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?

It was always ‘non uniform day’ when I was at school and my kids were at school in NW England. However, I still know what mufti means and I’m surprised a lot of others don’t.

I am 39 years old and have used this word since I was 4. I have never, ever ever heard even a whisper about this word being offensive.
Our headteacher is Muslim. Several PTA members, who come up with ideas for, organise, plan and send out communications about the events are not white and/or from former "colonial" countries. There are are mix of families from all over the world who's children attend the school.
Noone. Not one breathing living soul give a shiny shit about the word "mufti".

All I can see is it means non uniform but why does it mean that?
Like originally where how is the word mufti connected to non-uniform?

See my comment above

Can't say Im surprised because my sister is the exact same. She doesn't read any school emails or texts. Doesn't go on the parent portal. She doesn't even know when they are off half the time and I always tell her now so she doesn't send the kids.

I've never heard it called that, but I know the term 'mufti' for being out of uniform because I'm a late Boomer/Generation Jones and knew people who were in the army.

In Fife, I only ever hear it being referred to as 'Non-Uniform Day'.

Yeah, I just read it.

It doesn’t change my view in the slightest: all mentioned in that post (including the Muslim headteacher) are pretty ignorant and lacking in inquisitive nous, having unquestioningly adopted the term, clearly patently unaware of its connotations.

It's a military term, but I don't know the etymology. Middle eastern, perhaps?

It's really not that deep.

I'm in my thirties too and the first time I've heard the term mufti day is from this thread.

Maybe she just didn't realize it was that day. People do have more bloody important things going on in their lives

Yes - I imagine it’s not, for someone who seems to have the view that mothers should automatically assume responsibility for this admin, rather than fathers.

Weird that your browser has access to Mumsnet but not Google. How difficult that must make life.

The British Army in India were familiar with mufti scholars. When not required to wear uniform the soldiers often wore local clothing and considered themselves to look like mufti. Mufti therefore came to mean not in uniform for soldiers and from there spread to mean commonly mean out of any uniform.

Its important to remember not everyone has the same hours in the day.
I've friends who work full time at 37h and full time at 45h per week, or people who say they work but only do 15h per week. Professionals who have training on top of those hours etc
Some people have longer commutes, or other caring responsibilities or other hobbies and clubs.
And frankly not everyone cares about the PTA and their ridiculous events. Schools and PTAs seem to love coming up with ridiculous reasons to waste people's time, like who on earth would want to spend their time hanging around their kids school.

From Wikipedia:

The word originates from the Arabic "Mufti" (مفتي), meaning an Islamic scholar. It has been used by the British Army since 1816 and is thought to derive from the vaguely Eastern style dressing gowns and tasselled caps worn by off-duty officers in the early 19th century. Yule and Burnell's Hobson-Jobson (1886) notes that the word was "perhaps originally applied to the attire of dressing-gown, smoking-cap, and slippers, which was like the Oriental dress of the Mufti".[2]
Another possibility for the origin of the use of the word “mufti” in the context of school clothes is that the word is taken from Urdu, in which mufti means free, originated from Persian.

@WearyAuldWummanthis has been explained already about 5 times on the thread.

Because it's not that important to them . Simple as.

I've heard of the term but only because they talked about it on the radio once. I think it was Jason Manford mentioned Mufti day and his colleague was like "what the heck is that?!" and he's like "you've never heard of mufti day?!" so ever since then I assumed it was a Manchester/northern term. Never used it in the Midlands when I was growing up that's for sure!

It's called 'selective memory', she can remember the mufti but not remember to make some kind of contribution to the event. There are a lot like that.

Yep. Sadly this is true

If I'd have got that email from the school, I'd have stuck "no uniform/take bottle" in the calendar, and that ignored/forgot the bit about the fayre, because school fayres are shit, and my DC don't care about them.

(I appreciate that they are fundraisers, but i honestly think the pta would raise more if they sent out a justgiving link, and didn't expect people to suffer through an event to make their donation)

Why the sarcasm?
The woman will have had notificaations from the school and her child will probably have talked about it.

And frankly not everyone cares about the PTA and their ridiculous events. Schools and PTAs seem to love coming up with ridiculous reasons to waste people's time, like who on earth would want to spend their time hanging around their kids school.
People who appreciate that school budgets are very tight and that PTA volunteers work really hard to put on events that are both fun for the children and raise vital funds to allow for lots of activities and equipment to be purchased that otherwise wouldn't?

Sorry our raising money to cover tablets, subscriptions to additional online language resources, theatre company visits, a new SEN room etc is so annoying for you.

Our work used to put notices of the back of toilet doors. So you’d think over the course of a week the average person might have taken note…..nope, still people who were oblivious to such things! TBH these days it’s all done digitally and I never read half of it.

Because it's fun for the kids and it helps raise money for the school that then benefits the kids?