Charging for Design Tech materials

[nomiddlename]

I'm so cross having just read a letter sent home from my dd's middle school (yr 5). The new DT teacher is asking that all parents 'contribute' £5.00 for the materials they buy for DT projects.

I'm really annoyed that for a curriculum subject, we have to pay (and yes, I can afford it but that's not the point). Can you imagine if the english dept. sent a letter home saying that we had to pay for books the kids have to read?

Then it says, that if you don't pay the fiver, after your child has made the thing, it will be dismantled so the bits can be recycled - how cruel is that?!!!

Surely for a standard curriculum subject, either the school could ask for the odd thing (ie, cardboard box/loo roll etc) and the school provides things such as clay/paint etc or the PTA raise money so that the cost of materials can be subsidised.

Do other schools charge for DT materials at primary age?

Bored now.

'I have to say there seems to be a 'look at us paying for all these resources out of our pocket - aren't we great?' thing going on here.'

You may be hearing trumpet-blowing OP, I thought we were just explaining something to a rather rude and incredulous person who had implied that we were lying.
Don't see the point in continuing this conversation, although always nice to meet other teachers.

I wasn't implying you were lying at all.

I'm going to tootle off now though because I paid the money and spoken to SIL (teacher in a very poor city school) who said that art and DT should have their own budget and teachers should not pay with their own money for basic materials. She said that whilst as a FT teacher, she perhaps paid around £50 a year, it was her choice (for extra xmas decs/new cushions for carpet area etc) no way would she have ever paid for materials and no would the HT expect staff to.

Anyway - thanks for all your replies. Contrary to how it may have sounded, I know what a fab job teachers do and now understand that it's even harder for some to get vital resources than others.

I'm really old and we paid for our DT (wood work / metal work/ sewing /cookery) materials.
I had to pay for my children's DT materials and buy anything they produced so I'm surprised anyone thinks this is strange.

As a teacher I probably spend about 5% of my salary on resources for my class. I've already spent £50 on books and pens this week

I don't mean to harp on but the UK raises millions of pounds to be sent to Africa (I totally with this) for books/classrooms/pens/paper etc, yet our teachers are forking out £50 a week (mrz is anyway) on pens/books.

I really don't mean for you to take this the wrong way but perhaps it's the planning of lessons and the content that needs looking at to reduce the amount of expensive resources needed.

Why on earth would a teacher pay for pens? I'm sorry - I had shut up and left but I just don't understand why anyone would do this?

Would you rather children sat in classrooms without the resources to participate in the lesson?

At my (state grammar) school we paid for cooking ingredients for cookery, wood for woodwork projects, binca/fabric and embrodery threads for needlework projects etc. And this was in the 1970s when everyone was on a 3 day week.

That's terrible that teachers feel the need to pay for things out of their own salaries.

It has been the case for the last 30 years at least though bitter child of teacher. I sympathise with nailak- I have no childhood favourites to pass on to my children either- all gone into classrooms over the years.

In the 1970s teachers would NOT have paid for things out of their own money. If you didn't bring your cookery ingredients you had to sit in the corner and gurn to your friends. It must have been blimmin ace being an adult/teacher in 1977. Smoking in the staff-room, twisting Nigel B's ear until it bled just because they could, going to the pub at lunchtime and driving back to school, half cut.

I don't mean cookery/DT ingredients, I mean materials for the classroom, books, pencils etc.

Plus, time is marching on... last 30 years only covers the 80s onwards nowadays

nomiddlename I'm a SENCO and I'm working with a group of children who need special pens to help them learn to write with appropriate pressure. I don't have to buy the pens but they have been recommended by the Occupational therapy service to help these pupils overcome their difficulties so I've bought them...

CaptainNancy when my daughter comes into school with me during the holidays she says ... that was mine ... and that was mine ... and so was that.
I confess I bought her Christmas and birthday presents with the thought of future classroom use firmly in mind [shameful]

Just as an example, in my last year of teaching we were making photograph frames in D&T. If we used resources funded by school then the frames would have been made from cardboard and sellotaped together.

Instead, I bought a job lot of 2x1 wooden sticks and some wood glue. School had the glue guns but couldn't afford the glue. I also bought some cellophane to act as protection for the photographs.

So, in my lesson they measured wood and cut correctly using saws under supervision. They then stuck these together. Then they placed some cellophane inside and their photo behind it. They finished by measuring and cutting a piece of card to fit the back and spent two valuable lessons working in groups to come up witht hte best way to help the frames stand up.

This was so much more worthwhile and so much more enjoyable that it would have been had we stuck to cutting up coloured card.

Surely though mrz those pens would have come from the very separate SENCO budget? I thought SEN budgets were a lot higher???

SEN budgets higher? Where have you been for the last 18mo?

Was talking to my sister earlier who mentioned how much money she has already spent on materials for her class since half term. I winced. She is now writing begging letters to local firms to get some more stuff. Just stuff to cover the basic curriculum. At the end of the (short) call she said she was going to bed and finishing off the marking there. SO glad I didn't go into teaching.

What SEN budget?
I have a child who requires 1-1 all the time he is in school including lunch time and my SEN budget covers the 60% of his support that the LEA don't fund

I think someone should be campaigning to help teachers/schools. Surely this should go to parliament. Teachers should not be spending a large portion of their salary on basic resources.

So glad I didn't go into teaching too!

I have in my time bought pens and other things for children whose parents couldn't or wouldn't so that they could at least see a level playing field from a distance.

( I have to admit that I do feel quite smug sometimes, when I buy something, and the lesson goes well, and the parents or my colleagues are impressed- am clearly v shallow!)

Lol at SEN budget being higher! In Brigadoon, possibly!

I am astonished that parents don't realise that this goes on. Before we had kids I spent a huge amount on resources. Not just disposible resources but also stuff like a set of 4 posters showing pictures of WWII bombed cities. We had very limited history resources and every teacher knows kids learn so much better when it is visual. Me reading them a description of what it was like just wouldn't have had the same affect. We used those picture to imagine how the children felt (one was a bombed school) and it led to fantastic writing in literacy and a different level of learning IMVHO.

And yes, I could have taught the subject without them but the bloody problem with teachers is that they actually care about what they do and want the kids to learn and enjoy the lesson.

Oh and I'm not sure it's always restricted to teaching as I know an OT who paid for a season parking ticket because otherwise the young man who found himself wheelchair bound after a terrible road accident could not afford to be seen.

lovingthecoast there are loads of books with pictures of WWII bombed cities or the internet

Today, I listened about how Lord Taylor was sent to prison for fraud, having taken £11000 of tax payers money. Think how many teaching resources that little lot could have bought!

Yes there are books but firstly, we didn't have any in school and secondly, I wanted a few copies of the same pictures so I could do a whole class lesson based around those. Internet, yes, I used a lot but often difficult to find large, photographic type pictures rather than drawn pictures or those too small to be suitable with a Y3 class. History really needs to be resourced well in primary schools if you are to enthuse kids. I'm not talking about spending ££££ on tacky stuff but things like replica newspapers and photographs can bring a lesson alive.

Other things I have bought have included individual whiteboard marker pens to use with the A4 wipe clean whiteboards which we use all the time in maths. We were given one for each child in Sept but even the most careful child can't make one pen last until July so if I wanted to carry on using the boards, I needed to buy the extra pens. As I found the boards invaluable when doing mental maths, I bought the pens. Also just day to day miscellaneous stuff such as string and pegs to make a washing line for maths and 'well done' stickers.

Now, of course it is my choice to give out reward stickers and to use a washing line to help demonstrate place value but when you know these things make you a better teacher delivering better lessons then it's difficult to make the decision not to buy them.