school takin the mick!

[Tortington]

i posted a while back about how the primary school that my twins attend seem to be taking the mick with regards to the money they want from parents and the final straw came when i didnt allow my children to go on a trip to london because i basically thought it was a piss take. i then received a letter home which was very nicely phrased but basically said " dear mum, if you are too poor to send your child on trips let us know and we will pay for them"

after enquiries of the informal kind i realised i was the only mum to get this letter and it was specifically because of this trip issue

i then wrote a letter as i firmly believe you can write and re write letters beofre you send them and get your point accross where as face to face meetings may be controvertal.

my daughter cried and didnt want to take the letter in - she even left it on the back seat of the car ( she knows the strength of my wrath and was embarrassed)

so i made an appointment for a couple of days later and went to see the head

i told the head i thought the school was rather expensive but what bothered me most was that the school was EXPECTING parents to be able to cough up the money
the head said - but we have the fund to help you
i said - any other mother but me would send their child on this trip, and pay in full but you are not to know whether that child then gets an evening meal.
i chose not to send my children as i couldnt afford it - and my pride will ot allow me to come to the school in effect begging for money i will not do it
she said - what do you propose we do?
i said - not so many expensive trips there are other ways of educating children than paying extortionate fees to go to some maritime museum

but we have the fund to help parents that cannot afford it - she said again

the conversation went no where and i could tell that i wasnt getting through,
i even explained that in my line of work if i sned letters out to the people i deal with saying - i hae organised something - however we have a fund if youa re too poor - my managers would clamp down on me regarding equal opps alone - whereas with this approach you this you are providing equal opps your not

so i left without getting anywhere

but its blood boiling time

i paid £60 EACH FOR MY KIDS TO GO ON A TRIP and to stay overnight, but by now my kidsdidnt want to stand out as the kids whose mum couldnt aford it - even if i did explain about principles - other kids dont see principles
so blow me i pay it
i get seriously skint and pay £120 out of my monthly budget - am still fuming

now the cheeky b*stards have told us we have to take them there and pick them up

no coach is included
i shit u not

now despite the money issue - which am still fuming about ( and because during said conversation before she said the school doesnt ask for much - but add it all up it so does especially with twins)

on top of that i am fuming that after paying this money - the school assumes i can get the time off work at this short notice to do this - to take them and pick them up

an sick to the back teeth - the headmistress is on maternity and i just want to scream at someone
am thinking of writing a letter to the PTA can i do that? will it be read out at the meeting?

oh and cringe of cringes when i look back on the meeting i was saying phrases like " i could afford it you know i'm not poor it was the principle" for goodness sake it was obvious she didnt believe me.

but add it all up with xmas fairs, easter fairs, raffle tickets, summer fetes, school trips, and the often donations yu get asked for

everytime my kids bring a letter home - i say " how much do they want now?"

Are your sons at primary school, custardo? I have never been faced with a £60.00 fee for school trips yet, thank goodness. It sounds an extortionate amount. Is this just for one night away? And with twins, you have to cough up double. That's serious money. And you say you have to drive them there - what - all the way to london?

There's meant to be a fund at our school for trips if parents don't pay, but I can see where you are coming from - why should anyone have to stand up and ask for this in the first place?

There's lots of fundraising at our school, so I know what you mean about emptying purses all the time. Most things I don't object to, especially if the school or my son only who directly profit from my donation. But not all money has such a defined recipient. The thing that got me was when my son arrived home with a drinks coaster. He had designed a picture for it. He was pleased as punch with the coaster, but I had to pay £2.00 to keep it. We then had the opportunity to pay another £8.00 for the whole set or £7.00 for a mouse mat with his design on. The money goes mostly to the profit-making company who organise this activity in schools, but a donation gets made to the school as well, so you have a double guilt trip - both your child and the school want your cash, but you know the drinks coaster company is getting the lions share.

PS I think it's really not on for the head to assume that every child will go on this school trip. When this sort of money is at stake, shouldn't the trip be presented as optional? If the school made it clear that pupils who didn't go would be catered for in school as normal, then there would be less stigma attached to staying behind. At my son's school children sometimes do not go on trips and they just join another class for a day.

Oh, Custardo, a woman after my own heart! I too get seriously dischuffed with so-called educational trips and some of them are indeed very expensive. My dd is at senior school and they wanted us to pay 350gbp for a trip abroad, plus 250GBP spending money!!!!!!!!!! As we were planning an expensive 'once in a life time' holiday to the US that year, we just said no, though I suspect we'd have said no, anyway. It's a great deal of money.

They come up with arguments like 'It gives less well off children the chance to go abroad' etc, which I'm afraid I countered by saying their entire family could probably have a camping holiday abroad for that sort of money. Teachers have even admitted to me that the educational value is pretty limited, which undermines the entire thing.

Our tiny primary school at home has got over the constant shelling out of cash by making it possible for parents to give a gbp10 donation each term and that covers all their costs. It was decided democratically at a meeting and has worked extremely well. The pressure has been lifted and everyone can join in.

I'd definitely report your concerns to the PTA - you can't be the only parent who find this a burden and an imposition. Good luck.

As Suedonim said, you can't be the only parent who thinks it's a bit much, and yes, I'd definately write to the PTA, and even the governors. Especially, as you have already had a meeting with the head and got nowhere.
I also object to forking out for extras, our twins are at Day Nursery, when they have a trip, we end up paying for the trip, the day at nursery,a packed lunch and are asked to accompany them (so a days leave as well).We did it once, worked out what it cost us and never bothered again !!!!
They also do funraising events, usually for nursery funds, (as if we're not paying through the nose already), but a recent one, is a pijama day to raise money for some, "Horse sanctuary". I've decided this is just too much, I'll send the boys wearing their PJ's, so they will not be "different", but refuse to collect any sponsor money, and have thrown the forms they were given away !!! Well, to be more truethful, DH screwed it into a ball, while muttering about where they could stick it !!!
I think your perfectly right, why should you keep having to fork out all the time, and made to feel mean or poor when you don't !!!!

Dd has just come home with a school trip, but the cost is only £10, and that has a coach to take them there and back. It is not an overnight trip. They have been told that the limit on spending money for the trip is £2. That seems about right to me.

What an dreadful situation!.....I think I would write/contact your Govenors - either the Chairperson or ask who there is who has specific responsibilites for curriculum type activities.
Good luck!

jac34 I remember being most unimpressed with DD's nursery/daycase holding fundraising events. We paid fees - AFAIWC, they should be buying equipment from that. It rubbed even more because the owners moved in near to us, spent a fortune on doing up their house - about 50k, judging by the amount of building work - and swan around in jags, etc!

Oh Custardo, I sympathise too. When I was working I really objected to the time consuming things and wished I could just donate some cash instead which would have had the same effect but no, they would rather I made a cake to sell than get a donatation of the £2.00 they were going to sell it for. Now I'm not working it's the money I worry about although our school hasn't asked for any huge amounts yet. They did send a note about one trip though saying the cost was 'optional' BUT if anyone couldn't afford to go then the whole trip would be cancelled and no-one would go! Guilt trip or what?!!! So I think your school's fund is probably better! Anyway, we paid but I think it was £10 or something and it was the zoo, did fit into their theme for the week and they did put a limit on spending money of £2. Anyway, I think we all know why you're irritated. I wish our school would tell us at the beginning of term what they're going to ask for and put a limit on it like the £10 mentioned here.

£60 sounds ridiculous to me, especially if you have to take them and pick them up. This is to London from Brighton area isn't it? Surely travel + entrance isn't this much? £120 sounds a ridiculous amount. I can only think that writing to the PTA and/or the governors is the way to see if you can change their policies. Hey, can't you GO to a PTA meeting? Surely parents are allowed? Then you can ensure your point is made. There should be a parent governor who is there to put parents' point of view so could you approach them? If you're working it's completely out of order to assume that you're free to provide a taxi service at short notice (or any notice, actually!) too. Let us know how you get on.

www we have that letter on a regular basis!! With 4 (3 secondary & 1 primary) we seem to get a letter demanding money with menaces almost every week. If it isn't trips it's sponsored bounces, or fetes, or non-uniform day. The only time we were free of this was when 2 of them were (dare I say it?) at private school!

The children are well aware of what is going on. I was quite shocked when I found out that DS1 deliberately doesn't bring letters home because he'd decided we "couldn't afford it". I explained to him that actually I'D decide whether we could afford it- poor soul had done himself out of several trips by then. DS3 was the only child in his school who didn't go to the panto at Xmas & we were asked to keep him home (again his decision, but based on cost..).

Like custardo, I don't want to ask for money from the fund because actually we aren't THAT poor, and there are other families who genuinely couldn't find the money, while we could if pushed. It's the PRINCIPLE of the thing. As DH says, in our day it was one trip at the end of the school year to somewhere cheap- in his case (Kent) a farm & in mine (Portsmouth) round the harbour & down to the shore to study rockpools (which I remember fondly to this day), or a picnic with games on Butser Hill. Why is it always something that costs a small fortune?

When I was in school, we had one trip at the end of the school year(as you've said tallulah), but we had a choise of about 3 different ones.
But as my school took kids from many surrounding villages, including quite a few, pretty poor areas, they always had a variety of walking trips,(happening on the same days as the expensive ones) to interesting places in the local area.
All you had to bring was a packed lunch, and if you had free school dinners, the school provided the lunch.
Some people went on more than one of the "expensive" trips, but most people went on one,and then also went on a couple of the walking ones. This way nobody stayed home, and everyone got a few days out of school.
I think schools should be more, aware that not all parents can afford theses expenses, but don't like to ask for financial help.
Also, I think it's different than when we were kids, most families do go abroad theses days, so children do get to know what other counties are like.And I think, there are alot of people now, who would rather their children did not go away too much with the school, as there are questions over proper supevision !!

seious back peddling here! remember though the principle!!!!!!!

i was in a rant and as so pften happens was therefore incoherent.

i was mixing two school trips up as examples

so the twins are going away for 2 nights and 3 days - not to london to a place about 10 miles away - still it may well have been london as i have to take the time out of work,

taking them and bringing them back has never been mentioned until last week. they go next week!

so to give the school credit - we got told about this trip before xmas - just before xmas - when we were skint buying pressies! - but still 3 months full notice is good so we paid a deposit of half. january comes we get a letter saying that they are going to some maritime museum. the cost was 14 quid or something - which tome means 28 JUST AFTER XMAS so i said no

the head sent me a letter of concern becuase - i read the trip letter saw the pound signs and thought cheeky bloody gits. however it was a trip which was part of the curriculum - and therefore was a "voluntary payment" so i asked the head if i sent a small amount of money in and said they could go on this trip would it suffice she said " erm..no actually we would prefer it if you asked for you children to have a subsidy from this fund so we know where we are up to!"

so then in that situation we are back to the Pride issues again, equal opps, and principles.

if the school could give me a list of trips they are planning to put on and which are curriculum and which are not - i can make an informed decision and adjust my budget accordingly.

but i had already put a £60 deposit down on the two night away trip to be asked for more money for another trip - which i couldnt now afford - but which it turns out would have been more beneficial.grrrrrr

pr.
dischuffed - is my new word is fab!

Fortuneatly I am not in this position just yet, but my dd pre-school sent home a letter about a day trip to the zoo which would cost about £10 (not a huge amount) but we pay £17 a year for an anual pass to the zoo, so I resented paying £4.50 to get her in, another £3.50 per child topay for an adult between 2 , plus £2 on the coach when the zoo is less than 5 miles from home and we go almost every week anyway!!

I explained this to the head and she said that we were not alone, virtually every child in the area has a gold card to the zoo, so they weren't doing that trip after all!!!

I felt so mean, we would have paid if all teh others were going, but just for a jolly, which is pretty well free for us normally seemed a bit daft!

I don't yet have kids in school, so this is making me quite nervous!

I think it's totally out of order to arrange a trip that costs so much and not make it toatally optional. I used to work in a secondary school, and once or twice a year there would be a trip to France or Germany. The trip always cost under £100, and this was for 3 nights away in France, plus entry to eg Disneyland Paris, so £60 for a trip to London seems comparitively expensive to me. The trip were always just for a coach load eg 30-40 pupils, and were open to 2 year groups eg yr 7&8 or 9&10, so there were 30-40 places available for approx. 400 pupils. It was 1st come 1st served, and as so may couldn't go it wasn't an issue of anyone being singled out as being too poor or anything like that. If anyone wanted to go but didn't get a space they had 1st dibs at the next trip. Everyone seemed to think it was pretty fair.

As for the educational value, I agree, minimal. OTOH it wasn't just the foreign experience, but the experience of being away from home, getting along with other people, being a bit more responsible/independant/ sometimes free from the often over-burdening responsibilites at home.
Also the staff that organised these trip often were under pressure from 'the management' to provide the trips, they took an enormous amount of work to organise ~& got little thanks at the end of the day. I suspect if you've heard any less-than-positive comments from the teachers, they probably don't want to do it either!

Finally, with reagrd to the school fund, it's a tough one, I mean while you don't ewant to & don't feel like you should have to go cap in hand, nevertheless, if the fund is available, you can see the scghool's point of view of offering it. There must be an acceptable way round this?

I agree. I'm not keen on school trips and would prefer it if they left travel education to parents. I'm not keen on them being taken hither and yon and so many of our friends are teachers, all with tales to tell of children in their care getting lost, absconding, or coming home alive by the skin of their teeth ............ NOOOO!!!!! It's not for me. I'll plead poverty when the time comes and if that doesn't work, throw gigantic sickies with bribes and special holidays in lieu for the children. Pah!

In the school I work in, we try and keep the cost of any trip to about £5, including the coach, or we know that lots of parents just couldn't afford it. You have to plan carefully and be creative with the trips.

I second your rant custardo and my ds is only 4.5 yrs old! It is the annoying assumptions that I find so annoying. Dh missed ds's Christmas concert 'cos they did not botheer to tell us the dates etc until about 3 weeks before the event and DH had a work meeting that he could not miss. It could have just as easily been me that had an uncancellable work meeting.

The thing is that the schools know about the changes in times, proposed school trips, parents evening much earlier than than they bother telling parents about and it seriously p**s me off. Why not send a newsletter with dates for the diary (incl early pick up dates, parents evenings,school trips etc) at the start of the school term/year and then a more detailed note nearer the time?

I'm shocked that private day nurseries are fund-raising for equipment. Surely this can't be right.

I got 2 days notice to talk to my ds's teacher about his report. Unsurprisingly, niether of us could go as we both work full-time!! Was I supposed to bring my own class along too???

i would be interested to now you views on the "poor" fund

should parents have to ask for a subsidy for a trip ?- i think this option is humiliating and may deter people from applying.

is there another option? i would hate to confront the school without a solution

i agree with lara, regrds schools being creative.

honestly you wouldnt believe the middle class suburbia that constitutes most of the children in the school. where i used to live trips were very rare - no one could afford it, school knew this and didnt arrange it, i think this school relies on its fairly affluent parents

i therefore have come to the conclusion that the school assumes everyone can pay these amounts. i resent it. i resent being made to feel second class. i resent my children having to go to another class for the day, as i cant afford the trip and dont want to beg for money.

this is the last trip. i will boycott the rest and send a letter to school everytime i do so.

i dropped them off today they were so excited am sure they will have the best time.
i was late for work and i had a supervision!

i have to pick them up on friday when i will be at a meeting 110 miles away and have to leave at 2pm to pick them up at 4!

however views on poor fund and solutions much appreciated ta

custardo, you are right, it isn't nice for the children or the parents to have to ask for funding. The schools really have no idea about individual family's financial situation and so I think they should use the funding available to ensure that the cost of trips to all parents are as low as possible - ie the whole trip should be subsidised.

Why not follow the church collection method? People put money in envelopes so no one knows how much they are giving.

The school suggests a figure for contribution, but parents simply give money in a sealed and unnamed envelope. So you could give 10p if you wanted and no one would be any the wiser. Some of the more affluent parents might decide to give a higher than suggested figure as well. If the total amount was not enough for the trip, extra money could be taken from the emergency school trip fund.

If the schools are being run efficiently and properly by the local education board and by the governers etc. then there should never be a need to ask for more than a small amount when these trips come up.

I do think it bad though that for trips where only certain people get to go on them (such as exchange trips to France etc.) that this sort of 'Poor' fund be used to pay for all of them as it should be a voluntary thing.

I also think all compulsary trips should be paid for by the school. If it is part of the sylabus then the school should do a deal with the place or places being visited to get a great rate.

I like Tigermoth's idea of the unnamed envelopes (and presumably separate consent forms).

A friend's children used to go to a school which drew its children from two quite financially diverse areas. Whenever a trip was planned, the letter made it clear that some families may struggle to pay and it would be appreciated if those that could afford it contributed extra on top of their own child's ticket. Prob worded a lot better than that though.

The plain envelope might be an excellent idea in principle, but you might well find that the more afluent parents would refuse to play the game and pay extra. Some parents have a sort of,'It is the schools idea to take them, let them pay for it' attitude. It shouldn't happen, but it does.