AIBU to be baffled a mum had no idea the school fayre was happening?

[xAwaywiththefairiesx]

Today my daughter's primary school had a spring fayre after school on the school field. Ice cream van, face-painting, various stalls with games, the usual. All arranged by the PTA to raise money for the school.
There was a mufti day today, and the children were asked to bring a donation to the school as an exchange for the mufti, something like cakes to sell or a teddy for the tombola or a bottle of wine as a prize or something.
One mum wanders onto the field after school, with both of her kids in mufti, looking around bewildered saying "What's this? Is this a new thing they're doing? Will it be every week?"

And this is so weird to me because the spring fayre has been organised for months. We have lots of emails asking for donations, several more asking for volunteers, we've had at least three leaflets home about it, and she obviously got the memo about mufti, the whole point in which was for the school fayre!

My phone own child has been banging on about it for three weeks.

How can she get so unaware? I'm not judging, honestly, I'm just baffled how it got past her.

Is it just me? Could you miss something like this after all that communication?

This is hilarious 🤣🤣🤣 seriously, I couldn’t tell you when my kids school fayre’s are, I’ll usually skim through the newsletters and put the things in our calendar which need essential action e.g non uniform day, Victorian day etc but whichever one of us remembers the night before usually also puts a helpful message in the class and group chat the night before, which has saved us all
on many occasion as most of us have a 100 different work and home related things we have to remember to action each week

Not always. I think when you’ve got older primary age school kids who are in Y5 and Y6 and find ‘dress up days’ or whatever a bit childish and ‘not cool’ anymore because they have grown out of it, it’s no longer ‘fun’ for them and they start to find it a bit embarrassing. I will admit, I do get sick and tired of the constant “next week we will be raising awareness for {insert special day here} and we invite your child to come to school wearing {insert colours/ outfit here}. It does start to wear me down when half the time we don’t have those colour clothes or we have to spend money on new costumes every week. Maybe you don’t realise just how sick and tired parents get. You may think it’s fun for the kids, yes. And it probably is once a year….but when it’s multiple times a term, it causes parents so much stress

Also, you do realise that ‘mufti’ is probably a regional thing. And we do say “none uniform day” where I live. I’ve never heard of the word ‘mufti’ before so why are you talking as if those who are asking what a mufti day is are all thick and clueless? If someone said to me “we are having a mufti day” I’d look at them gone out. It must be regional slang. Never heard of the word, sorry.

Totally agree, children in need is what gets me as usually end up spending £20-30 on our credit card to buy the required outfits

I work full time and have 2 disabled children - I often forget own clothes day (thankfully the class group chat reminds me) and I certainly don’t give a shite about the school fayre!

I had to look up why the word is un-pc now. I understand now, but how do you keep up with these things?! 🤦🏻

I knew the expression, but not that a mufti was a sacred Islamic robe.

Do people subscribe to an app that updates them when terms go out of favour?

I’m so grateful 2 of mine are in Y7 and Y8 now. Secondary schools pester parents far less. No more world book day, no more children in need day, no more comic relief day or Disney day or dressing in certain colours for ‘National whatever day’.
They allow Xmas jumpers or non uniform on the last day of term before Xmas holidays and that is enough. The kids get to enjoy it and it’s once a year so not stressing the parents. No pressure to buy Xmas jumpers and no embarrassment for the kids who don’t wish to wear them as they can go in non uniform.
It’s saved me a fortune on costumes and specific coloured clothes days as well as summer/ spring/ Xmas fairs!

I would be one of those mums. I work full time and have children at different school and I constantly get emails, leaflets and messages asking for things. Schools should only be allowed to ask for donations once a year. It's overwhelming otherwise. Especially with all the other notifications from schools. If I didn't work as much it would be a bit more manageable.

Also, I've never heard of the word 'mufti'. I'm originally from the North east bit now live in N.Ireland. We just call it 'non uniform day'.

As a PTA chair and involved in lots of other community groups that hold events, shows etc. it always amazes me how oblivious some people are. You can email them, message them, drop leaflets through their door and put posters everywhere and they still seem surprised completely unaware. Some people just don’t notice things, even when you spoon feed them.

I work in a school office and send out all the communications to parents regarding things like this all the time. Emails, letters, newsletters, posters and there are always parents that still complain saying "i didnt know about this, the school didnt inform us" despite nearly all other parents being aware 🙄 the amount of times I say we have sent out so many emails, letters etc there really is nothing more we could of done to make you aware is unbelievable. It honestly drives me crazy. They also have the audacity to argue until they get their phone out and go into their emails and then act terribly shocked when all the emails are in their inbox in black and white or they go into their kids school bags and pull out the mass of reminders or look at the posters in the doors, window and bulletin boards and still blame the school. I also get the parents kicking off stating they didnt know it was the school holidays despite reminders, term dates plastered all over the school and all over the website. Some parents are just blind to it and cannot be pleased!

I've made another comment about this. The school ask for donations, every year. Not through the PTA, they just ask for them themselves.
Two people donated £5 each this year. Noone donated a penny last year, and one person donated £2 the year before.
The PTA events raise thousands. Noone is transferring £20 to the school's bank account, but they will wander round a school event and spend £20 worth of change. And local businesses will sponsor the events in exchange for advertising in our newsletters and their leaflets in every book bag.

So it's all very well saying parents could just make donations and leave it at that, but in reality it doesn't work.

Mufti has always been a universal word for " out of uniform " . I remember it being used in MAS*H which was set in Korean War of 1950s . How old am I ? !
Re : School mum are you sure it was the mum ? I might have dropped my nephew or niece and asked that question.

I have been PTA of a small state primary. We raised loads of money and the two fairs each year were very popular.

However. OP, you say months of work went into the school fair. And just over £1000 raised. How many hours went into it I wonder? Sometimes we ran smaller events and I just thought bigger this, if every PTA person put in £50 we’d raise more (and we all put in way more than 10 hours each).

We have been a few paying schools for years now. Still have school events, fairs etc but all proceeds go to charities. It’s a lot less stressful and the PTA is extremely friendly and large so you can join in and put a few hours in for a great event.

But all the PTA haters can naff off. They’re just parents doing their best and doing their bit.

Leaflets in book bags isn't acceptable. Maybe people just don't value what you are wanting to fund (leaver's hoodies spring to mind. )

The comments you are quoting was in response to someone telling me to use "clear plain English" and no, to answer your question, I did not realise it was only a regional thing until this thread.
Just as others had no idea "mufti" was a word, I also had no idea that mufti wasn't a word for some people. I thought it was universal English as every person I know uses and recognises the word.

Obviously, I was being light-hearted about the "weird, boring and clunky" comment, hence the emojis.

I couldn't actually give a flying fuck what term people use to describe a day where people do not wear uniform.

Leaflets in book bags is acceptable when the business is paying the PTA hundreds just to distribute a few leaflets and we are putting that money straight into the school.
The PTA doesn't pay for leavers hoodies, parents pay for them themselves, but we do organise the orders for the parents.
The entire school is invited to come up with ideas of what they money is spent on, and a vote is taken, involving the head, the governors and the PTA committee. 90% of it goes on SEN provision and assistance for low-income families, like free uniforms. What's left takes the Year 6s and Year 2s on a fun trip.

I've never heard of a mufti before this thread

This!! It’s all very well expecting parents to donate money for certain charities but what about the cost to parents who otherwise may have chosen not to donate to these charities for whatever reason.

As for raising money for school… What used to get me was the school residential trips they used to arrange at one of my son’s old primary schools at £180 per child and where the children stay overnight/ 2 nights or whatever. Yes the school funded some of it so parents probably ended up paying £100 rather than the full £180 as the school funded the rest of the £80. What was extremely annoying about this was the numerous dress up days to raise money for the school to be able to fund their contribution for these residential trips. So the ‘school’s contribution’ was still coming from the parents in one form or another regardless, plus the extra £20 per costume parents had to spend for each and every dress up day they held to raise money for the school to fund these residential trips. So in reality, the parents weren’t saving £80 they were probably spending way more than that on donations towards the school paying their share and also then having to buy costumes anyway which far exceeded the school’s contribution of £80!! Might as well have just let the parents to pay the full £180 for residential trip in that case 🙄

Of course you wouldn’t scream at her because it would confirm you as an aggressive, arrogant, person, lacking in understanding or empathy.

However, if you really cared about being inclusive and had said something to her along the lines of ‘Hello, I’m sorry but I couldn’t help hearing you didn’t know about the Fayre. We have sent information via x.y.z. If you missed those messages, what would be the best way of informing you and involving you ?’.

But you didn’t; instead, you came and asked the Mumsnet collective of thousands to speculate, and then pushed your agenda of school activity volunteers being undervalued.

It was your continuous assumption that all parents should know what it means, even when multiple people asked you what ‘mufti’ means where you came across as treating them as thick!

Mufti isn't a term I'm familiar with, 'non-uniform day' is the term used at all the schools locally. This clearly illustrates how subjective communication and language can be - what is clearly understood by some is not understood by others. For some reason at my DS school I never received any text or emails from the school so I was blissfully unaware of many events - and DS was never forthcoming so I missed out on a lot, I was 'that mum'.

I am that parent. Or was when my kids were younger. 4 kids, multiple schools / nurseries, full time job, zillions of emails per day (may be slight hyperbole) and other day to day demands. I often didn’t keep up with all the school(s) communications. One positive that’s come from it is that my kids became very good at keeping on top of their own schedules and telling me where I needed to be / do.

I never kicked off about anything though. I always took the stance…it’s probably me that’s missed it. Sounds right.

I also think I also played an important role in the school. I was the parent that everyone could feel better than 🤣 I made everyone else feel like they were high functioning and super organised / contributing / engaged. In comparison to me at least. A role I was happy to fulfil as I’m not a particularly competitive parent.

I'm not sure I did. Do you have any examples of me doing that, other than what was clearly a joke?

Whoa weird and emotional thread!

1. Never heard of mufti before? Sounds like a nickname for 1970s style pubes!

2. Some people have quite a lot going on at home. Elderly parents, work stress and health or money worries.

Personally, the PTA was always the absolute last in my priority list.

However I did donate art / craft supplies and books (when DC had finished with them!) directly to the school 💐

Haha I thought it was just me who instantly thought of the word “muff” when I read mufti 😂🤣