Schools and their shit - a rant

[Icannoteven]

Aargh! Schools and their incessant shit!

I have two kids, one leaving infants school and one leaving juniors for comp and this month has just been back to back bullshit. I’ve had approximately 3 billion emails from each school about events which require parental participation in some form or attendance at school during the school working day.

Leavers disco, dress up days, tombola donations, leavers assembly, leavers performance, end of term trip - parent helpers needed, parents evening, fucking bake sales, welcome evening, welcome day, welcome afternoon tea, Father’s Day event, summer fayre, parent helpers for summer fayre, summer picnic, non-uniform day, sport day, information evening, chance to meet the send team and on and on and on. A separate email for each one.

Jesus Christ. Am I supposed to take the entirety of July off to deal with school admin and attend day-time events? It’s so relentless. Add medical appointments on top of all this shite and it’s amazing any parent manages to ever hold down a job.

Do schools not think about the burden on parents? Do they think everyone has a SAHM?

You don't have to respond to every one. I would take a strict look at what is actually necessary. Not everyone bakes or donates. try to do the bare minimum you can get away with. Sometimes you gave to be a bit selfish.

Ours has annoyed me today - phone call at 2:30 - DD1's been sick, can she be collected. Now I work out in the community as a healthcare worker - so I'm all over the place and DH is therefore down as first contact if there are any problems - but nope, school default to ringing mum first every single time, and when I said, "OK, I'm just about to get on the motorway (thankfully I was heading back from visits) I'll be half an hour" the admin staff got dead uppity with me about how she supposed she could find DD somewhere to sit till I got there, until I said it was either half an hour for me to get there (they're lucky cos most of this week I've been a good hour and a half drive away) or ring DH as he works from home.

It's massively fucked me off because what the hell do they want from women? It's not just "oh we need someone near who can pick them up if they're ill" because we have that covered with DH being down as primary emergency contact - but it felt today very much like they didn't want mothers to have any form of "proper" job (ie one that can't be picked up and dropped at any particular moment).

DH incidentally was there in under 5 minutes - so it's not as if we're a family who'll ignore school when they come ringing.

Oh yes the expectation of being able to magically transport yourself to the sick child in school by the end of the phone call. Some office team staff seriously don’t get it that working parents can’t drop everything and go, like you’d leave a building if it was on fire.
Some events I try to bypass, such as a sponsored bounce on a giant inflatable (kids do go on it though). They get 5 minutes and you end up coughing up more than it would cost to take them to an actual cool soft play!

I think it's wonderful that they are trying to give the children so many great experiences. If you don't want to attend any of them you can just ignore it.

Oh god, I always ignore the sponsorship forms.

They require parental participation or attendance during the school day? As in... it's somehow compulsory?! Or they inform you about these events and you can choose to attend or not? Full time teachers can rarely attend their own dc's school events, so it would seem odd if they didn't understand that not all parents could attend!

This really, really annoys me. DH works from home and can be there in about 7 minutes. I work 6 miles away manning a reception desk. DH is primary contact but they see "Mr" and skip right on by. Last time I was on the phone when they rang and got a pissy voicemail.

The only essential thing on the list is parents evening. The rest should be abolished, I'm sure the teachers would much rather focus on teaching than Summer fairs, leavers events, sports days, parties and proms. However I suspect that the suggestion would be met by outrage from parents.

They could attempt to reduce the burden on parents though. For example, if they just set all this crap out in one email instead of ten. It would be an improvement if they just picked one method of communication tbh. I don’t love having to check the school newsletter, class pages, book bag, school Facebook group, class email, class WhatsApp group, website and actual notice board because they can’t choose a method.

My kids nursery always do this. Ring me first al the time. Despite me telling them multiple times I currently cannot drive due to health and DP is able to get there in 10 minutes. I've even had them put a note on the system stating that. Yet still they always call me first. So frigging annoying.

Oh boo hoo for you.
What a misery. No doubt if the school did bugger all for the kids you’d be moaning about that too.
It’s just general life admin, that’s all.

It's not compulsory but there's a small child who is disappointed when a parent can't be there. Anytime I've been at school events it's only 1 or 2 children who don't have an adult there and it's makes them sad, no matter how hard the teacher tries to include them and keep them busy. It's just another layer of parental guilt.

In the last two weeks we've had sports day, summer show, football tournament, prize giving, parents eve, orthodontist appt, all in the working day. And that's just for the child at primary! I'm very fortunate to have a flexible employer but there's only so much give, I don't want to take the piss but I also don't want to let my child down.

For every person like you there are four or five who complain when said list of activities doesn’t happen, and these tend to be the people with the most time to voice their complaints and the people who are most visible at drop off / pick up. Many schools I’ve worked in have a bit of a skewed sense of what their community actually wants due to the loud shouty minority thing.

Precisely. Schools can't really win. Unfortunately there is no consensus among parents about what constitutes too many events or too few events, or what time they should be, or what level of communication is too much or too little.

I can only imagine the reaction if school sent out a letter saying 'Right folks - we are no longer inviting parents to any assemblies, plays, concerts or sports days, because some parents aren't able to attend'. The Head would have to go into hiding.

This. You don't have to do ANY of it.

Agreed. It was school sports day last month and I was between jobs, so could go; there were hundreds of adults there (400 kids jn the school). At 11am. We live in a cheapish area so many households don't have all adults working FT and they are the ones I know who make costumes/cake from scratch and want the school plays/summer fayre/school trip organising.

I don’t think she’s complaining about the activities they do. We all did them too at school; bake sale, sports day, toy days, craft days etc. It’s the bombardment of information. We are all too easily accessible now and this can be overwhelming when women (let’s be honest, it’s mostly women) are juggling work, home and children.

They should have one big school calendar that you get at the start of the year with key dates on. Anyone who wants to attend events or be active can access further information on the school website. Job done.

YANBU, and I say this as someone who works in a school. I understand them wanting to give the children nice experiences but I think the sheer volume of special events, dress up days, competitions etc is overwhelming for some children, not to mention parents, and could be cut down. It's all very well saying "you don't have to attend" but some children (especially when they're little) do get upset when they don't have anyone turn up and parents will feel an element of pressure and guilt around this.

When my two oldest were in early primary, I was often the only parent to volunteer for their forest school, swimming, library etc. I often did a school day out mid uni exams with baby twins strapped to me otherwise it would be cancelled.

Years later and those babies are now upper primary age. I'm now also disabled, have done 1 swim lesson when I felt able.

Our schools new office staff are utter pish too, I miss all the emails with exactly ALL the details.

Nothings ever compulsory, apart from a jail sentence.

Yanbu, year 6 leavers the last two months was the most insane insanity I have ever known. The events, the class whatsapp, the school emails, the residential, hoodies, leavers bookes, own clothes, bake sales, dress doen, dress up, people going mad over finding red carpet for the leavers disco, teachers leavingz teachers coming, sen meetings, talks about this or that, festivals, pta meets, sports days.. i felt like i had gone through a mill complete insanity

I definitely understand this. I've got 3 in primary and 1 in secondary school. I get multiple emails a day from my eldest's school, related to his GCSEs but it's the primary school I'm struggling with. They all have separate sports days, class assemblies, " stay and play" where you go into their class and go through their books with them. I accidentally missed one and felt terrible. Then there are parents evenings, summer fair for which they have had several own clothes days in exchange for certain things donated for that. Two have had school trips in the last week that required certain kit and a packed lunch. One is singing in a church next week so I need to attend that also. All this spread over 4 weeks.

Who should look after your sick child in your opinion? I don't think the teacher can leave her class to attend to one child.

You're so lucky your children are offered so many wonderful opportunities to have experiences outside the classroom!

My DDs end of term assembly is next week, I know this because she told me. There has been no communication from the school about it despite the expectation that parents attend (small special school with lots of parental presence). I called the school to confirm the date and time, apparently they can’t tell me because it’s not been finalised, but yes I should plan to attend. How the fuck am I supposed to guess the right day and time!

As a school administrator but also parent of 2 primary school children, I can see from both sides. Your transition type events are one type of thing, and your fun events are made to be a bit of light relief after a busy school year - to celebrate the kids achievements and allow you all to let your hair down. It's a verrrrryyyy long term this one and yes it is busy, but I think some bits are necessary like meet the teacher/parents evening etc and anything else just don't do it if you can't or don't want to. We definitely can't moan as we get it from plenty of entitled people who say we don't do enough and the others say it's too much. It's all intended to keep the children at the centre of everything we do, for their benefit. Please bear that in mind.
Also, you will have to specify your order of preference for being contacted when children need collected. Sometimes when we are juggling a million things at once (as you can imagine the numbers of moving parts in a school at any given time), we might not catch that it's dad/gran/childminder first. It's a simple mistake and although frustrating, not a huge deal. Usually at that point we are holding your child's head over a sick bucket or cleaning up from their stomach upset, while consoling them as they are upset because WE CARE about them! (And I am eternally grateful to the staff aty children's school as I know from experience that they are doing the same for my children when they are unwell/sad/worried. So please forgive our admin error at that point and have some patience and understanding 😏 not so easy to understand how It is when you don't work in a school but just a chance to get some insight from someone at the coal face. Hope that helps.