To think the school only has itself to blame for nobody joining the PTA

[JandamiHash]

my DS’s primary has put a bit of a begging message in this week’s newsletter about “Do you enjoy the new playground markings, and community events, and a well stocked school library? This is all thanks to the efforts of our PTA! However, we don’t have nearly enough members to sustain it so if you don’t want to lose the benefits for your children, parents need to step up and join the committee so we can keep it going! We are looking for one parent from each class to do the right thing and volunteer.”

I have done PTA work in the past (and then became way too much to commit to) and I get it’s valuable. I always go to events and spend money too.

However, even if I had the time, I’d be disinclined to join because the school SLT seem to have gone down a road of patronising parents constantly. The newsletter every week congratulates all the children with 100% attendance for that term and says “Well done to those children!”. They also tell us which class has “won” at school attendance every fortnight. Nobody cares though. It’s probably a sore point because I have a disabled son who has been off school with hospital stays on a number of occasion. He’s only had 1 day off this term though thankfully. I hate the idea of congratulating only healthy and/or NT children for not being off sick.

Other annoying/patronising messages include:

• “We would like to see less junk and more fruit in lunchboxes! Why not make the effort and replace that chocolate bar with a banana this week”
• “We would like to remind parents that pencil cases should be small - we can’t be expected to magic a fat pencil case into a thin school drawer”
• ”It’s pumpkin making competition in 6 hours time, and we are telling you now [they don’t actually say that but they do give v short notice]. It can be a wonderful opportunity to put the phones and iPads down and spend some much needed craft time with your little ones.
• ”We know holidays can be fun, but what’s not fun is depriving a child of an education. Taking your child in term time, even for a cheaper holiday, is unacceptable and we do not authorise absences for this reason. There are plenty of places that are budget friendly in the school holidays, and your child’s education should take priority.”

Parents are sick of it. I have lots of parents who are friends and everyone moans about the newsletter content, they do at drop off and pick up too. Absolutely nobody is checking to see if their class has “won” good absence rates.

AIBU to think the school can’t patronise parents constantly then expect everyone to jump up to volunteer with the school? I know PTA is largely parent run and it’s for the benefit of the children, but I don’t feel like partnering with a place that seems hell bent on arsey (often ableist) messages and making the ND/disabled kids feel like shit for not being healthy enough for their liking.

Im actually half tempted to say this to the school.

That would be a failure of leadership and management, then - a Headteacher in a primary school allowing patronising missives to go out in their and the teachers’ names. If the people asking for the messages to be sent are refusing to take responsibility for how they are received, that is not the fault of the messenger. No wonder so many parents complain about school communication if it’s just a lot of uncontrolled verbal diarrhoea from staff who keep telling the admin to “put something in the newsletter about this thing parents do that is annoying me in class.”

But this thread is about the value of PTA volunteer groups who do so much good for schools. Lots of posters have pointed out that they are quite separate from SLT and governing bodies.
My local primary school is asking for PTA volunteers to be DBS checked and help with swimming lessons for early years classes particularly children SEND and mobility problems.
I really think a lot of parents on this thread are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Smugly deciding not to help because of some unrelated school issue.

Parent helpers for swimming, etc, are nothing to do with the PTA, you can do the former without being part of the latter and it will be the school, not the PTA asking for parent helpers. The PTA is a fundraising organisation, it is not a provider of parent helpers to go on school trips, help with swimming lessons and read with the children, albeit that it is often the same people who do both, because they have the volunteering mindset.

I think you may be right and the same good people volunteer for all the unpaid jobs. Our PTA ( and I am pretty certain it was the PTA volunteers) used to bring tea and coffee round for teachers at Parent consultation evenings. That wasn’t fund raising and we always thanked the PTA rather than unnamed volunteers. I think the PTA volunteered helpers on the evenings. Schools would never request such a service. The PTA provided the volunteers.

I think that the issue here is that the school have lost some of the OP’s goodwill by sending irritating messages. Although a PTA is separate from the SLT (thank God, I don’t know how to run a school), it is run on parental goodwill for the benefit of the school.

Goodwill is not limitless and, once it’s spent, it’s really hard to generate more.

I'm heavily involved with a PTA and also irritated by school communication. Only the head comes to meetings and the bulk of the organisation is done by four of us. All of us work full time except one who is 70.

The motivation is to create a school community, give children experiences they love at prices parents can afford, or free if they can't.

In a meeting of our head with the LA (he told us later) that schools are being asked to source funding from everywhere, and that PTAs are more important now than ever. So underneath rocking up with ponies and massive dinosaur helter skelters we are providing as much as we can to let the school budget go on the essentials while we do our bit in making up the extras which help teachers teach and our families to get the best experiences we can give them.

None of this means that the head can't be a pompous and sanctimonious arse at times, and the relationship between school and PTA is not easy.

But: your PTA are putting up with the very same communication style from the SLT generally. They're irritated too, but there's a bigger picture which depends on them getting past it. Please don't volunteer if you don't want to/can't, but those messages are being sent to the PTA committee who is no doubt rolling her/his eyes and cracking on with the good stuff.

If I had to pick a fight it would be the celebrating the 100% attendance, there must be a way to promote attendance without making a child with health issues feel worse. Thinking about it is it disability discrimination? Child can't help their illness or appointments being in school time.

Maybe we need some sort of national push on this.

When I look back I realise one of my kids would have missed out every term for 3 years. Why? She saw an orthodontist in build up to jaw surgery. We couldn't pick times for appointments but I'd try to get early morning or afternoon but funnily enough other parents were doing the same and even if I got first appointment of the day, 9 am, it meant I couldn't get her back to school before 10 am and she was already too late for registration. Obviously that doesn't compare to a child with a disability that is going to be with them 24/7 but if something as simple as orthodontic appointments can have such a big impact it shows how hard it must be for a child who is going to face that for 13 years at school.

I wonder if any charity would take this up as it must have mentalhealth impacts over time and there is a big push on children's mental health. Maybe mumsnet would be interested?

"A failure of leadership and management" - no, they're messages that are slightly irritating but get the point across. No-one is being harmed and sending out a newsletter is not the core purpose of a school. I really don't think people understand how financially stretched schools are these days.

Teachers are there to complete tasks related to teaching. Not to be communications experts. SLT should be focused on teaching and learning, safeguarding and well-being. They delegate tasks because that's how any organisation works.

They can't hire a communications expert because there's no money to do so. The person who organises the newsletter is probably on barely above minimum wage. Their messages are annoying but get the point across. Our newsletter sometimes has grammatical errors because the people who write it do not have a brilliant standard of written English (the errors aren't awful, just occasional incorrect homophones and the like). They are on minimum wage and were the best candidates for their respective jobs - not newsletter writer but parent support. They are absolutely amazing at supporting parents and hold difficult conversations relating to safeguarding and mental health every day. Their newsletters are a tiny part of what they do on a Friday morning; they typically have around an hour to write it.

what's your definition of patronism here? because to me that is the wording you use to encourage a 9 year old, not an adult.

@JandamiHash Why not join, encourage a few like-minded people to also join and set your terms? if they need you, they need to meet you at least half-way.

ETA: sorry, fell into the page 1 trap.

In your shoes, OP i would compose a standard email, and send it to the head every week.
It would cover:

• way to go: othering children who can't attend 100% due to health issues
• way to go: encouraging sick children to spread their germs
• stop policing the lunchboxes, the parents who are careful about that are insulted, the parents who don't ignore it, and parents of children who are food avoidant/afrid etc are insulted and frustrated
• etc etc etc

I’m not punishing anyone, I can’t join anyway

I’m in this camp as well. Who cares if a kid gets a chocolate bar in their lunchbox.

I haven’t said people shouldn’t join - I’ve said the school can’t expect people to join when they are always put people’s backs up (and yes it is the school wanting people to join it’s in their interest)

Parents who have parenting classes are normally those with children’s services involved which means there are concerns of abuse/neglect.

As for “sub par” parenting - this is subjective and in the eyes of the state only really applies if a child is being mistreated.

Dont know about you but I don’t want a state controlled mandate where someone else decides what good parenting is and makes that demand of me. Isn’t the joy of life that we are all different and do things in different ways? Including raising children?

I haven’t joined our PTA because of the politics and in-fighting. It sounds utterly unbearable.

Spot on. Although I don’t volunteer anymore because I don’t have time. I do go to nearly all events though and spend generously. But having to actually work with the people in school who take this attitude as a partner (yes I do work with school for my DS but I HAVE to do that and and thankfully the staff I have contact with are decent) on a work-type event - fuck that noise.

I disagree with you. The Headteacher absolutely should take in interest in how school communication comes across to parents. I say that as someone who works in a school and has full knowledge of the dire financial state of the state education sector. You do not need to be a communication expert to know when and how to pick your battles and not to include every gripe in the school newsletter. If you unnecessarily aggravate parents, you are ultimately creating a greater workload for yourself, as complaints are extremely time consuming to deal with, and parents who find school communications to be high handed or petty become trigger happy with their complaints - they see it as getting their own back on what they perceive to be the school’s petty sniping.

Phew, what would we do without, bun days, pumpkin making?
Junior schools are a pita it's like the women's institute extension club...

None of the messages in the op are unreasonable and none of them have anything to do with the PTA.

If no one joins the PTA then the nice extras that PTA fundraising buys will not happen. That is a fact. You do not have to join the PTA. The school will become more unpleasant and less popular if everyone chooses likewise.

All the rest of the irrelevant stuff in your OP would be the same at every primary school in the country.

Yet when there was a hiatus in PTA events at my children’s school, parents started complaining that the school no longer did nice things for their kids, like discos, Christmas cards with their children’s designs on, etc, because they never paid any attention to what was being done by the PTA and what was being done by the school. It’s the perennial argument over the purpose of schools - to teach children to read, write and do maths and nothing more, or to create a sense of community.

All of the messages in the OP are passive aggressive.

It's in the children's interest.

"The school" is not a person. You can't help "the school." You can only help the children in it.

The admin person sending out emails is going to get no benefit from having a thriving PTA.

I agree that the sense of community is definitely a positive aspect. However, there seems to be an issue with the spacing, organization, and timing of events. I also recall being approached in the playground for money, with PTA members pulling out card machines to imply that donations were mandatory.

It's all a bit of Kirby vac sales, very pushy...

Ok, I understand the admin didn’t care about the size of pencil cases and maybe copying and pasting, but how about having some pride in the work the send out to 100s of people, spell check, grammar edit. How about they don’t send it out multiple times, recall dozens of messages. How about they check the school voicemail system for messages before call parents up and wanting to know where the child is. How about they don’t leave phone messages that start with ok mum x is ok but…. Then hang up because they have called the wrong parent. How about they actually check the parents name instead of assuming that the child and parent share the same name, how about they don’t phone up and demand a parent coming into school for urgent reasons without checking with staff who now have to deal with an angry parent whose been dragged into school over a £2.40 overdue lunch money payment 🤷‍♀️ Enough examples for you?

Enough examples for what? Would you really trust them to spellcheck the Headteacher’s messages for them, given your general opinion of their abilities? 🤣

enough example of someone with shocking admin skills that you took issue with me commenting about previously.