Kids excluded from free trip

[AbiGabi]

Some of the kids at my dc’s school were selected to be allowed to go on an outward bound/activity trip where they had a great time staying in huts, having campfires, petting animals and doing some exciting and amusing team activities and sport.

The activity was free, and it wasn’t advertised to all parents in the year - only those who had been picked.

I only found out about it when I saw the school newsletter saying what a truly fabulous time the kids had had, and about 3 pages of photos showing them all havi nt fun. The school newsletter then banged on about how amazing it was that the school was to be able to provide this trip totally free to the kids who went, because the outward bound centre provided facilities for free so the school only had to pay for food and the coach to transport all the kids. Coaches are NOT cheap!

last month the school came begging for contributions to buy classroom equipment and I gave the school £50 not realising they were spaffing money on trips my dc wasn’t invited to!

Aibu to feel this is sharp practice by the school and unfair?

I’m just guessing, and hear me out here, that they didn’t share pupil’s personal information because it’s got absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. I’m also guessing that they might have assumed that as adults the parents of other students were going to be capable of celebrating the experience of some pupils without making it about themselves.

The criteria wasn’t kept secret though, the OP just feels it was too outing to share.

People will be less likely to tell the school if they are eligible if they know it’ll be plastered all over the next school newsletter.

I can guarantee that the pupils who were selected were vulnerable or disadvantaged pupils who have never gone further than their own town.

If you could afford to donate £50 to the school, I am sure that your children have had plenty of life experiences that these children have never had.

I would ask. When my dc were in secondary school I saw a coach full of children getting off a coach at the end of the school day. I asked my DS where they had been and he said it was a reward trip for the kids who are usually naughty for being good. They had been to Alton Towers.
Believe you me schools aren’t always fair in their selection processes !

I nearly spat out my brew reading this!

Ex teacher

there’s a lot of external funding now which is linked to pupil premium.

also, pp is ever 6 which means that the pupil premium status persists for six years after the trigger event/fsm claim etc. this can mean that some kids who are pp are now in better financial circumstances - we used to run additional maths support groups for pp kids and I particularly remember one kid who’d been on fsm some time ago saying he was going to Florida to Disneyworld.

we Also at our school applied for and got funding to run maths circles for gifted and talented maths students BUT half of each group had to be pp. it was actually quite hard to balance that one as the further you get through secondary the more the pp kids tend to be concentrated in the lower groups.
these circles were quite frequently mentioned in our newsletter etc but not the fact that half of the attendees had to be pp.

Can't be arsed to work at school and you get a free trip to Alton Towers - preparing for a kids perfectly for the world where if you can be arsed to work you get benefits steeped upon you (including free trips for your kids to adventure centres it would seem).

Instead what we should do is explain to the bullies why it’s unacceptable to bully children for circumstances entirely beyond their control.

Ah yes of course. That will do it. The sure-fire way to stop bullying dead in its tracks is to explain to the bullies why it's a bad thing to do. Amazing nobody's thought of that before.

Back in reality, the school has to deal with the world as it is as opposed to how it would like it to be. The 'stupid school' will know exactly what the upshot of highlighting that the 'poor kids' have been on an outing would be, and that no amount of well-intended 'explaining' would change that.

Yes this happened at my kids' school as well. I posted it earlier 😬 myself and other parents for fuming as well but were basically told its tough tits 😡

This would be completely unacceptable.
you can’t say ‘all these kids who were chosen are pupil premium’.

I accompanied the Geography field trip last year, trip to a poverty stricken area, which I thought was a bit mad, as did the locals the kids stopped to answer surveys ‘Don’t you know there are dangerous drug addicts round here?’ asked one bloke they stopped!

I run a very popular trip and literally did the random name picker spin. I thought that was the fairest way. The year before we were told we had to prioritise the PP kids, didn’t bother me, but I did have a couple of queries from parents saying that they knew naughty kids had been chosen over their little angels, think it was 7/40. The PP kids all had the maximum £350 paid last year, but this year, I was told they would not receive this.

OMG OP, too right the school should be more upfront about why the children were chosen. Surely the school should have captioned the photos to let you know.

“Here are Milly and Jake enjoying the zip wire, Milly’s single parent mother doesn’t work and so she, Milly and her four siblings all live on benefits since none of their absent fathers pay a penny for their upkeep.”

”Edward loved the sleeping accomodation, he couldn’t get over the luxury of having clean sheets and a duvet and not sharing with his bed wetting brother”

Would that have helped sooth your outrage?

Just ask what the selection criteria was. If names were pulled out of a hat, then it’s a fair process and you simply bought a £50 raffle ticket and lost.

How expensive do you think coaches are exactly?

There are criteria for PP expenditure. But yes indirectly PP children could benefit from a broader activity or extra tuition being funded from that pot.

I remember looking longingly out of the window in maths at some select kids doing a fun inflatable assault cause day on the field, with paint ball and all sorts of tram activities. They were children in really low sets struggling and from disadvantaged backgrounds, it was a hugely positive thing for them.

I and two other students went to the Himalayas on a trip that we had to raise money for ourselves in entrepreneurial ways, but which was organised with a charity via schools across the county, as part of the gifted and talented programme. A bunch of us applied and our three names were chosen based on our essays. The year after the kids went to Africa.

There are so many reasons for not everyone to take part in something, and it's not always funded by other parents.

I don't want my financial circumstances broadcast to the world and that would apply regardless of how much money I had.

Without knowing the criteria I default to thinking you're being unreasonable because I can't imagine the school didn't have a good reason for selecting the pupils they did.

Maybe they have health difficulties or SEN, maybe they are especially talented at nature-based activities or sport, maybe they've shown exemplary behaviour, or maybe they have difficult circumstances at home, but the school obviously felt that this trip was of particular benefit.

Do you want the pupil premium kids to be highlighted in future? They are usually the ones with the brown bag lunches on trips if that helps!

I took a small group of children on a similar trip which we received funding for. The children were all care experienced youngsters and the funding was through that particular stream and I had applied to a grant and got lucky.
We shared that children had gone on a trip but we certainly didn’t broadcast to the entire school community that these children had experienced care or were on a compulsory supervision order.

@AbiGabi

this question has been answered re the trip BUT I am going back to your earlier post about pots and specifically saying what for and I completely agree.

four kids.

we started by giving to parent council events (I am now chair and get it). But felt things needed more. So we gave cash to the class teachers, for, example, the Christmas show.

four years in, do you know what they need? Specific pot help and lots of money and shouting about it.

two examples.

loose parts for playground. Oh parent council can give x amount.

NO. Let’s go to local business places and ask and deliver. Planks. Crates. Tyres. Start a specific Facebook appeal. We need x and G.

now I’m in the library. Do teachers have time for this. Nope. Or resources. Nope. Or a focus to start?

so I said to local people, business or otherwise.

we need.

this this and this.

it’s amazing how many were happy to buy
one bean bag.

rather than as you say fifty quid.

The teachers don’t have the time for this, the local authorities don’t give a flying monkeys about this and the fundraising from parent council is so needed for the individual school projections. Here things like, swimming, transport, a school trip.

Shouldn’t think so. It makes for some very economical “enrichment” - ie nobody ever gets anything much.

My children receive pupil premium and get ‘extra things’ at school although we are high earners as a family but they are service children. The pupil premium recognises the extra strain and needs they are often under.

Honestly you sound absolutely insufferable. Just because you gave the school a tenner here and there you think you should have oversight of every bit of personal information relating to vulnerable kids, and if they get bullied hard luck.

I would say if you are that interested become a governor but I’m not sure I’d want to inflict that on the board.

If you have so little confidence in the school then you should move your kids. Otherwise why not celebrate the school doing something nice rather than all
of this “me me me” narcissism.

OP I'd be interested if you'd feel the same if it was based in merit and reward? For instance, the kids who had excelled in English travelling to take part in a junior parliament, or the sportiest kids getting trophies at a school celebration? Sometimes the money gets spent on things like these, and sometimes it gets spent on kids who never get recognised for these things, to increase their self esteem and show them that they have the ability to do great things too.