To question the cost of this pasta salad?

[Pastasaladage]

NC

School have emailed today and all the children in DD class will be learning to cook a pasta salad one morning next week.(it is part of their topic)

A lovely person who runs cookery classes is coming in to take the session.

Parents have been asked to pay £13 per child.

AIBU to think this excessive?!

That's outrageous

If it's being taught at school the cost should be zero.

Hah! 13 quid for a bit of pasta with some chicken and peppers in. Even if she is charging £20 an hour that doesn't add up with 25 kids unless she's boiling the water with the heat from her hands alone.
Silly woman just lost herself a contract.

Pasta salad... 🤣

Okay... A well thought out response there. Good to see both sides of the story.

Ask the teacher/school for a breakdown of the costs for ingredients for 1 portion.

Jeez is it Gordon Ramsay giving the lesson?
Ridiculous price for some pasta.

I like pasta...but...

Chase it up with school.

@Heather37231 I've checked all the school Comms about it and it is £13.04p

As previous poster said, I would refuse to pay on principle.
the school are being tone deaf, excluding children from a fun activity and putting unreasonable pressure on parents.
if confirmed, then the school appear to be so out of touch that it’s absolutely shocking and I would begin to question their judgement and whether they are living in the real world.
if that is the correct figures, the school should have addressed it in whatever they sent it out explaining it was high but this was the reason.

I don't want to sound rude but pasta salad... you literally boil some pasta and chop up some salad vegetables, like cucumber and tomatoes. Mix them all up together and serve? That's like £3 worth of ingredients all together. It's not exactly an exciting dish.

When my kid was doing a pasta salad I provided the ingredients and it was £2 at the most, back in 2010

I wouldn't pay either.

I wouldn’t pay and I’d make a formal complaint about the way they have worded the request for money.

If there’s a parent WhatsApp group or the like, I’d post the details there about it being unlawful for the school to require you to pay for activities like these. Because some parents are going to either keep their children off school or struggle to pay, and neither of those two things are good.

It must be that Beckham kid coming in. He knows how to make sandwiches and all sorts.

I think £13 is reasonable

Assuming they're making enough to feed your entire town...

If your child does make this very expensive pasta salad. Please post a picture here so we all know what a £13 pasta salad should look like :)

Why the 4p?

My dc is in Y6 and made spaghetti bolognese before Christmas (which I forgot about and then sat in a bag in the back of the fridge buried behind the cheese and chutney for over a month 😕). It didn't cost anything in parent contribution. I assume the school must have sent someone to buy some mince, tomatoes, and spaghetti (there's like 12 of them, so wouldn't have cost that much) and then her Y6 teacher, who clearly is competent enough to know how to make a spag bol, taught them how to do it. I would have happily paid for the ingredients, but it doesn't require a specialist external teacher. This sounds like the head teacher's SIL runs a cookery club and was looking for business.

The original quote was most likely £300 for the lesson. I'm assuming there must be 23 kids in the class so the school simply divided 300 by 23 which gives £13.04.

Ask the school op, please! We must know what they're thinking!

I would reply saying that you are not going to pay and let them decide whether to exclude your child or not.

They cannot legally exclude her child if she refuses to pay.

I’d raise it with the governors. I’d also write a letter to school explaining your concerns and potentially telling them you won’t be paying.
This is wrong in so many ways the school is actively excluding pupils whose families can’t pay. If there is a WhatsApp group and it has sensible parents in it would be worth organising a boycott. At least of everyone refuses to pay them those who genuinely would struggle to pay won’t feel excluded.

I really don’t miss primary schools and their incessant ill timed demands for money.

I wonder what amazing embellishments an external person could add to a pasta salad that the cooking teacher couldn't to justify that ridiculous cost

DH, DD and I had an amazing morning at a cookery school in Malvern during last years H/T ... an entire morning which started with fresh coffee, tea, hot chocolate and homemade brownies then we cooked a vegan Mexican feast which we sat down and ate together with the instructor for lunch and took all leftovers home.

For a private morning the three of us paid less than £100!

Definitely email and ask for a breakdown of costs. I'd want Gordon Ramsay teaching my child for that money.

I'd want him cooking my dinner