Tickets for School Performances/learning outcomes etc - Help!

[tryingtobeagoodhuman100]

Our first school has a whole year performance coming up and each child has been given tickets to bring home for family to attend. This is quite a normal thing with performances as there are 60 children in the year group and the school hall probably wouldn't stretch to having parents/grandparents/siblings for every child. normally everyone gets 2 tickets and if you need extra you can ask the office or swap etc with other parents. In this instance some of the children only received 1 ticket and some received 2. One of the parents asked the office for an extra ticket and was told that she cant have one as tickets are reserved for real parents and she is separated. She is remarried and has been for 5 years and has 2 children with her husband. Her son doesn't actually have contact with his father (although that probably wouldn't make a difference to procedure). Does anyone have any official guidelines/legislation that would help to explain this? It's the first time this has happened & parents have had this issue and adding to the problem is that there are several parents who are also separated who received 2 tickets which is causing some upset. What kind of an admin exercise would a school use to determine who is 'separated' or not? And could this be classed as discrimination? I'd love any help from anyone who has explanations with some back-up of official guidelines etc rather than just opinion

There's no legislation.
I would think that if the 'other' parent receives a copy of reports etc then a ticket has been forwarded to that parent.
Your friend should check with the school.

We say 2 tickets per child. Parents can decide how they use them, if we know parents aren't on taking terms (or there have been problems before) we offer 1 to Mum and 1 to Dad.

If there are any left over tickets after the initial allocation then everyone is welcome to apply for them on a first come, first served basis. There are usually tickets left over and that means involved parents (step parents/ grand parents etc) get an extra ticket and those that aren't don't.

It's a mammoth task and the poor office staff often deal with cross parents but this is the only way we've found of making it vaguely fair for the children.

Interesting first post.

There is no legislation around this, you would be better taking it up with the school.

Thanks for your thoughts on my first post :-) - its definitely a tough one. I think the problem is that there isn't any consistency and the school have singled people out. Plus, is it fair that children whose parents don't live together are only able to have tickets for parents whereas the rest of the children can use their 2nd ticket for grandparents etc. I'm taking my mum with me but any parents who don't live with the other parent wouldn't even get this opportunity

I bet there is consistency and the tickets have been issued according to parental responsibility.

Each child gets two tickets. Those with parental responsibility decide who goes between them. Most people work it out or take turns year on year if 4 adults are involved with the child due to new partners, remarriage etc. Or even the two birth parents go!

I suspect they've had problems with just sending home 2 tickets.

Child gives 2 tickets to whichever parent they see that night. eg. Mum who decides she and step-dad will go. Child is upset/dad kicks off because dad wants, quite reasonably, to go instead of step dad.
It may be those non-resident parents who have parental responsibility receive them through the post.

I think that’s quite narrow minded of the school. Each child should be treated the same and given two tickets. If two aren’t needed, one can be returned.

My reading of the OP is that each child receives two tickets, one for the mum and one for the dad. If parents are together, either/both can go or they can decide that grannie will go instead. if the parents are separated, the Mum and Dad can decide separately what to do with their ticket, either go, give it to someone else or return to school. if more tickets are needed, they can be requested from the school. Seems reasonable to me!

There's not going to be anything in the way of guidance, each school will do what they think works best, it might be a good system, it might be a rubbish one, no harm in politely making your point and hoping the school agree with you.

It's a potential minefield and won't get any better, just one of the vagaries of school life.

Thanks everyone - it seems my lengthy question was actually rubbish :-) the issue was that only children living with 2 parents get 2 tickets. Children of separated parents get 1 initially then a second if the other parent comes forward to claim it. I appreciate all your replies though - some of the suggestions are brilliant and we can use them to help
improve the schools policy :-)

All children should get two tickets. How they are used is up to the child’s family. No judgements should be made by schools on the status of a child’s parents! I would try very hard to get this changed. Is this a Church school?

Ours aren't ticketed at all! It's just a performance aimed at each class involved's parents, but if you struggle to get in for that one you can go to the opposite class's day to see the play instead (most people tend to go to the "correct" class day because they can see their own friends to chat to so it relatively equalises out) and grandparents or whatever are perfectly welcome to come along as well.

There is a thread in Legal Matters about a school that always gives the tickets to the child's mother, meaning that the child's father and his family never get a look in. The approach this school is taking when dealing with separated parents is much fairer, i.e. giving one ticket to the parent with care with another available for the other parent if they want it. It would be better if the second ticket was offered to the parent with care if the NRP doesn't want it.