PTA hands out smarties to raise money for fitness.....

[lingle]

We have a great PTA committee. I'm not on it but go to the meetings and do my bit in school.

It's been agreed that we'll concentrate our funds towards improving school sports and fitness facilities for the near future.

Last year, one fundraiser involved acquiring 80 giant tubes of smarties, handing them out to a child in each family and asking the children to fill the empty boxes with 20p pieces.

I know you've got to strike a balance when it comes to sweets but for me having smarties forced on the children in this way isn't right. It's also a bit of a contradiction to raise money for fitness by force-feeding them smarties.

We do other things that involve sweets/cakes, in particular we have bun-bakes. But I figure that, with a bun-bake, there are at least some children who are learning to cook with their parents. So I feel that there's a benefit that makes it a good thing - or at least not bad.

I wonder whether it's still legal for schools to hand out sweets. I thought the rules were pretty strict now.

Anyway, I would appreciate advice on raising this tactfully. Or honest views if you all think I should say nothing. I've had experience of raising a similar issue tactlessly at the pre-school (where the only snacks the children got were biscuits). After ranting at the poor chair for a good five minutes, I was so ashamed that I avoided her for 18 months before finally plucking up the courage to apologise......beetroot red, I was... dont' want to repeat that at school!

Yes, we used standard sized tubes (I can imagine the complaints if we'd used big ones - that's a lot of money to fill one )

ok i admit I was wrong to say the smarties were "forced" on the children! It was me they were forced on! Mine do have quite a lot of sweets/cakes though we don't buy them for the house.

And yes if they were fair trade rather than Nestle I'd have been less bothered.

I just think that there ought to be some benefit to someone, somewhere, whether it's your own kids learning to make cornflake cakes or whatever, from PTA activities.

I am very active for my school so don't fall into the "moaning from the sidelines" category.

A friend of mine has a really good strategy re junk food which is that she never ever buys it for her kids but they can have whatever they want at other people's houses/parties/or using money from grandma, etc.

I can understand the raisins approach not working!! I suppose the alternatives are things like hollowing out a pumpkin or growing a sunflower seed.

Hmm, I thought that they said "giant" in the PTA meeting....could be wrong, not intending to exaggerate, sorry.
my husband picked up on the day in question and ate the smarties, so I didn't see them!

Each standard Smarties tube holds around £10 in 20p pieces ... I can't see why they PTA would need larger tubes

Lingle, how much money are they expecting to raise and how do they intend to spend it? If they are trying to achieve a goal like make sport available to children after school, or help people pay for swimming lessons or enable the school to have a football team, I think there might be a point to the tube of smarties idea (assuming they aren't giant tubes). These goals could really change the lifestyles of some children. If all they want to do is buy a couple more netballs, then I am not so convinced by the idea.

MadamePlatypus: Well, there is this grand plan to have a Multi Use Games Area. And we do have a fairly mixed catchment area - we're a very prosperous town, but the one council estate in town is next to our school so we do, for instance, get "added value" points in our Ofsteds.
It's a difficult one, isn't it, and there's nothing wrong with having an open mind, or being willing to change your mind.
We did get the smarties for free (from Waitrose) so maybe, assuming next year we have to pay for them, the idea just won't be repeated.

I admit that a search through my mumsnet posts might well lead you to call me a hypocrite, but I think you will see that at 10.06 I said:

"I wouldn't have a problem with the school handing out normal sized tubes of smarties".

I think this is a non-issue - one tube of smarties is not an obese child going to make.