Schools asking for parental contributions

[ButamIwhoyouthinkIam]

I’m sure this one will be divisive and is partly down to personal politics but I’m interested in the consensus.

state funded primary, good catchment, in deficit, like many others.

email last week to suggest a voluntary contribution from parents to cover essential materials, lays out case etc. but already have quite a few requests annually for enrichment and also trips. Has active PTA and most families donate to this through usual calendar of events.

email sets out rising costs of utilities etc and asks parents to plug the gap. I’m not sure this is the right solution for something that is inherently gov funded and it feels like a slippery slope.

IABU: it’s reasonable for schools to ask this and for parents to be happy to pay

YABU: a different option eg lobbying gov or showing the deficit would be more reasonable. Contributing financially allows the funding problem to be hidden

@ItsmetheflamingoThe supply staff are expensive due to the profits made by the agency. Years ago we did have a supply pool. However it was pretty poor! Most schools got their own supply in and the savvy ones had former teachers who didn’t want regular work as supply. I don’t see why academy chains cannot run supply agencies but getting decent supply teachers is a nightmare.

Obviously the agency has profit but employed teachers cost in pension.

the school I was governor at agency staff were cheaper than oncosted teachers, despite the obviously far higher hourly rate.

it’s not good to use agency staff instead of employed teachers, but I think it’s wrong to assume they’re more expensive

(btw we were at one point almost exclusively staffed by agency including headteacher. We were saving on our salary budget)

Did you say the e-mail is asking parents to cover the utilities and essential materials? I wonder what they mean by essential materials, have they said?

Our primary school is an outstanding state school in a lovely village with great kids and parents. We give a voluntary donation of £20 per month. We happily pay for school trips and we contribute about £50 for Christmas and end-of-school-year presents for the teachers, teaching assistants, headmistress etc. Individual parents will sometimes buy additional gifts on behalf of a class for teachers. The school has a charity which raises between 12-15k per year and there is an annual school fundraising event that parents and kids get involved in which typically raises about 5k per year.

This all seems to be the norm in this area. There's a state primary on the other side of the city that receive between 25-50k per year in parent donations! I think parents are quite generous because if the primaries weren't as good as they are, we'd be paying 15-20k per year on private education.

@Itsmetheflamingo When you manage a school, you find teachers go off sick! You pay the NI whilst they are off. Many schools find themselves struggling financially if this happens. Most primaries don’t use supply for a whole year. Some secondaries might and there could be a saving but probably not when compared to a NQT cost. I cannot imagine having a head from an agency. Here we second one in and deputy takes over their school. But we keep costs down.

So what you mean is agencies is expensive because they are covering an already paid for teacher? That is true, but the driver of that expense is not the agency profit as you suggested, but the double payments.

It’s both in my view. However I have more experience of primary where it’s inevitably a double cost. If schools have sick teachers it often leads to overspends but we used to insure to limit it. Not sure if schools do that now.

i do note the DOfE is seeking to limit fees paid to supply teacher agencies though. Money paid to agencies will be capped.

DH went to a rural primary with 11 pupils from reception to Y6. The teacher had to teach a mixed age group.

Surely,
this is fairly standard.

Contributing to running expenses like utilities?

Absolutely not.

@TheThinkingEconomist Unfortunately, overheads are 100% of school budgets. Staff are 85% ish. What do you think parental contributions should be for? Fluffy unicorns? I’d want an explanation of the school budget before I parted with a lot of money but most schools are now not wanting extras. They are wanting necessities.

Parental contributions should always be ring-fenced and how they are eventually spent clearly communicated to parents.

Asking parents to fill in budgetary holes with minimal or no transparency is not acceptable.

My ds primary school asked for £50 per term per pupil, it was a Catholic school that was getting payments from the church attached to the school & who had recently promoted the Head Teacher to executive Head paying him £145k a year for doing what most of the parents saw as swanning about getting his picture in the paper, he was in nearly every week, the school didn't gain anything from having him in this new position, there was another Head Teacher appointed, the staffing appeared top heavy for a one class entry primary school, Executive Head, Head Teacher & 2 Deputy Heads. At the time I was a new single parent on benefits who had £30 a week to feed & clothe myself & ds, they kept on sending increasingly demanding reminders & even resorted to telling children of parents who hadn't paid to remind them & teachers at parents evening had direct debit forms all filled out except for the bank details & signature to hand to the parents, they even had a list on the desk in plain sight of who had & hadn't paid to emotionally blackmail parents to pay.

@TheThinkingEconomist I do actually agree with you and they must have a separate account and it’s usually run as a charitable enterprise. Schools should be honest about what the money is to be spent on and many ask for money as part of an appeal - my local secondary wanted money for pupil lockers.

The problem is that schools don’t have money for basic things and it’s not always possible to know if the school is well run financially. Parents can be asked for a contribution each term and look at the money @Nat6999 is talking about for salaries! Completely profligate and unaffordable. The Exec head could be a MAT appointment (the church) but costs have got out of hand and some employees are doing very well. Parents certainly do need clarity if they are paying towards this.