Is it normal for primary schools to expect so many payments?

[ThisRealFawn]

I have twins in Yr 5 in Primary School and recently (in the past 2 years) there are just so many things to pay for. I appreciate that the school are taking the children out to do things but it’s all at a cost to the parents that we just cannot afford easily in these pricy times. This is a state school. Not private btw.

last term we paid for:

music lessons x2 = £130
forest school x2 = £40 (plus £100 ish worth of weather appropriate clothing)
residential x2 = £300 (plus all the stuff they needed)
costumes for school play = £40 ish

so like £700 ish

this upcoming term already we have paid

music lessons x2 = £130
weekly ice skating x2 = £130
Sherwood forest trip x2 = £60

so another £300+ already before the term has even started

Is this normal? How are people affording this. Like I said - I’m glad for the children they get to do this stuff but I don’t like the assumption that everybody will just happily keep paying for whatever the school decide to arrange.

if you’re entitled to school meals I think you get it all paid for but we don’t qualify even though we aren’t high earners.

we haven’t done anything really over the Easter hols because I literally have had £100 left to last me 2 weeks. Could have done with that £300 I’ve just had to pay really 😂

Is this normal now for primary schools or is our school unusual for this?

Nope. She’s my daughter’s best friend. Her twin doesn’t have cp and she is going but nothing for her disabled sister. She is just going into a different class for the 6 weeks

Thats absolutely awful and against the equalities act. They should have made provision for her to attend.

Absolutely agree. Hopefully this was the choice of the family/she didn't want to, rather than the school telling her she couldn't. They will get extra funding for her via her ehcp, so it's not due to cost even if she needed an accessible taxi to get there

Secondary is worse! This year I paid £2300 for residential trips for each of my 2. Both linked with their GCSE and ALevel content.

Plus music lessons £180 per term and regular fundraising events...

Kids cost a fortune.to raise!

Music lessons are always optional or free. Never heard of a primary school doing ice skating. Forest school is free at our school. We just pay for swimming lessons and trips. Residentials, we can pay for in instalments.

If you have two kids going on the residential at our school you only pay for one. You can opt out of everything, but in the grand scheme of things if too many opt out it won't happen.

So as you’ve said, the music lessons aren’t compulsory.

The school shouldn’t bother offering forest school or ice skating. Did they not have a coat each and wellies though?

If they didn’t offer trips people would moan. It’s just exacerbated for you having twins. £150 for a residential is good, even if it’s only 2 nights.

Did you pay for them to do after school rehearsals for the school production? If that was free I can understand them asking you to source their costumes.

I'm not sure it being twins makes any difference by the time they are in Year 5. OP is paying out the same as she would for 2 differently aged primary school children, assuming the school offers similar sorts of trips/activities in each year group. If it's just Year 5 where the costs are huge, then OP has had a few years of being able to put money aside. Residentials don't typically happen every year but in a known year group(s).

Totally agree. It’s not fair at all

Well this never used to really be the case so why would I put money aside for it? Ours have had residentials from year 3 although I didn’t send them til y4

The residential was just one night this year. Next years is 3 nights.

no it was a whole class play. Not an extra curricular thing. We all got told what costumes we needed to source/make

Your friend should look up education law and disability inclusion and put in a complaint. I have been at school trips with kids who are in wheelchairs and the children were full included (as they should be). The schools should be ensuring they book trips which are inclusive for all.

I am also in that generation but it wasn't "free": it was subsidised. I grew up in Kent and while there was a huge amount of subsidised music, it wasn't actually free in the main - there was a charge for lessons, instrument hire and music groups and courses, even if nominal.

The money councils have to subsidise is greatly reduced.

Scotland is funded at a higher rate.

Anyway, your school sounds like an outlier, OP. Those are really high expectations for the state sector and you must be in a pretty affluent area if most parents are indeed paying.

Would you consider meeting the Head and asking for the rationale, explaining that it's difficult financially? It could help others.

Thank you. We have also had this message about if not enough parents paying, so wondered if the paying group is expected to cover the trip for the whole class.

You're right. It's more fair for the average tax payer to pay for extras which your twins will enjoy. That's fair.

That’s not what I said at all, it’s about protecting the kids who won’t be paid for.

Regardless if that’s due to poverty or parents who decide not to for many many reasons.

As a child in the 80s/90s everything was free, music, sports, school trips and swimming lessons. My only residential was £10 to cover the bus.

I want to say ice skating and forest school are very unusual activities but perhaps they are the closest things on offer.

A school near us goes skiing, as it’s on the schools doorstep.

But schools can't afford to offer endless free stuff any more, unfortunately.

Music lessons aren't compulsory . They will be hiring a peri teacher ( a music teacher who travels to different schools) they will likely need several to teach different instruments. This costs the school which will be quite rightly charged to the parents. Peri teachers is a full time job. They need payment

I wonder if the people who don’t pay a lot have a school with an active PTA. It’s been a while since my kids were at primary school but as a PTA we would raise about 25-30k a year in total so a proportion of this would go towards forest school/ school trips/class celebrations etc. it was very demographically mixed so often when there were school trips the wealthier parents would pay a bit extra to pay towards the ones who couldn’t t afford it.
selfishly I didn’t want my child to miss out on doing something due to budget constraints so was always happy so subsidise to make all this stuff happen.

Yabu, music lessons are not compulsory, nor are residentials. You want your children to go as they are great experiences. As for spending 100 on weather clothing! What on earth are you buying? Waterproof trousers from asda are £5 a waterproof jacket £10 which most kids already own. I work at a school there's no way we expect parents to spend that kind of money. Education trips are voluntary contributions but if the school don't get enough they can't go ahead. I don't begrudge paying for school trips at all, kids love them and schools do try and keep them as cheap as possible as a lot of parents already don't pay. Then the missing money comes out of the school budgets which they don't have extra to fund trips.

I realise this and it makes me sad in many ways. I obtained a lot of skills for life, everything from reading music to kayaking and windsurfing.

I wish we were still in a place for all kids to have these options regardless of circumstances.

No the costs of a trip is worked out exactly per pupil. We have cancelled trips before as we didn't have enough contributions. The money comes out of the school budget, there is not extra money for trips so if not enough pay some schools do cancel as they can not afford to take the hit. As pp have said if a school has a good pta it makes a huge difference as they often fund things the school budgets can't.

£130 for music lessons for 2 for a term sounds pretty cheap. It's getting on for £500 a year for just DS to do music lessons, though this is an optional extra that I budget for. Can't believe it all used to be free when I was his age. Hardly anyone learns an instrument now compared to back then.

OP to answer your question - in my experience this much paid activity organised by the school, in school time, isn’t normal.

Our school had music teachers that came to the school and you could sign up for music lessons but it was not something everyone did - only if you were interested. Not “all the class”. They did have class swimming lessons sometimes, but not as expensive as the ice skating.

Forest school cost nothing- it was on the school field run by a volunteer. They wore normal clothes / wellies. Definitely no specified helmets, snow boots, thermal base layers. We ended up buying some kit years later at secondary for d of e, but we had most of it anyway from doing walks.

There was one residential in y6 which was more expensive (maybe £150??) and probably a couple of paid school trips but maybe £20 ish for them?

It was free 8n Staffordshire. Loan of instrument too if you couldn’t afford one. A friend of mine had a cello on loan and private lessons throughout secondary. Plus Saturday Music School to play in ensembles. I play flute and was lucky enough to get my own, but 8 had the lessons right through at no cost to my parents.