How does your school administer permission slips?

[fridayohfriday]

My DCs school processes many hundreds of individual permissions slips for trips, events, extra-curricular activities etc every year. Many of them are accompanied by small payments by cheque or cash (we don't have ParentPay or equivalent).

For those schools that are a bit more advanced in their use of technology - do you have an online way of administering permissions?

Dd's school uses ParentPay. When you pay for a school trip it also pops up with standard permission slip blurb and says payment means you have given permission.

If you want to caveat any of the permission stuff then you have to complete a manual form and payment.

We can pay by bank transfer but the only problem is my bank will only allow 18 characters for the reference. Which is a bit tricky when you have to put child name/form/item you're paying for.

We still have to fill in reply slips for trips etc. rather than being able to rsvp by email which creates a lot of waste paper.

We get 99% of notifications by email, ParentMail, and can pay most things via ParentMail as well. I think only really small amounts are payed by cash or cheque.

I love this. First I don't loose the paper and can print and sign at work and bring it to school the next day. Secondly I don't have to worry about having cash around.

Why not lobby for a better system?

Yep, plan to lobby, just evidence gathering first .

Is ParentPay expensive for schools to set up and use? They're pretty technophobic, so would latch onto any upfront costs as an excuse to stick with the status quo.

all electronic payment systems charge for their services. About 2-5%. when budgets are very tight this is a significant cost for schools. (used to work in a school. sorry about typos am on rubbish phone)

Yes, ParentPay is expensive. Big set up costs and they take a % of each transaction too. It's great for schools who can go completely cashless because there are savings to be made by not dealing with cash but in areas where parents dealings are mostly in cash, you have to run both systems. At our school 90% of payments, even for things like residential costing £££, are in cash - we very rarely receive a cheque.

also some LAs may give quite a strong impression to their schools that a signed permission slip is very important esp. If they've had legal action taken them over trips etc in the past.

We do a whole school life permission slip at start of reception and so individual trip permission slips not needed; just send out a letter telling parents about each trip and that £x "donation" is needed if required.

We can do pretty much everything via Tucasi - payments and permission slips.

Thanks Patricia. Is it expensive too, like Parentmail?

If all these tools have a commission charge, do schools take the hit on that themselves, or build it into the cost of the activities? It would seem reasonable to do that, but not sure if it's culturally acceptable.

What about parents that don't pay the voluntary contribution? Lots of our parents return the consent form without any money included, as that is part of their rights. There needs to be a subtle way of gathering consent from them without flagging up that they can't afford the money.

All the schools I know pay for Parent Pay, Parent Mail, etc. from their own budgets, as it seems unfair to up the price of a dinner for those parents paying by that method. If we asked for contributions for Parent Mail many wouldn't subscribe and the whole idea of the system is to ensure parents get the messages and the office streamlines its work load. We already have a number in each class who haven't signed up, so we have to make sure we print sufficient copies and take them to teach class to give to those named pupils only.