That bloody school is make life hard at this time of year

[Bluebluetuesday]

We're all running about, getting ready fir Christmas, blagging work for multiple periods if time off to attend school events, sending in colour coordinated gifts for the raffle, being harassed by the bloody class rep for teachers gifts etc etc etc.

Then the school send out an email and a text and a Dojo to tell us they've cancelled all the lunch bookings for next Wednesday as it's a special Christmas Lunch and we've to rebook if dc want it.
The bloody lunch on a Wednesday is a cooked dinner anyway, with exactly the same component parts as the bloody Christmas lunch.
It's just so bloody petty and annoying, they seem to be sending 20 plus comms a day at the moment and this has tipped me over the edge

I’m guessing for Christmas dinner day that is the only option though therefore school need to let parents know that so they can send a packed lunch if needed. If they have the booking system normally then it being changed for a special lunch would make sense.

Yeah, that is annoying. Surely they knew when Christmas lunch would be and set it up in advance? My DD’s was already on there when I booked this term’s lunches.

I do understand that the kids who were down for special diet etc would need to change, but surely they could just click a button and change the cooked dinner to Christmas dinner for all the dc already subscribed. To add insult they sent a link to it that didn't even work, so they probably got loads of emails and calls about it, just making work for everyone involved.

I think you need to give your head a wobble. Just book the lunch or make packed lunch. It happens every year.

Straw that broke the camels back OP. It’s absolutely ridiculous. The requests are incessant. It’s our first year experiencing it as DS is in pre school

I adore DD's school; they are wonderful. I therefore smile and nod. But it drives me nuts how much fannying about there is, like this! They are completely chaotic about communications, so you never know whether a crucial bit of info will be on a note in your child's book bag, on an email attachment buried in paragraph three of the headteacher's weekly news bulletin, or on a totally separate email which may or may not have a title relevant to the news actually contained within. Trying to figure out something as simple as when the Nativity Service might be, or whatever, is a constant battle.

Oh, and that doesn't include the times when they simply don't include crucial info in any official communication, and just send it home by word of mouth from your child ... because obviously, a primary-school-aged child is a totally reliable and excellent source of information and won't even possibly just forget to tell you.

My DCs school had 4 non uniform days in a month, each asking for a different item donated for the school fair. Plus children in need was another non uniform day with the £1 donation as well. And there’s the school fair, book fair and christmas party that all cost as well. This at a school in one of the most deprived areas in the UK, and I know it’s not compulsory but obviously kids notice if you don’t join in. Luckily we can afford it but I know for lots of parents it’ll be a lot of pressure to spend right before Christmas. Just seems quite thoughtless on the schools part.

My child's school sent a letter home last week saying what character my child will be in the school Xmas play and saying we don't need to buy an outfit.

Then this week sent a letter home saying we did need to buy a costume and it needed to be at school by x date (which was less than a week away).

😡

I hear you! I love my ds's primary school and communication was actually worse at his sister’s school. But i wish someone would invent a better means of communicating than attaching a school newsletter, so you have to download a pdf and scroll down four pages of nice photos and updates about recycling awards or class/sports events to find the calendar updates, which are listed so you can’t even cut and paste them to a calendar entry and you have to fish out the ones that are relevant (no, I don’t care if Y6 have a theatre trip next week!)

And then you get told a month in advance you have to book Christmas dinner on one platform before 5th December; you get a slip of paper in the School Bookbag saying you must bring in a costume for School nativity by 10th but no reminders for that ; and a separate letter is emailed in November telling you that tickets for the nativity will only be on a first-come-first-served basis and you have to magically remember to log into a different online booking system no earlier than 7pm on 28th November.

I forgot about odd socks for anti-bullying day.

Raffle tickets for the Christmas fair were due in two weeks ago - I didn’t bother, we never win because it’s rigged, so I just dumped £20 in the PTA kitty and saved myself the bother of writing my address 20 times on all the ticket stubs

Absolutely no one knows if there is a Christmas postbox or when it opens and closes. Most of the mums are by this stage slightly hysterical and the dads are so disengaged they might as well all be high on weed.

I’ve contributed to four out of five giftrounds in the WhatsApp group. The one I didn’t contribute to is Reception Staff because frankly they do NOT make my life easier. I wish them a merry Christmas but no present for them this year!

You are busy because you want to make a nice Christmas for your children. The school is doing exactly the same thing. YABU.

It will be the catering company that has asked this for the Christmas dinners change anyway, not the school.

It will take seconds to rebook it. It's probably the catering provider that has messed up rather than the school. Frustrating, but hardly that big a deal.

If you don't want to give a gift to your child's teacher, tell the class rep to sod off.
If you don't want to donate to the raffle (which presumably is raising money for the school) don't bother.
If you don't want to negotiate time off to see your child perform, don't.

And as teachers, we won't bother putting on a nativity, doing a carol service, Christmas lunch, party etc etc to make those magical primary school memories...whilst also juggling all the same shit that you are. We'll just attempt to do maths, English and all the usual lessons right up until the last day of term, with 30 odd kids who have had chocolate for breakfast and come in every day wanting to tell us what their bloody elf has done.

Maybe think of it from both sides...?

I'm so glad I don't have to deal with primary schools any more since ds3 moved up to year 7.

I'd have liked it, just for once, to get a clear, straight-forward communication. Insead you'd get some word salad, passive sentence, garbled nonsense that you'd have to trawl through just to get to the one or two bits of pertinent information.

People who do school emails please, please put important date changes or requests at the top of emails, not burried halfway through the text after listing the whys and the wherefores. The "whats" go at the TOP, and then you can go into explaining the whys and the hows.

I’m an ex-teacher so I do understand it from both sides. It’s so overwhelming as a parent to juggle all the different messages. Some of the emails randomly go to my junk as well (not the school’s fault I know).

As a school, it’s hard to please everyone. Some people want only emails, some want only letters. They don’t have the budget to endlessly print letters so they email and put it on the school website and social media pages but someone will always want it done differently.

As both a parent trying to do it all around work and an ex-teacher, I can acknowledge that it’s both incredibly stressful and incredibly lovely to do the nativity and the other Christmas events with the children.

It’s pretty standard school dynamics, they ramp up pressures at specific times but usually it’s towards the mid-higher risk parents/families, the safe parents don’t get subjected to the same scrutiny.. it’s to keep parents engaged during stressful/busy periods.

I really hated the Christmas period at primary school. My two are now a late teen and young adult, so those years are far behind me, but I clearly remember the endless letters asking for donations and Christmas lunch choices and Christmas jumper days and fill a shoebox with gifts and bring a plate to the class party and bake a cake for the cake sale and come to this assembly and that nativity but don't forget to get tickets, and buy these Christmas cards designed by the kids....
🤯
Loved their teachers, no blame on them at all. But fuck me, it was a lot.

You think schools make the lead up to Christmas stressful to scrutinise / check 'higher risk' (aka particularly stressed) families are still capable of engaging even when it's even more stressful? Like a stress test?

@Roobixcy I don’t know whether that’s just your experience but it couldn’t be further from the truth!

lol at the idea I am getting hassled for baking donations for the PTA’s stand at the Xmas show as a kind of stealth safeguarding approach.

I had this crap with 6 children too

What on earth are you on about?

No it isn’t.

You’d think we do all the Christmas stuff for our own benefit! (Fellow teacher here)

I think the date of Christmas was known about in 1752, when Great Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar. So about 270 years notice is not enough for the school then.

I agree about telling parents though, in case they want to choose a packed lunch. Could have been done about a month ago though.

Wondering if you’re a parent at my kid’s school because we had the exact same situation and email 🤣 or if it’s a fun catering / Scopay glitch 🤣

My daughter's school decided that they would go home straight after the nativity play as they'd be tired. It was half an hour long and they had about 2 lines each. They're also off on Friday for a random training day.