voluntary contribitions

[allcriedout1]

I regularly seem to get letters from school asking for money to pay for a trip or activity during school hours. Am I right in assuming that these contributions should be voluntary?

What happens at your school?

If the trips/activities take place during school hours then all contributions are voluntary.

You will find though that not much takes place without contributions.

We pay a VC each term, trips come out of this.

As far as I know payment is voluntary - no child is excluded from an educational trip, but if everyone refuses to pay up the school just won't do trips at all. IMO the children will miss out a lot.

Paymennt is voluntary, with the disclaimer normally appearing that "if there are insufficient contributions the trip may not be able to go ahead"

Bottom line, no contribution, no trip. (although I think if there are families who are really struggling they will be helped)

School always used to put on letters "payment is voluntary..." but this seems to have disappeared from current letters. I would never not pay for trip but I do think its cheeky not saying its voluntary.

There are very clear rules that are supposed to be followed. Every school must by law have a charging policy and this should say that charges are voluntary for school trips during the school day.

If it does not say that then you should challenge the school to amend their letters to meet the legal requirements.

All of our letters about school trips ask for a "voluntary contribution" of a certain amount. As others have said though, they also add that if there are not enough contributions then the trip won't happen.

There is no money in the school budget for school trips. Quite simply, a school can perform all of its functions without them - they are not necessary in educating a child (and certainly not in getting children good SATs results). However most (I don't know any that don't but I wouldn't like to assume!) schools see the invaluable benefit in organising trips out of school for their children (and let me tell you, they take A LOT of organising - permission slips, collecting money, organising free school dinners, risk assessments, pre-visits, booking coaches...).

So yes - they have to be voluntary by law(even if they don't tell you this) BUT unless parents pay for them, they just won't/can't happen.

Just for your info a 52 seater coach costs up to £500 for the day if outside school time (i.e returning at 5:00), £300 if inside school time (not much of a trip!). You'd need two such coaches for a two-form entry year group = £600-£1000. Plus entry fee into where ever, say £5 per child minimum 60x£5 = £300. So a trip for one year group could cost between £900 - £1300. So take £1000 as an average and apply this to just 4 year groups - that's £4000. It's a huge part of any budget.

I do understand that and I really don't mind paying. It would be just nice if letters were worded better. Especially if its for a school trip out.
However, The one recently which annoyed me was a company who came into school for a themed day. We were told that the school was going to use the classes Christmas money to reduce the cost so we only had to pay X. We could also purchase costumes for the day at about £30.

Plus the school has also recently entered one of these lovely competitions where I think everone wins the right to purchase a book with a few lines of their childs work in.

I am just starting to feel a bit like a cash machine.