Should PTA pay for staff training and not be told what the training will be?

[soweneo]

There was a really difficult PTA meeting for our local primary this week. The primary is headed by a very unpopular head and pupil and staff numbers have dropped by about a third in 5 years. Add this in to general decreasing budgets and the school must be very strapped.

The school have now asked the PTA for funding for 'essential staff training' and when some of the PTA asked for clarification the school admin assistant (the only member of staff who came to the meeting) said they can't clarify.

They have also asked for stationary costs, and when a member of the PTA asked if parents could do an amazon or similar wish list instead the school have said that they want a 'pot of money' for stationery instead.

The parents who have been in the PTA for a longer time and used to fundraise for enrichment projects and school trips, science weeks etc feel these requests go against the PTA's aims as listed on the website.

Some of the younger parents, new to fundraising, feel more comfortable about it.

I feel this is more of a leadership issue that needs addressing, but perhaps I am wrong? Whatever it is, the PTA is split down the middle.
The school had already asked for a £10 donation at the beginning of the school year for stationery.

OP you need to get it taken down a you can identify the school

I do like the letter from the head saying
As you will know from the last newsletter of T6 we are asking parents to make a voluntary donation of £10 towards our stationary costs.

Maybe a spelling lesson for the Head could be funded by the PTA?

The ptfa is a charity in its own right. Have a look at the original paperwork.

That's why I suggested a letter, sets out the important stuff in writing. Quote where necessary, harder to argue with

The money will belong to the ptfa and our school asked for specific things that enhanced the ch school life

Shouty parent is absolutely wrong. If you are Parentkind members (assume you are as you’ve got their constitution) you can phone their help line for support.

Agree with other PPs - call ParentKind & get some advice.
It definitely sounds like this new parent/trustee has an agenda & has essentially indicated that they will try to make things difficult.
What they've told you about the legal advice is utter rubbish. The PTA is a separate charity from the school & is responsible for deciding what they spend the money on - the school can ask but cannot demand.

Tbh if it was me & this all gets too nasty - I would probably quit, let the new parents find out for themselves how hard it is to run a PTA, fund what they/the school wants without proper oversight & then report them to the Charity Commission!

The school can request, the PTA doesn't have to agree.
Similarly the PTA can provide but the school doesn't have to use.

She's right that you can't sit on funds indefinitely. They have been raised to be spent.

But that does not mean they must be given to the school for projects which the PTA does not wish to support or which are ultra vires.

If the school does not put forward requests (with business cases and approximate breakdown of costs) that PTA can agree, then you as the PTA need to canvass parents for what 'extras' they would most like to see provided.

It doesn’t around like the pta is being specific

in dds school the pta highlighted what each event was raising money for and the monthly newsletter showed evidence. Eg books, laptops or a garden etc

parents knew explicitly what they were funding for

id have never have contributed to a general lot of funds

Pot

I'm secretary for our PTA and looking back through the minutes, at some point in the past there was a big fallout between the headteacher and PTA. It was something to do with the head trying to steer the pta on what events they could hold. The pta wanted to do a car boot sale and the head said no, it was too common and gave a bad impression of the school 😂. The entire committee resigned in protest and there was no PTA for a few years until that particular head left! The head would not have been able to access the pta funds as parents are signatories and the money can only be used by whole committee agreement.

Your head and the shouty parent are spouting nonsense. They have absolutely no control over the money and are setting themselves up for a fall. They should not be behaving in such a way towards volunteers who give their time and effort.

Our PTA pays for many things that make a difference in the day to day operations of the school, but the pta is very involved in making those decisions. It is not a slush fund for the administration . We have purchased radios to make pickup go more smoothly. That involved research and meetings to make sure the school got what it needed and that a good purchase was made. We did purchase new chairs, a set of special wiggle chairs for every classroom that the school would never be able to work into the classroom regular budget.

I can see something like large amounts stationary coming from Amazon being inefficient, but they should still provide specific details, not just ask for cash, and really, the Amazon wish list is how most small items get purchased.

The whole point of pta is to raise funds for extras for the children directly, not for the running of the school (stationery, phone bill) or staff training or wages. Its for educational visits, treats, end of school year zoo/alton towers day out.

The money is held by and accounted for, by the pta. If the pta cannot explain exactly what they are paying for then don't pay out. £2,500 for training is not explicit enough. Training for what, how to be a cat wrangler? Actually, that might not be a bad idea 😅

@Ponderingwindow We have asked the headteacher 3 times over 5 years if we can do a wish list and each time it was a no. I thought it would be a lovely way for parents who work long hours to feel they can get involved from their desks - I love being able to buy something for the school that is visible.
Each time it has been turned down as the head doesn't like Amazon.

The head doesn't necessarily get to say how you spend.

If the school doesn't put forward acceptable options, then you will have to come up with your own ideas. If they don't want to use a wish list that's fine. Other ways to purchase are available.

HT does not have veto on your activities (though if they will sulk and not use stuff because you are an independent body then they are creating a problem, for you don't want spending to go to waste)

PTA is not a pot for HT to dip in to - it's not the school's money.

Nothing without a business case which shows needs and also why the items are not meant to be covered by school budget (important/essential does not equate to eligible for PTA funding), nothing to be considered without a breakdown of costs and no funds handed over without invoices

As well as 7 years as role holder on committees in primary, I was also treasurer in secondary for 9 years.
For secondary we used to ask departments to put in bids. They had to be clear what they were asking for, how much it would cost, and who / how many pupils it would benefit (e.g. GCSE pupils only, or KS3, or SEN pupils or whatever).
There is no way we would have approved bids for 'training' as far too unspecific and should be part of school's budget anyway.

Back to an EGM for me. Then committee either has backing of parents to resist spending money on this, or it resigns and lets someone else waste it.

I guess ‘training’ could be PTA appropriate but ‘essential training’ has school budget written all over it.

The PTA may very well decide that paying for some specialist training in something like forest school would be a worthwhile way of enhancing the standard curriculum and providing fun activities for the children. But no one is going to describe that as ‘essential training’.

Things that would be essential - safeguarding training, some tedious session on data protection, stuff of curriculum updates, and so on - are just the standard business of running a school and a HT clearly needs to be resourcing them from the school budget.

I’d imagine the chair of the governors would be interested in what ‘essential training’ a head had decided was discretionary enough that it didn’t need to be part of the school budget.

Op you can Google the school using the bit you have cut and paste from that website. I’m going to report that post for you

@MaryGubbins Gosh, thank you, I didn't realise someone could do that as I had taken out the name.

I am a former PTA Chair (in Scotland where I appreciate things are different).

PTAs are bound by their constitution. Ours said that money raised should be for the educational benefit of all the children at the school. So we had to refuse to fund things like leavers' parties or hoodies because there was no educational benefit. You could argue that "training" could have educational benefit, it would depend what the training was for though. We funded first aid training for the older classes every year and teachers got trained as part of that too. Similarly we paid for a specialist to come in and train the teachers on how to best deliver a specific musical theatre package we were paying for.

But the key is clarity and communication - we were lucky in that the Head was completely on board and would give us a wish-list or clear priorities of what she wanted, and why. Then she would also be very good at communicating that back to the parents - so in the newsletter it would say "this week the children enjoyed a planetarium experience, fully funded by the PTA".

The admin person here isn't at fault, @soweneo, she's being put in a tricky position by the Head and other senior members of staff at school. I would request a meeting with the Head or Deputy and just lay out the facts - that you're legally constrained by your constitution, that you can't just hand over money without knowing where it's going to, and that you need to be able to tell parents what it's being spent on. Non-confrontational, we're all working together sort of thing.

Good luck

Hold an EGM and put it to vote but make sure the chair makes it clear what your constitution says.

Your council website should also hold guidance notes and/or have a POC to speak to.... At least in Scotland this is the case.

Also to add - PTA does not legally HAVE to be registered with the Charity Commission or similar body in Scotland.

It depends on annual income and other factors.

It does seem though that your new member is talking absolute bollocks. We had one of those too, when we refused the fund the leavers' hoodies because it was against the constitution there were a couple of trouble makers kicking up a fuss on the facebook group.

Agree a good place to get impartial advice is Parentkind or another governing body.

@FamilyTreeBuilder I felt really sorry for the admin assistant, but the headteacher has never once in 5 years come to a PTA meeting or an event and this year she wouldn't even meet with the two committed members who asked for a meeting to discuss the spending requests

Re community and communication She doesn't go to any PTA events -- not sure heads should as not working hours though. She stopped parent volunteers from the community and doesn't do any of the community events that school previously got involved with (random example, we are rural and there is a scarecrow trail every two years and the children always used to love making a school one to the theme, and it would be displayed at the gate. It seems trivial but in a small rural community with not much going on for kids it was always a highlight. Another example the children always used to pick apples for a fundraiser (PTA) with a local food company. Now the children are not allowed to pick the apples on the school grounds even though the parents still donate apples to raise money for the school. Lots and lots of little community things that have built up to leave some very upset parents)
She doesn't even go to the Year 6 leavers party on the last day of term which the other teachers go to. I feel sad for the teachers and TA's, a few have had to be made redundant due to falling roll call as she is unpopular, and she just doesn't seem to like children.

On the off chance you are in Scotland

connect.scot/resources

@CombatBarbie nope not scotland x

She sounds like a nightmare @soweneo . My parents live in a village with a very small 3 room school and it's the heart of the community and the Head is keen to build links with the village.

She sounds generally useless and you're not going to change it. You can however support the Chair in addressing the "give us the cash and don't ask questions" approahc.