Have the school done the right thing even though it punishes the wrong set of people ?

[Mumof3bringwine]

DC is in year 6 and as I am sure everyone with a child in the same year is aware the leavers celebrations are in full swing.
The leavers hoodies were organised by the class parent rep.
The hoodies were handed out a while ago and the children have been proudly wearing them 2 days a week in school and were due to wear them for their residential.
unfortunately the Rep has purposely left 1 child without a hoody and also did not include their name on everyone else’s hoody.
I am not sure why it has only been bought to the attention of the school now, but they sent an email basically saying due to one child’s name not being on the hoody they are now banned from being worn on the school premises. Some very angry parents who think the school are punishing the children for something not in their control.
I am not sure what else the school could of done ? I believe they made the right decision but I seem to be the minority!

It could be because one of the parent of a bigger child complained that they were discriminated by having to pay more ?

I don't know. In my local schools, the volunteers deal with the design and the authorisations, but the parents themselves order on the supplier website, so they deal with sizes, VAT, prices. It's easier.
That way, if a parent want to buy a hoodie to wear now, and an adult size to keep as a souvenir for later, they can.

This is awful ..particularly as deliberate. My son has never liked or been known as his first name and has been known as another name since reception. No teacher or child has ever called him by his actual first name and all his books / pegs were marked up as the name he likes to be known as. When the year 6 leavers hoodies came out he was devastated as he thought he had been left off. It turned out someone had used his legal first name which was repeated on the hoodie twice as another boy is called that. Obviously someone had a list of “ official names” and it had not been noticed. It was not deliberate but we had a week of tears every evening because people had asked why he wasn’t on the hoodies. He then refused to wear it to school, School were really apologetic and put me in touch with the local printer. In the end I paid to have them overprint his hoodie and squeeze his name into a gap. He was happy to wear the hoodie after that. A genuine mistake but it was so heartbreaking at the time. My heart goes out to the parents and child in this particular instance ….

How? She bought a child hoodie on which no VAT is chargeable, paid the amount asked for it, then got told she’d have to subsidise the others’ VAT.

Even then, she said she’d need some time to pay.

How’s that being a total nightmare?

i do understand the frustration if one parent was doing it alone. It seems very odd. Lots of people actually wanted to help with the year 6 stuff as it was such a big year.

From the sound of it this parent has form for being controlling and intimidating. If that's well known who would want to volunteer to (attempt to) work closely with her on projects?

That’s a shame, we had a google shared spreadsheet which everyone put their size and we specifically asked for how they wanted name to appear. It really wasn’t very difficult. The hardest part was simply getting everyone to do it as there are always a few who you have to handhold through it! Honestly the endless conversations we had about making sure all the kids would be happy. With regards to the yearbook we even went as far to count how many times each child appeared in the photos to make sure no one could accuse us of accidental favouritism and a child would be upset they only featured 5 times vs someone else who featured 10!

Was it definitely a parent? Normally the school would organise the goodies.

I can't actually believe an adult would do this.

Well she was factually wrong to try and smooth the VAT across all sizes as kids clothes are exempt from VAT.

So she fucked up the costing and fucked up the resolution.

I see your point uuuuu and thetrumanshow and it does always irk me buying my secondary school son's school branded sweatshirt in adult sizes and paying VAT, as - rather like a school leavers' hoodie - it's not going to be bought and worn by anyone other than children.

I think the approach of getting everyone to order whatever size they like and paying direct is perfect.

But all of this is making me glad that I'm not doing it!

It's not.

The organiser was a right cow.

And now everyone has useless hoodies and a bitter taste.

unlike the removal of the name, that's the perfect example of "if you don't like it, do it yourself".

If you don't agree with the way the rep decided to deal with the VAT, you should have been involved in the process. This is what happens when you leave one person to deal with everything. You cannot complain that you don't agree with the way they actually deal with it.

Not all of us use WhatsApp regularly - doesnt make us precious. You need an attitude adjustment. Nothing wrong with email - a lot less binging of notifications. I reply to emails efficiently - I might take days to reply to WhatsApp. And by the way I always pay my dues that I have agreed to and I dont need chasing. I receive emails and know what I need to pay.

to be fair, I am pretty sure at least 50% ( and frankly a lot more) don't give a monkey about the whole name situation. If the child was a popular one, and a friend of their child, parents will have an opinion.

Otherwise, they really won't care.

No she wasn’t. It is hard enough collecting the money for 60 children, let alone trying to get them to pay different prices. All the children get a hoodie and they should pay the same price. I don’t know about other children’s schools but we had a very mixed demographic and so some children could never have afforded to pay £30 for one so we basically spread the cost of those children over all the other hoodies. No one had any complaint about this. Ultimately everyone paid about £30 for their hoodies whatever the size and honestly I don’t think that was an unreasonable price.

but you expect special treatment from a volunteer already giving away far too much time, and expect them to waste even more time to write you an email when everybody else is on the whatsapp group. (or vice-versa).

It's very annoying. They are doing YOU a favour, not the other way round.

You know I wasn't actually there, right?

And that you go around charging people for things they didn't agree to pay.

Stupid class rep should have offered adults to pay for adult vat items or cancelled the order. Could have considered speaking to PTA or school about pupil premium top ups, or just not organised it.

Being the only person to volunteer doesn't mean you can do a bad job.

I wasn't there either, I am just replying to your post.

Being the only person to volunteer doesn't mean you can do a bad job.
they're not trying to do a bad job, but if they do -volunteer is not synonym of being a specialist or even efficient - you can't complain!

I think you can complain though - but raising a question about VAT charges is not a complaint is a question. The point of appointing yourself as class rep which is a choice is not to dictate but to discuss and feedback.

And we wonder why people don’t want to volunteer to be reps or the PTA.. it honestly is the world’s most thankless task.

The school is right. The adult/parent who purposely left this name off is a bully and should be ashamed of themselves.

Why on earth would she get the blame?! The blame lies firmly with the nasty parent bullying her child!

again, volunteer yourself!

You are BU to expect a volunteer to put every detail to the vote, or to prioritise one thing over another. If you don't agree, get involved and put your opinion forward. As a non-volunteer, you don't get to dictate the way they manage their tasks.

You are also conveniently forgetting that half the parents will complain about too many discussions because they just want to pay and not hear a word.

Parents complain about emails sent by the school! So let's be realistic how much discussion and feedbacks parents are happy to give.

There’s another principle at play though, which is if you screw something up you should try to smooth it over with reasonably good grace. This was someone who actually should not have VAT levied on them, asking for some time to pay.

(Interesting off-topic debate about whether the rep is an agent or a reseller. VAT isn’t something you can just decide to vary because you feel it would be fairer if the rates were different).

No it's not special treatment. Just simply that many of us use perfectly normal and accepted means of communication. eg email. Normal - in business, professional and personal communications. Luckily for me I am no longer involved in snobby cliques at schools. Once your child leaves primary you may well realise this.

ok but managing a task is a completely different issue to what is here right

she decided to say to parents we will pay individually for our jumpers - everyone did

she then removed a child’s name from the jumper and refused her jumper because the VAT she accidentally ( fair enough ) missed off was added and the parent questioned it and couldn’t pay when it turns out that she did pay full price for her child’s jumper and don’t owe any money what so ever. You can’t force someone to pay more for something

I literally cannot wait !