Schools charging for holiday revision sessions - normal?

[crazymonsters]

Just curious as a local school which my friend's daughter attends is charging £54 a day (or £27 per half-day) for Y12 revision sessions over Easter. Is this normal? I don't know if they have discounts in place for free school meals etc - hopefully they do.

If teachers are working over the whole holidays I'm not surprised schools need to charge, but I guess I am surprised that the sessions are so extensive - every day full time rather than just a couple of freebie sessions covered by school budget.

The school does get very good results, and has the sort of catchment that is prepared to pay, and I expect the money just covers staff overtime rather than making a profit, but even so, it seems a bit intense. Whatever happened to independent revision? I think if I was a student there I would feel the need to be at every session or risk being at a disadvantage.

For the first week of the holidays Dd did about 3-4 hours of revision per day.

For the second week shevwent to stay with a friend at the seaside city. I think they did a couple of hours per day. She also had a couple of days off completely when she did Family things & a day trip to London.

DD at Indie - all sessions run during Easter were in the main voluntary mainly to finish off coursework (DT etc)...we were not charged extra for the sessions and teachers volunteered to come in. There were 3 hour skills and techniques sessions in a few subjects which I think all children would find helpful(probably why virtually every child attended)...being able to really understand what is being asked and answering questions correctly (in correlation with marks) could mean the difference between one grade and another. To have these sessions out of school term time also means time in school can be spent on the syllabus.