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?

I honestly don’t care tbh. Like I said, the umpteen events advertised by schools every week and the expectation that parents should remember all these events and contribute financially is stressful. You claimed you wasn’t angry at this person turning up to the event and not having a clue about it but you started a whole thread about it and slated her… so yes there is some expectation by you that parents should know and take part in these events. So yes you are coming across as a nasty PTA I’m afraid!

You need to feed this back to your school instead of having a go at us.
More than one person has agreed with you that dress up days are not a good way to do things.
Our school only has a nativity as a dress up day and the PTA provide free costumes. We have Victorian day and a Roman day and all the other stuff, but only the teachers dress up, not the kids.

So what's the answer? We run a variety of mufti days, discos, fairs, sponsored activities and evening quizes. All are entirely voluntary.

Should we just take a couple of years off and stop raising money at all?

None of us want anything to be stressful but it is a fact that if we don't do this stuff then the school has less money and the children miss out on various enrichment activities.

I don’t mind the odd event. But it’s all the time now where there’s something going off and the number of events seem to have increased the more my children have been in school. And now we have this pressure on us to get involved

Oh you again! 🤣

Like I said, there was never any of this shit when I was at school back in the 80s and 90s but all of a sudden the expectation is on the parents to have to fund all this stuff. You can dress it up as voluntarily all you like, but parents feel the pressure of not having their child left out!

Admit I haven't read the whole thread.

Re. The baffled mom, most likely scenario is that her kids have another parent (another mom or a dad) who deals with most of the emails from the school, and didn't think to mention the fayre to her, but did manage to remind her it was mufti?

My husband at the time dealt with most stuff like this, because I worked much longer hours in a more stressful job, and he didn't always remember to tell me about stuff! But he would definitely have remembered if DD needed to be in mufti, or anything like that.

So what's the answer?

The answer is to take it to your MP. It’s not up to parents to spend a fortune on events for the schools. Like I said, we don’t mind the odd one and we don’t mind contributing but it’s something almost every week now and a lot of parents just don’t have the funds to keep this going all the time! How is it that secondary schools can get by without all these events. Ours does a sponsored sports day once a year but that’s it. They also do a Xmas jumper/ non uniform day on the last week of term before Xmas but don’t ask for contributions. It’s not something different every week and relentless draining of parent funds!!

Oh wow! This has turned into a bit of a PTA bashing thread!
Regarding your original question the parents probably just missed the information, we had 2 parents on Friday night shocked that we have an inset day next Thursday! It’s been on every newsletter since September on our list of dates!
Regarding the PTA I understand parents may feel narked to be constantly contributing however school funding is such that schools can barely provide the cake at the moment so the PTA are fundraising to provide the icing and cherry on YOUR child’s education!
Our PTA fund a book bag for every new child, the majority of the cost for us to take the whole school to a panto in December as well as numerous other wonderful opportunities and last year they contributed to buying books for our new reading scheme as school funds couldn’t cover it!
And before we start bashing the government to fund it better you know who gives the government their money to spend? Us the tax payers so in order to better fund schools taxes would go up so you’re still paying! Personally I’d rather fund it through the PTA than tax rises!
Plus PTA members are giving their time voluntarily if you’re not happy with the events their choosing to run maybe you need to join up so you have a say! Said as a member of school staff who is eternally grateful for the wonderful things our PTA help us provide for our children!

Then don’t do it! It is not obligatory. And maybe if more of you didn’t participate the school and PTA would realise it is not worthwhile and change to other fundraising ideas. Again, I agree it’s a weird thing to do as a PTA, there are enough other dress up days in school. All I can think is they see it as a way to spread the cost out for a trip to the whole school rather than just the class/year that is going.
Our PTA only do a couple of non uniform days a year and that is in exchange for donations for raffle/tombola prizes, so can be a very low cost option and some do the non uniform without donating anything! We wouldn’t exclude anyone at any event like this.

Run the school fayre but don’t expect everyone to engage with the same enthusiasm as yourself. I used to do loads of volunteering etc when I didn’t have quite as much on my plate, everyone’s circumstances are different

Secondary schools have far more children so the money they get each year is much higher than us in the smaller infant and junior schools.

Our MP is a great. He's very aware of the difficulties and he does all he can to help. We invite him to our events and he occasionally attends. But he's not going to drop several thousand pounds each into the laps of all the schools in his constituency. It needs to come from central government, and that takes time.

“Then don’t do it! It is not obligatory.”
I have said over and over again you can dress it up as ‘not obligatory’ all you like. Unfortunately parents feel a certain amount of pressure. And yes myself and other parents just stopped doing it, especially when our kids got to Y6 and felt they had grown out of going to school dressed as a crocodile and even found it somewhat embarrassing! But schools still continued to hold these events regardless. They just changed the wording to say “your child can either come dressed up and xyz or in no uniform”. We still had to remember all these special dates regardless. We still had to make contributions.

Exactly this! Certainly don’t create threads slagging parents off because they don’t have the same enthusiasm either

However, secondary schools have probably double/ triple and even quadruple the amount of pupils that a primarily school

But that’s a government issue and not a parent issue.

Then take the non uniform option and pay your £1. Easy, no £20 lay out. If this is an option, what is your problem?

That’s just at one school though. I have said earlier that I have 3 children. All at one point were attending different schools. 2 now in the same secondary school and one still in primary school. This primary school doesn’t budge with their events unfortunately. And like I said, it’s the expectation to remember all these events that’s part of the problem. We just can’t do it if we have more than one child. We are sick and tired of the pressure to remember all these events that’s part we are then expected to donate towards in one way or another.

It’s not about the enthusiasm, just the awareness. How can people be that oblivious of what is going on around them? I said earlier, I’m involved in different groups/committees in my community and the amount of people who don’t know what’s going on even when told directly - several times - amazes me. Then you get the ‘oh, I’d have gone if I’d known’ all while stood right next to poster for said event.

Why is it so hard to remember? Get a calendar and write them down. Many others manage it.

People have already explained many, many times on this thread that if they are a single parent and work full time and have more than one child that are attending different schools and where each school is putting on different events on different days all the time then it’s very easy to not remember all of them. Even if the parents don’t work full time it’s extremely difficult to remember multiple events and being bombarded with messages umpteen times a day. I’m so sorry not all of us have impeccable memory like you!

Yes, I agree, it is.

But sadly, the government are underfunding schools and we are trying to fill a gap.

We are also all parents on the PTA btw. On top of organising the events, we also have to remember them all and send our kids in with whatever donations/mufti or whatever they need. We find people to take our kids round the fayres while we work on the stalls, and hand whoever is taking them round £20 to blow on tat. We feign enthusiasm when our kids win some gigantic freaky-eyed teddy on the tombola that we have to then carry home. We get it. We're just trying to help.

Oh ffs! You’re being ridiculous now. Just stop putting pressure on parents to remember everything. You don’t know what goes on in my life. I have 2 send children that are at hospital appointments multiple times a year, a mother who is battling cancer and a school who expect us to remember multiple events every term!

You’re getting very unfairly bashed here! As a member of school staff we’re so grateful for all you do xx