Advertising The Sun within the school

[Arkadia]

For a few weeks now my school has been asking EXPLICITLY the kids in their care to buy The Sun (THE SUN!!) so that they can collect some book tokens. If they reach 3500 tokens they get £500 worth of books (which books?)

AIBU if I feel offended by it?

1. I don't think the school should advertise ANY product (let's not forget that this IS a form of advertising)
2. If that product is The Sun, that holds even more true.
3. If they really need to advertise, are our children SO cheap that you can have a 6 week campaign and pay £500 tops for it? (to top it up, some joinery firm has sponsored some "park with care, you might be endangering a child" sign.)

OK, schools are strapped for cash, but if they NEED these £500 worth of books I am sure they could raise that amount very quickly simply asking the parents.

When I first found a letter about this initiative in my kids' bag, I went straight to the school office to return it - explaining why - but that sorted no effect.
Just before the break I sent a strongly worded email to the HT, but that clearly has sorted NO effect.
Now I am thinking of putting a written complaint in, as the school's twitter feed is full of exhortations to buy The Sun.

Am I being unreasonable?

You do have reason to be unhappy about this if the school are going overboard about exhorting primary school kids to buy something to be able to get the free books. The fact that it is the Sun just adds to the concern that the school are loosing sight of the principals that they are supposed to uphold in all their pupils.

Some examples taken from the school's twitter feeds:

• Sept (all feeds): tweet (Along with link to the Sun) advising about the competition, that there are £550 worth of books and that the class with most tokes will receive a prize. .

At about the same time the letter from the school arrived.

• Oct: Tweet from the school saying: "parents please buy the Sun" (because of the 50 tokens thing)
• Oct: tweet advising that the next day there will be 50 tokens in the paper. "Please, support our school".
• Oct: The school re-tweets someone calling on everybody to BUY the Sun.

(I have to say, I am not clear when the 50 tokens were supposed to be available, but no matter).

I particularly resent this link between "The Sun" and "support your school".

In class there is a box where the kids can put the tokens in.

So far I have been asked three times by my kids to buy the Sun.

So, am I being unreasonable?

I hope none of the parents are Liverpool FC fans. They would find this very offensive.