips, leavers hoodies and each teacher gets a fund to buy what they choose for their classroom. We asked for donations for the tombolas which could have been something from the back of the cupboard. No one keeps tabs on who donates as the school is demographically diverse.

Before I joined the committee, I didn't mind all of this either.

I work in a school. We limit charity days to children in need and bring a bottle/box of chocs for the Christmas fair. We know parents don't have a lot of money so PTA have done Christmas jumper sale (£1) and uniform sales after school. We also never charge more than £1 and it is completely voluntary.

We normally ask parents to donate gifts for local hospitals but this year have made decorations instead as we are aware our parents are struggling.

I remember it well, used to keep a stash of £1 coins in the car, as I used to forget and the kids would remember just as they were getting out of the car. It does get easier once there are at High School though, we only had to pay for art supplies, occasional dress down days. However uniform was more expensive, blazers, tie, jumpers, formal shirts, rugby top, pe kit, football boots.

The amounts described by OP are fairly normal but agree with others you can say no to certain elements.

As for the comments re the PTA, I'm on ours and this year all funds raised are going to trips to subsidise the amount parents need to pay in the current climate. I have suggested the option of a lump sum cash donation in leiu of cake sales etc but our PTA like to provide the fun experience. Personally I'd rather skip the experience and give cash directly but apparently I'm in the minority.

Dd's old school used PTA funds to buy the teachers an expensive Nespresso machine, coffee pods and a hamper of treats for the teachers in the staffroom. Considering the school had no online lessons in Covid (they couldn't afford to update their Internet connection), floors that were falling apart and a lack of reading books that was galling.

To complain about this is to not understand that children learn charitable giving (even for the smallest amounts) from their school community benefits a wider cause. How else would the next generation understand about fundraising to support sectors of society that need the help? So yes, it’s tricky to keep up, but even £1 if you have it, for your child to wear a different coloured jumper for the day, will show them how to contribute to causes.

YABU for your use of face at Sands.

Standard at our school. I can afford it but I worry about families who really can’t. If you’re in good bank territory there isn’t a spare few quid.

Who’s making children feel left out though? I’ve worked in four different primary schools and in each one, in an ‘own clothes’ day, the children just drop their pound/donation in a tub. In my most recent school, we probably get about half of the children donating when we ask for money, but no one keeps track of who has paid and who hasn’t and they’re all in their own clothes regardless.

Why do people get wound up by this. The school can ask. It is not compulsory. Don’t worry about it.