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?

The nursery teacher at DDs school told me that they knew all the major dates at the start of the year because the hall was in such demand. So they all got their bookings done in September. Why they then kept all those a secret is anyone’s guess.
we did in year 6 get a print out of all the dates finally (and then we went into lockdown).
but previously they drop fed events, so you would go to one, then find out about another a week later but you’d already wasted a days holiday on the first one and couldn’t go to the second you were more interested in.
They also did termly ‘literacy afternoons’ where you could go and look at your child’s books. Basically it was to get rid of the kids early and all the staff would go home early.
Parents worked this out and stopped going.

Aren't SAHMs of school-aged children usually ripped apart on MN? I thought it wasn't the acceptable thing.

Sorry if you were upset by my other response.

It’s the emails and log onto this or that. And the really late notice of needing random things like yellow tshirt.

I’m sure as a child I brought home a letter on Fridays that included all the info parents needed and I came back to school on Monday with tear-off slips in envelopes with a cheque or a few coins.

@MsRumpole and others, I put down DH's number as mine as well as his. I worked in a lab where we couldn't take phones inside so I was totally unable to receive phone calls during the working day. We also used a family email address purely for school.

What did schools do before mobiles were so ubiquitous? And before then, when most people didn't even have a landline?

How far should she go with this? Menu she doesn't like at local restaurant - perhaps she should offer to cook the food? Local GP practice isn't offering a very effective booking process? Perhaps she should offer to create a new front-end portal? The post office is a bit slow? Maybe she should get in there and start delivering parcels herself?

The reality is that as parents, we often don't have a lot of control over things happenign at school and we have limited, if any, choices for changing school. So when things aren't working properly, it's perfectly okay for us to have opinions on that. r to make suggestions. And this particular poster has repeatedly asked the school for somethign simple - for them to call her DH BEFORE they cal her. Which they simply seem unable to do. And then they get arsey with HER because she wants them to do it.

It could be worse. You could be school staff trying to do all that on top of teaching your children.

I highly recommend getting an email address specifically for school communication. It’s extremely helpful to have to all in one place with no other clutter. It also means you can put an alert on it so you get notified of every message.

it doesn’t solve the communication inefficiency issues, but it goes a long way towards managing them.

Sounds nice.

However, from experience, there is no single way of guaranteeing that any communication, whether for one single item or for ten (which would require the checking of about 15 people to be sure that all 10 events were exactly as planned and then followed up by 22 separate reminders on multiple channels), whether by email, app, piece of paper, on the website, emailed again, told to the children and parents verbally, tattooed upon the chest of the site manager, on a digital calendar that can be downloaded with automatic reminders set, reminded again through all these channels, sent by carrier pigeon or simply phoned through will ever have every parent reading, digesting and actually understanding it.

I've read emails absolutely screaming about how they had no idea x event was happening and we were all complete morons where they've forwarded the three emails stating it and reminding them about it are further down the chain. I've read them where they're complaining that it's literally impossible to access the app sent through the app, I've sat through calls where they're shouting that they never get told anything until the last second because they've just received a list of all planned events for the next six months and where they've already complained about the event three times.

It's absolutely your responsibility as a parent to arrange to leave work as soon as is possible. If this is just impossible, you need to have a backup plan so that someone else can pick your child up in your absence. It really isn't ok to just tell school that you are stuck in work and can't come.

Schools do their best to make sure a sick child is as comfortable as possible while they are waiting for their parent, or carer to get them, but the understanding is always that SOMEONE is on their way to get them.

Why is your employer placing this burden on you when they could adapt their employment practices to accommodate parents and educators? Is their profit more important that raising the next generation?

I really really hate this assumption here that everyone is in an office working for a greedy corporate employer. Many of us work in public sector jobs. It’s tough for me to walk out of a clinic for sports day. I would not want to do that to patients. Nothing to do with profit.

🙄🙄🙄

Or maybe just put it in your own calendar the first time you read it. Job done. It's really not difficult. I get that there a lot of messages in primary. But it's basic organisational skills. Read the email about the dress up day, open your calendar in your phone and put it in. Takes a minute.

I really don't understand the parents complaining about their own organisational skills.....

This. Just plonking it all in a calendar at the beginning of the year or term would no doubt be much easier for the school too. They'd probably choose to do that if they could trust parents to look at the calendar.

I didn't say that I wouldn't arrange for my kid to be picked up.

I said that sometimes I or DH can't get to the school within a schools expected response time - which is somewhere near the speed of light, usually.

During that time - and, indeed ANY time when my children are at the school they are, in fact, providing childcare. They just are. If they didn't, then millions of people wouldn't be able to work, it's that simple. I know people who work in schools don't like that, but it's a fact.

As school admin I'd give anything to go back to the days of a cheque or money in an envelope together iwth a consent slip. So much easier for us.
But we'd still get parents complaining tht they don't have cash/change/they sent the envelope to school and now the school claims it's missing/they didn't get the change back.

Move them to public school. One of the old fashioned kind rather than these namby pamby ‘we care’ nonsenses some our nowadays. Put them in at 5 and collect them again as polished, we’ll educated (and completely messed up) 18 year olds. And then you can pack them off to uni.
Worked for my grandparents…

I really don't think you understand the difference between "childcare" and "compulsory education". You can take advantage of your child being at a place of education during their compulsory school years so that you are able to work. But it isn't "childcare". We ARE caring for your child while they are in that place of education (i.e making sure they are ok, resolving any upsets, checking on their wellbeing). But it still isnt' "childcare".

No need to eye roll. I'm agreeing with there being far too many events going on in prmary. It's unnecessary. It's a lot of extra work for teachers and admin staff and half of them don't agree with a lot of them. We know it upsets the kids whose parents can't attend. But still SLT push for it...

When I was at primary in the 70s and 80s the only thing that parents were invited to were the Christmas fair, a Christmas concert, a parents evening and a sports day. That's all that parents were invited to, for the whole year. We still had fun as kids in school. We just didn't need our parents to watch us. Mind you, parenting was much more hands off in those days too......

society has changed beyond all recognition. Imagine if a school trip by coach took place now with one teacher on his own all day with 30 9 year olds, with no mobile phones, minimal risk assessments, no other adult help.... Or if during summer he took the class on a whim down to the local rec one afternoon instead of doing Science because the weather was niceI

Being a primary aged kid, and being the parent of one, mean totlly different things in 2025. Some things are better, some are worse. C'est la vie.

Im so glad all my dc are out of school now! The constant requests for money for mufti, fancy dress, sponsorship, trips, cake sales etc etc etc used to drive me crazy! Its not fair on your child to not allow them to take part but its bloody relentless.

It's absolutely your responsibility as a parent to arrange to leave work as soon as is possible. If this is just impossible, you need to have a backup plan so that someone else can pick your child up in your absence.

And when the school ignores that there’s a first point of contact listed who can, in fact, do that, but for some reason chooses not to call them?

Can you define what childcare is then please? If it isn’t caring for your child and making sure they’re ok?

I’m not sure what school doesn’t do that you say childcare is? It educates as well, but it’s still the single form of childcare that exists for school age children during term time.

At least you have your lovely big holiday to recover from it all. Most people need to just keep working and juggling.

Recover? Good grief. You make it sound like your life is a chore to be gotten through. You choose to work and juggle, no one is making you. The alternatives might be unpalatable or inconvenient to you but it is still a choice, you have to just decide what your priorities are.

Yes, maybe she should. Or alternatively she could try not to be so malconteted with everything and annoyed that things aren't exactly the way she personally would like It. It might stop the moaning.

And that particular post was complaining that the emails didn't load directly into her calendar so she didn't have to organise them herself, not that the school staff phoned her before DH.