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

This is amazing thank you! Our school has a small deficit (but a revenue reserve of 8 times that) and spend 86% more than average on support staff and IT!

My child’s secondary school is rich 😭 in year reserves of £400k and revenue reserve of £5.6m

None of the secondary schools in my area (3 towns) are in deficit

Yes I’m asked to pay 70 bucks per child every September. I just pay it as it’s a good cause

The school I work in gets all the new parents in during July before the kids start in year 7. They give information about starting etc and then give them a direct debit form. Most parents do fill this in and give a monthly contribution. It is run as a charity and school need to ask for funds for certain things. Usually building projects.

The birthrate is down since the pandemic. This will happen increasingly as funding is per capita. I'm not sure what the solution is.

There are plenty of ways round that. You can just rejig things. For example, our primary subsidised some trips for pupil premium children. You could get the pta to pay for that and rebadge the pupil premium money for something else.

I don't think you'd need to involve the pta for that.

Schools are in massive amounts of debt. You can find this easily enough on the school benchmark site. They do not have the funds anymore and really do need parents help. It isn’t right but it is real.

If my child’s school asked this of parents I wouldn’t hesitate! Most schools are having their budgets cut and can’t afford materials, pens, pencils etc! Surely there’s something parents can contribute even if it’s not money? I regularly clear out my sons toys/books and donate them to the school if they want them. I also give them bags of art materials, I keep anything that can be used like toilet rolls, plastic lids, cardboard! Everything helps

Remaining the VAT is worth more than gift aid so probs don’t need the PTA at all

Doesn't the pta give the money to the school and the school makes the purchase, so can recover vat.

At DDs' school I always contributed to the PTA, both on the committee and financially. I never felt as comfortable contributing to the school.fund as they never published the accounts.

Well there you go then. Can use the PTA after all 🤣 I must admit I’m totally confused as to why we are having this discussion, I only suggested they should reclaim the vat

Yes because some can afford it and want to help

It's better to ask than just to take. Obviously richer people can choose state or private education, but it's right that you get the choice, unlike care homes, for example, where they can just take people's houses. It does worry me that one day they'll force rich people to pay for private schools. Not because I'm rich, I'm not, but because state schools should be open to all, and it would cause even more of a divide in society.
I'd prefer to pay any extra money I had for something that's actually useful, rather than pay taxes for things that are actively bad (like some of teh road changes they've made near us, like restrictions on public places etc).

I would have rather paid a lump sum at the beginning of each year than go to the Christmas/summer fetes and bake sales etc.

The government should be doing more but in the absence of that, the schools need the help. I would donate. Or you could suggest compiling an Amazon wish list and everyone buying from that for the school. Depends on what they need it for.

I'm a governor and was going to suggest the comparison tool and finding out a bit more about how the school is working to address its financial situation. Our school has been in deficit and there were a number of levers we were able to pull to address some of this and we are now on our way out of deficit.

It's not something we would dream of doing because it does a couple of things. First, it makes poorer families feel bad and not a full part of the school community. Then, word will also get around locally and poorer families will self select out of that school because they will feel like there is financial pressure to contribute, making it less diverse. Finally, it's not a sustainable way of running your school budget. If there is a gaping hole in it the school needs to look very hard their operating model and whether they are also making best use of things like facilities hire.

Of course people are free to donate as much as they like to PTA stuff and we also have an additional way people can do a donation for residentials to support other families, but that's mentioned in passing, once.

I can remember "voluntary" contributions like that when I was at school in the early 2000s. I would often get letters to give to my mum asking for these contributions, which were additional to any trips etc. My mum was a single parent and struggled month to month to make ends meet. I hated the pressure these requests put on her so I stopped giving her the letters.

I valued my education, as did she, but (if my memory serves me right) if everyone paid the contributions the school would have been getting £144,000 from the parents.

We were never actually asked to give money but we were encouraged to provide glue sticks, paper etc for our children in primary school.

It's disgraceful and sad.

Haven't parents always been asked to contribute to school trips/extra curricular? As a child it was "if you dont pay you cant go" but nowadays it seems much more "if you can contribute, please do but no one will be excluded".

It’s interesting that the vote has been consistently at 60/40 on the side of schools wanting parental contributions being unreasonable. A few of the comments are a bit virtue signally (“but of course people should pay it’s a good cause”) but that misses the point somewhat. I’m not at all saying that I think schools should struggle, I’m saying that hiding the problem by asking parents to cover the shortfall is the wrong answer, especially without transparency of the finances or a recovery plan. What happens if this becomes the norm? Will we be moving towards a means tested semi-private education system?

I should also add that this school has also just announced a 2 week half term which will cost us extra in childcare this year.

Is the school full? head count impacts funding.

TBH schools kind of do this with the PTA, our raise a lot. I would pay monthly to help the school succeed. cheaper than private school fees!

School is oversubscribed. PTA contribute around £10k/year to the school

My worry is that having contributed. The school will need to justify its spending and communicating this with parents will cost time and money.

Why is it so underfunded?

Funding for schools assumes parents will contribute, but it sounds like this is asking beyond that, is that right?

The schools in disadvantaged areas will have more pupil premium students, so will be much more likely to be rolling in it and therefore much more money to buy stuff, far above and beyond that of a school in an affluent area with minimal pupil premium children.