Pre-school parent rota - charging parents for no-shows

[ponygirl]

Our pre-school has just (re-)introduced a parent rota system and we have instituted a fine for parents who do not show up for their rota-ed sessions. Our understanding was that other pre-schools operate this system, but a parent has rung our chair today and claimed we are breaking the law.

Does anyone know where we stand on this?

I'm happy to help out at anything I possibly can - mainly because I'm a nosey cow.

Daytime stuff I just generally can't do because I have a baby and can't take him with me. He doesn't go to nursery adn I have nobody to look after him (although Mum did visit to look after him so I could do the infant Xmas party in December ).

Dh could take annual leave but he already uses up most of his leave so that I can work (I'm freelance but full time SAHM so I can only work in evenings/weekends and sometimes it's not enough).

I love helping (am on PTA - yes despite full-time SAHM and freelance market analyst) and will do when I can but would feel very annoyed if I was on a rota, obliged, or else fined. That's just not on.

Is there some confusion here between pre-school, playgroup and other extra-curricular activities like Brownies or Cubs? Both ds's went to pre-school and there was never any pressure on parents to help out. They were welcomed if they wanted to help out but there was certainly no automatic assumption that you would, or any rota in place. If there had been, I would have had to find another pre-school as I was working fulltime and when older ds was there I would have had to drag the younger one along - if that would even be allowed. Like a couple of other people here, other peoples' kids irritate me most of the time and I can't imagine I would have done a good job if I had been required to be there.

It's also naive and somewhat arrogant to say it's only once in a blue moon so people who work or have younger siblings should be able to take leave, arrange other childcare etc. It may be only once every few months but if e.g. you work you have to add that morning/afternoon to all the other times you have to take off work to attend the nativity play, cover a child's illness, attend a hospital appt etc and it's just all too much.

With more optional activities like e.g. Cubs, I think parents have to be more prepared to help out but I wouldn't like to think that my son couldn't attend if I was genuinely not in a position to help out. Neither ds does anything like this at the moment but if they did and I couldn't volunteer for the meetings, I'd certainly try to help out in other ways, doing posters, letters etc at home or helping out at weekends for instance.

Also just wondering how on earth you would implement this - if you levied a fine on a parent and they refused to pay, what action would you take? Sending the baliffs in?! Or if, as happened to me this week, I had an emergency docs appt for ds2 which resulted in him nearly being admitted to hospital on Wed and that had been my day to help out at pre-school, would I have had to provide a doctors certificate to prove that I was not shirking? Or a note from the AA man if my car broke down? The more I think about it, the more bizarre the whole thing seems.

why a rota any way? is this place a money making place? its not a mother and toddler group - you cant leave your kids - so its pre- school or nursery - either they have a good enough business plan to be sustainable or they haven't i understand not why paretns are being bullied into becomming involved into helping if they do not wish to.

i could understand it more if it was akin to brownies - but this place must surely be a business?

how about those who simply cant afford it - or afford to take a day off work in their highly paid cleaning job

did i miss the answer to the question " what aobut those with younger children?"

you have to then find childcare for your childcare?

supposing i said fuck it - am not paying then what? would the nursery take me to court - or expel toddler?

surley the chucking out of a kid whose mum couldnt pay the fine OR do the rota if not morally objectionable then maybe against the law or at least the parent may be able to take legal action.

if someone has a rocket up their arse and sees a solicitor and they were not told of this arrangement before joining nursery - in other words its not a condition of nursery placement - i fear there would be some legal grounds to take this up on, or parent could tell them to feck off.

pisses me off the assumption that everyone can just take oh just 7 hours in a blue moon.

thats a day off work - a day you work so very very hard for - a day you save along with the rest - so if you are very fortunate you can have a lovely holiday or if your not so fortunate you can use it as time to look after your kids in school holidays,

then there are those days that crop up
who can just nip out of work for an hour to meet with a teacher?

most people have to take half a days leave

who can just nip out of work to go to a doctors appointment? - no, half a days work to book off

doctors appointment - multiply that by 4 people - yourself and three kids. - even if half the time you are lucky enough to get the rotweiller receptionist to give to an appointment after the working day is finished - thats still a lot of time.

dentist - how many people can afford to say to their precious nhs dentist - " nah sorry don't want that 10.30 appointment - can't do " no - there is very little room for manouver - half a day - multiply by four - divide by half incase you can get someone else to do it for you - you are lucky enough to have a partner who can take half a day or a relative who can do it for you. some are just not that lucky.

your kid is sick - gets sent home from school at least one kid per term.

its hard enough saying to your boss " scuse me Mr. igotnokids, dya mind, my ds has just twisted her ankle in PE, school want me to collect her immediatley." as well as pre booking the doctors and dentists appointments where you can (i can't prebook doctors appointment is a race to the phone at 8am that morning) however supposing you can, you do so to cover your work, be diligent , dont leave your team members in the poo. then you have to book another day off becuase nursery ( pre-school whatever) say you have to do a rota washing plates of crying brats?
whilst your collegues are thinking " piss taker - never in that girl, not pulling her weight shes always off with her kids i have three, all get sick, shit- i get sick, someone get hurt at school, teacher wants to see me regarding poor performance, bad attitude etc, then you come on mumsnet to be slated for working all the hours god sends ( well not you personally obviously - its someones sister) you dont love your kids how can you leave you lovely innocents to go to work - errr gas bill honey.

if you dont work and collect benefits your a no good lazy mo fo waste of my tax money.

lifes damn well fking hard enough for some people - why make it more complicated?

christ

Wow Ponygirl, I hope you aren't upset by the replies.

CUSTY (and everyone else) Having been on preschool committee I can categorically say that I'm pretty sure most have absolutely crap business plans. They are partly and sometimes even mostly run by untrained & unqualified volunteers with a dismally small budget & yet expected to meet professional standards or face closure. This is the situation for the vast majority of playgroups in England; under-funded, very poorly paid staff, etc. If you want a good business plan so you don't have to use your precious holiday time from work to spend time in your child's preschool then you all should campaign for tax rises to pay to fund preschool education properly. IN THE MEANTIME I can completely understand why Ponygirl's committee has taken this step...

DS1's old playgroup had this policy BUT they didn't enforce it very hard. Might be best compromise.

... Morning all!

Sorry I had to post and run last night, a rare evening spent with dh. I didn't expect so many replies. My first thread of over 100 posts!

Just to clarify a few things: the pre-school is a community playgroup (not allowed to use that p-word any more apparently). There are three qualified staff employed and it is run by a committee of volunteer parents. It runs three days a week offering two 2.5 hour sessions plus a lunch club in the middle. The pre-school is described in all the literature and advertising as being run by parents for parents, and it is heavily stressed that without the support of parents the pre-school will have to close. If parents don't want to do the support bit, then they are welcome to take their children elsewhere, but I know for a fact that the two nearest pre-schools in neighbouring villages also run parent rotas and at least one has a fine system: they charge £15 for a missed rota to pay for a replacement, we charge £5. One of the fundamental principles behind the pre-school is that the fees could be kept low because parents helped (we charge £4 for a 2.5 hour session to non-funded children). Maybe those were different times when parents had more time but less money, but I doubt it's changed so much that we could impose a dramatic hike in fees without losing everyone. Every year we have a nightmare getting committee members: at one point we only had four which wasn't enough in relation to the number of parents (under the consitution) but you can't make people join. It is really clear what the situation is, but the majority of parents don't want to know. And it does get up my nose that people don't want to help and it's always the same small group of reliable but increasingly fed-up people who get called upon. And I'm not for a minute thinking of working mothers, or those with dependants they can't bring. (Btw we don't rota pg women and those with small babies, though younger children are welcome.) In practice, we don't have these sorts of parents: working parents use nurseries; as we are sessional care only three days a week we tend to have part-time parents or non-working parents. I think the fine came in out of frustration not with parents who couldn't help, but those who won't. This is a village where everyone knows everyone's business, so we know the difference.

I first joined the pre-school committee about 4.5 years ago and the parent rota was in place then, but not the fine. The fine was instituted a year or so later because we had such a problem with no-shows. As far as I remember, there was only one incident when it should have been enforced, but when it came to it, we (the committee) didn't. About 18 months ago the pre-school was pretty much full for all sessions and the playleaders that we had at the time wanted to disband the parent rota because they felt that coercing parents was of no benefit to either the staff or (particularly) the children and wanted to encourage volunteers. In the four terms that followed there was a calendar for volunteers, parents were asked to volunteer both verbally and in newsletters. A grand total of one parent came in voluntarily. Now, numbers of funded children (which account for the bulk of our funding) have fallen dramatically, which is why we have reinstated the parent rota. We used to have four paid staff, now we have three plus a parent. We are legal to run with three staff, but it doesn't give the staff the opportunity to a lot of the things they would like to: small-group activities, rising fives, trips to the library, plus all the bureacracy that Ofsted obliges them to do: observations, scrapbooks etc etc.

I would love to know what the alternative might be. I'm not comfortable with the fine concept (it wasn't my idea, honest!) and I suspect it's unenforceable but I don't know how we get parents to support us. We need them there. At our last committee meeting where we confirmed new staffing arrangements, our pre-school leader was going to resign if we didn't allow three staff plus a parent, and if she goes we really are up a certain creek without a certain implement.

I hope this is coherent: I suspect it's a bit stream-of-consciousness, sorry . I've tried to cover all the points that were raised in the thread and will try and stay on top of it now. Thank you to all those who posted, it's given plenty of food for thought and thanks too for the few who were in support and made me feel less lonely!

... Morning all!

Sorry I had to post and run last night, a rare evening spent with dh. I didn't expect so many replies. My first thread of over 100 posts!

Just to clarify a few things: the pre-school is a community playgroup (not allowed to use that p-word any more apparently). There are three qualified staff employed and it is run by a committee of volunteer parents. It runs three days a week offering two 2.5 hour sessions plus a lunch club in the middle. The pre-school is described in all the literature and advertising as being run by parents for parents, and it is heavily stressed that without the support of parents the pre-school will have to close. If parents don't want to do the support bit, then they are welcome to take their children elsewhere, but I know for a fact that the two nearest pre-schools in neighbouring villages also run parent rotas and at least one has a fine system: they charge £15 for a missed rota to pay for a replacement, we charge £5. One of the fundamental principles behind the pre-school is that the fees could be kept low because parents helped (we charge £4 for a 2.5 hour session to non-funded children). Maybe those were different times when parents had more time but less money, but I doubt it's changed so much that we could impose a dramatic hike in fees without losing everyone. Every year we have a nightmare getting committee members: at one point we only had four which wasn't enough in relation to the number of parents (under the consitution) but you can't make people join. It is really clear what the situation is, but the majority of parents don't want to know. And it does get up my nose that people don't want to help and it's always the same small group of reliable but increasingly fed-up people who get called upon. And I'm not for a minute thinking of working mothers, or those with dependants they can't bring. (Btw we don't rota pg women and those with small babies, though younger children are welcome.) In practice, we don't have these sorts of parents: working parents use nurseries; as we are sessional care only three days a week we tend to have part-time parents or non-working parents. I think the fine came in out of frustration not with parents who couldn't help, but those who won't. This is a village where everyone knows everyone's business, so we know the difference.

I first joined the pre-school committee about 4.5 years ago and the parent rota was in place then, but not the fine. The fine was instituted a year or so later because we had such a problem with no-shows. As far as I remember, there was only one incident when it should have been enforced, but when it came to it, we (the committee) didn't. About 18 months ago the pre-school was pretty much full for all sessions and the playleaders that we had at the time wanted to disband the parent rota because they felt that coercing parents was of no benefit to either the staff or (particularly) the children and wanted to encourage volunteers. In the four terms that followed there was a calendar for volunteers, parents were asked to volunteer both verbally and in newsletters. A grand total of one parent came in voluntarily. Now, numbers of funded children (which account for the bulk of our funding) have fallen dramatically, which is why we have reinstated the parent rota. We used to have four paid staff, now we have three plus a parent. We are legal to run with three staff, but it doesn't give the staff the opportunity to a lot of the things they would like to: small-group activities, rising fives, trips to the library, plus all the bureacracy that Ofsted obliges them to do: observations, scrapbooks etc etc.

I would love to know what the alternative might be. I'm not comfortable with the fine concept (it wasn't my idea, honest!) and I suspect it's unenforceable but I don't know how we get parents to support us. We need them there. At our last committee meeting where we confirmed new staffing arrangements, our pre-school leader was going to resign if we didn't allow three staff plus a parent, and if she goes we really are up a certain creek without a certain implement.

I hope this is coherent: I suspect it's a bit stream-of-consciousness, sorry . I've tried to cover all the points that were raised in the thread and will try and stay on top of it now. Thank you to all those who posted, it's given plenty of food for thought and thanks too for the few who were in support and made me feel less lonely!

Sorry about the double post!

Ponygirl, thanks for the clarification. That makes a lot more sense now. I always thought pre-school and Playschool were kind of two different things with the former being more formal, regulated and requiring less voluntary input. didn't realise you could no longer use the "Play" word.

If it is made clear on all the literature etc that the group exists only because people need to help out, then that's a whole different issue. It still doesn't help someone who works full-time and perhaps doesn't have any other local pre-schools or who has other genuine rasons for not helping out. If this had been my situation when ds2 was attending pre-school, I would have had to hold my hands up at the beginning of the year and say "Here, have my 20 pounds in fines to cover my non-attendance and so you can make arrangements in advance for that day(s)". I wouldn't take a half-day off work to cover it because there just aren't enough days to cover the emergencies as it is. Have already had two half-days this week to cover tonsillitus. Happy New Year!

Still think the fine system is unworkable, though. Either you fine everybody regardless of reasons, or you make a rod for your own back of deciding which reasons are acceptable (or not) for absence.

Hi Ponygirl..
I think a lot of the reply's on here got confused with a pre-school and a day nursery... and thought they had to be in charge
Most Mums working all day would not use a 2-1/2 hour childcare system!

I also work in a pre-school and we've had trouble getting committee members in the past.

We don't have any parent volunteers... probably just as well!

Could you implement a system whereby the fees are increased slightly, but if parents volunteer then the fees will be reduced by a certain amount for each session they volunteer for? Maybe they get the reduction from next term's fees?

not read all the thread. Our local one operates in a similar way, phrsed as an additional fee if you don't volunteer. I wasn't at all offended by the idea. If you phrased it differently, i.e. you get money off if you do volunteer, I think that would be better. None of the others had this system though, and I much prefer sending DS1 to a preschool / playgroup where there are no volunteers, though it is a little more on the fees. .

Just to add there is no confusion over pre-school/nursery here as my kids have all attended pre-school, I don't think because its a preschool it makes it any less ludicrous

Just read your clarification post.

BTW - at our local one which has a simialr system, they phrase it as "fees £4 per session if on the rota or pg / baby under 1; fees £5 per session if you don't join the rota". As a working mum (I use grandparents and nanny care and therefore CAN also use sessional daycare but can't volunteer) I would have happily paid the higher rate, which was still cheaper than either of the next villages preschool / playschool places.

TBH, I think the parent-rota thing was the way playgroups started in 1970s, but is becoming outdated in this era of volunteer reluctance and increasingly complex lives. Shame, really.

Loved your post custy [hercules gets all smarmy]

ponygirl - ds2's pre-school is run on similar lines to yours - parent committee etc. We have a voluntary parent rota or you can pay an extra supplement as per squeakycat's post.

volunteers do not do child-interactive stuff, they make the snacks and drinks, serve them, clear away and wash up and also clean up the paints etc.

I'm happy to do this a couple of times a term - as others have said it gives you an insight into what actually goes on in the session.

You're wonderful, Custy.

Zebra, I'm thinking my taxes are too high now.