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?"

This rant is so close to my own heart at the moment! I don't object to paying for trips at all; what I object to is being asked to pay for activities in school eg: a guy coming with a bunch of clothes and playing Romans in the school hall cost £5 per child! We even got asked to pay for the Christingle (orange and coctail sticks!) which DD made in class. It REALLY annoys me and DD also cries if I write letters about it!

My boys' school has got this right. The school has a mixed catchment area, with some very poor/deprived housing areas, so just couldn't get away with the kind of things you describe. Next week every child in school will be doing a fun run, and they are encouraged to get sponsorship. (There is no pressure on the sponsorship, and it is clearly stated that parents are NOT expected to contribute large amounts). This is a one-off once a year event, and the money raised goes to pay for 'extras' in school - theatre groups, visiting musicians, baking, all sorts of things. So we are very rarely asked for any other money. (We don't pay extra for swimming, baking, arts/crafts, ..)

Trip charges are kept as low as possible. But as trips are part of the curriculum, and all children go, the contributions are voluntary.

They also sent us in September a list of all confirmed dates in the school calendar for the next 24 months! These dates are also re-confirmed and added to regularly in school newsletters.

Are you all jealous now?

kmg1 - I am definately jealous! It just shows that it is possible - most schools just can't be bothered!

Our school has non-uniform day at the end of every half-term and each child is "fined" 50p. That brings in getting on for £900 a year (if they all remember their 50p's - we forget sometimes, it doesn't matter) and that money pays for visiting theatre companies etc - they usually get one every term. I think most families can afford £1 per term per child. Like kmg's school, we don't have to pay for swimming, baking or arts and crafts (although only Y5 now goes swimming and only the infants bake regularly.)

Also like kmg's, trip contributions are "voluntary" but the letter always says that without such "voluntary" contributions the trip cannot take place. Hmmm. (Usually pretty cheap though - £6-£9 - and they don't go far either, has to be within school hours.)

The school also does sponsorships but they are usually for charities eg Barnardo's, NSPCC and again it doesn't matter if you don't get any. (Or at least it doesn't matter to school, and my DS doesn't mind - usually we lose the form in the general absent-minded mess we like to call home - but I can imagine some kids might get worked up about it.)

We have a very pro-active (albeit bloody annoying) Head who gets her mitts on anything going, so our school is involved in the Comenius project, an EU thing that encourages and funds schools in different European countries to establish ties with each other, exchange teacher visits etc. Recently this allowed the classes of the 2 teachers taking part to visit the Lowry Galleries free, and Bridgewater Hall for £2 each all in (for the coach) - the children subsequently did a class assembly (parents invited) and wrote to their French and Italian counterparts about it.

The only really expensive trip is to PGL in Y6. This is a Mon-Fri job and last time one of ours went (5 years ago) it was about £120 I think. DS2 will be going next summer and the first meeting about it will be in June - I will be interested to see if the cost has changed much. They issue a payment card at this June meeting, there will be 12 months before the trip and payments can be made on a weekly basis in term-time, so can be £3-£4 a week. Not sure what happens if a family really can't afford that much - possibly school can help out.

The Friends at our school, who I have mentioned before, are money-grubbing bggrs though so we get the "your child will be decorating this adorable wooden egg-cup with a felt-tip-pen for Easter, how many would you like at £1.50 a shot?" routine.

But WHY are we being asked for money all the time? We're told that rises in this tax and that tax are for education, and we pay all of it, yet there's still never enough. Where is it going? My parents were never expected to shell out for school like we do now, AND when I went to school all the books, pens and paper were provided BY THE SCHOOL. Now everything seems to be expected from the parents.

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Custardo - sorry long post coming up....
This thread has made me fuming - custardo, you have been treated appallingly and if I were you i would ask to speak at the next PTA meeting with suggestions of change to the present financial system as it is unfiar and clearly discriminatory - purely suggesting that they have a porr fun is downright insensitive and avoiding actually accepting responsibility for putting parents in the awkard and understandably embarrassing situation in the first place. I am so boiling mad for you that i feel like coming along with you and telling them what i think!@!!
To let you know where I am coming from...

When I taught (secondary school) we had a very mixed financial catchment area and constantly had to consider all pupils equally. We ran annual ski trips, history trips to Washington DC, loads of DofE trips to exotic places, infact trips all over the world. To be honest, a lot of them were organsied by the same few teachers whose prime motivation was in getting "free" trips abroad in return for providing the supervision and organisation side. Not many would ever admit it, always putting it out that they were giving up valuable holidays to give children wider learning experiences, but that was often a lot of tosh - especially when you hear the stories of what they all get up to (if the average parent only knew what happens in the average teenage school residential trip they would never ever let their children on one ever again, believe me! - staff are just as bad as the kids and too often downright irresponsible with alcohol etc.)

Saying that, we still had to do our best to meet equal opportunity policies and it sounds like some other schools could do with taking them on board in order to deal with the sensitive issue of affordability. eg. provide different payment systems where parents could pay small amounts weekly etc
daytime "full class" trips to be purely educational, relevant and kept under a certain financial figure as set by the pta rather than the staff, annually reviewable
"full class" trips to be limited to two a year max.
Pupils only allowed to go on one residential trip bi-annually
for day trips where we needed as full inclusion as possible for educational purposes (eg. something that involved courswork) every letter had to ask for a voluntary contribution to the costs with a suggested figure rather than a fixed fee but also explaining that if costs werent met that the trip may be cancelled (budget worked out on a 95% pay success rate) sounds unworkable - but it worked very succesfully as most paid up in full.
Collection of funds not done in the classroom but pupils to hand in money to reception in their own time - limits embarassment for non payers. even the staff don?t knopw who has paid and who hasn?t - the financial officer just gives us the raw figure and numbers.
Non payers who send in permission slip we accepted automatically and are never asked/harrassed about reasons why - if trip makes a slight loss then hopefully will balance out on next one..
I really could go on and on about this as I believe that parent funded trips can be so valuable and great fun to pupils but can be done in such a way that is as fair as possible. In an ideal world the school would pay for all trips and there would be total inclusion but at present this just isn?t an option.
Sorry if i have just bored the pants off you - just feel passionate about this sort of thing...

thanks for all the support

yes Jay tree plase come with me!

At the school where I was a governor we (governors) voted on the issue.

We decided that it was very important for the children to have a wide range of experiences eg. if they never go anywhere or see anythine how can they be expected to write creativly. Therefore every child would go on 1 theatre type trip a year paid for by school funds.

For activities within school (visiting drama groups etc) a voluntary contribution would be asked for to try and cover the cost.

In addition there would be one residential weekend (optional) during the child's school career.

This school was in a very deprived area and we felt that many children would not have these opportunities unless we provided them.

I teach in a fairly deprived area, and in a 'challenging' school. Our school budget is laughable - my laboratory has ceiling tiles missing, bits missing from cladding for the pipes, windows that don't open, desks that have been so graffiti'd on that I've given up telling the kids off (I inherited this room last year already in this state), and it generally just looks tired and grotty. Out of my own pocket I've paid for fresh lining paper for the walls to create displays, paper and card for the pupils to produce posters, other scientific posters, felt pens, glue, scissors, coloured pencils etc so that the pupils can have the best resources to use. I always have a huge tub of 'lendy pens' and pencils, a stock of rulers, and other essentials. All this has come out of my own pocket - schools just do not have the money to provide this sort of thing.

In many ways I resent subsidising the education of children other than my own, but I also wish to give my pupils the very best educational experience possible. If the kids don't have a pen, how can I expect them to do any work? But surely, asking parents to provide their children with a pen, pencil and ruler, and a bag to carry it all in isn't too much to ask?

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Rosiemum - I totally agree with your comments about basic school equipment - like you I found myself often supplementing my classroom with my own funds albeit it in little ways (eg. buying a CD needed for a module rather than wait for the enxt annual budget..) , it still added up. However, the real issue here is the expenses that schools ask parents to come up with for recreational issues such as extra curricular trips. They may well have social and educational value but are still non essential, yet parents are still under pressure to provide out of pride amongst other things - and the fact that none of us like to think our children may feel inferior, peer pressure to join in or feel that they are missing out on something everyone else is going to enjoy.. it is just not fair.

Robinw

Why do you get annoyed at "some children wouldn't get these opportunities"?

The fact that parents need ther money for food and shoes (or more realistically booze and fags) is precisely why we provided the opportunities and trips (one per year)instead.