£50 a month parental contribution for schooling

[noblegiraffe]

Apparently £50 per month is what some schools are asking parents to contribute to school funds.

How much does your school ask for, and do you actually pay it? Do you know if it goes into general coffers or is it for the PTA to buy ‘extras’?

And does the school ask you to pay for textbooks?

Just being nosy, really. My school doesn’t ask for anything, neither does my DCs’ primary (outside of PTA cake sales etc) so I have no idea how common this is.

On top of donating to our PTA (which made a lot of money) parents at our former grammar began to be asked for an extra £100 cash per year paid direct to school. Within months this had increased to £50 per month, so yes, £600 per year. A lot of us refused to pay. This was on top of paying for all textbooks, £30 art/DT materials, £100 per subject payment for out of hours creative and language subjects which had been dropped from the curriculum (I paid this as my DC wanted to progress to GCSE). After yet another annoying request for the monthly £50, which I ignored, I worked out what I had already spent for one child for one year, PTA donations included. A grand total of £1,200 (including one small trip away but excluding uniform). I never did pay that extra £600 per year, especially as we were never clearly told where the money was spent. What shocked me most was the attitude of the management and governors, that parents could afford it and should pay it, despite the fact that their oversight of the finances had been vague for years.

Which Astronotus is exactly my point, the school is just not facing reality but expecting their parents to put their hands in their pockets to cover their lack of oversight of the finances.
I do agree with the idea made by another poster that a good school business manager is definitely worth their weight in gold. If a school is consistently not able to match expenditure to income then they have a problem and this is where a top-notch school business manager will be able to resolve where the issues are. That may well be a message that the head teacher is not very happy to receive but is where schools do need now to be more business like.

But if ‘facing reality’ means making teachers redundant and cutting the curriculum, then is that really acceptable?

£200 per year for secondary age dd. You are pestered if you don’t pay it.

Haven't been asked to pay and would decline. Schools need to manage their budgets.

noblegiraffe,
that rather depends on the number of pupils, the number of teachers that you have and the number of other staff in the school. If you are a primary school and have seven classes then you need seven teachers. You need to be looking at how many other teaching staff you have and what their role is and whether you really do need them.
In a secondary school, then you are talking about the number of pupils in each class and the actually teaching commitment of each teachers plus very much in some schools how much of a blotted SLT they have.
A very significant change over the last few years has been in the 6th form. The funding is now very much less than it was and too many schools have still not accepted this and are running both small 6th forms and also subjects where they only have 2 or 3 pupils for the subject. Whilst I am all for having the widest possible curriculum there has to be reality, so if you only have 2 or 3 pupils for a subject then you either collapse the course or you come to an arrangement with another local school so that economies can be shared.

What? I’ve never heard of this! We just have the odd fundraiser and a letter each term reminding eligible parents to apply for pupil premium, even if they don’t want the free school meal.

admission if only problems could be so easily solved!
Not running a subject at sixth form because it is now shared with another school loses you a specialist teacher and a hole to fill at KS3. Some schools are filling that hole by reducing the teaching of that subject at KS3. Knock-on effect. Teaching can’t be shared with other schools so easily at KS3, geography gets in the way (we bus the kids around at sixth form).

Our schools (primary and secondary) have never asked for any contributions to school funds.

Parents can buy GCSE revision guides if they want to but that's about it.

We're not asked for anything. GCSE revision guides are subsidised and in some cases free - I'm getting some free for DD2 now that I am a single parent. I would pay if I were asked though - I know schools are ridiculously underfunded. I just wish people would stop voting for the people who are underfunding education...

As a finance person with experience in schools, it’s not just about getting in a great businesd manager. They can only do so much and can’t magic money out of thin air. Schools are underfunded by a long way. Sure there will be some cases of bad financial management, but on the whole schools are strapped for cash.

It’s fine if you are in a brand new spanking building but ever tried fixing a roof in an aging Victorian building when it costs £50k and you only have £10k “spare”? That’s a teacher you’re not replacing. Or worse, it’s a non EBAC subject that has to be pulled from the curriculum. Parents won’t put up with their children sitting in wet classrooms (nor should they).

These are the sorts of decisions faced by schools every day. I am not surprised they are asking for such large parental contributions.

School ask for £50 pm but how many pay I don’t know, they released figures about number of Parents by year group making regular contributions and it was a minority rather than majority.

Also pay for entrance for JMC, DT materials, £200 per year for any twilight course, school trips. The school have an Amazon wish list of library books. They get so many print credits at school and after that we have to pay. We also get asked for time to help decorate. We don’t get asked to pay for books but DD always seems to get to share the most scraggy copy going so I sometimes end up buying a copy so she has a copy to herself and then donate to the school once DD has finished with it.

It’s fine if you are in a brand new spanking building but ever tried fixing a roof in an aging Victorian building when it costs £50k and you only have £10k “spare”?

608 schools were given grants for roofing repairs/new roofs in 2016 from the Government's Condition-Improvement fund. Lots of roofing repairs and other projects approved for 2017 to 2018 as well:

On 3 April, we announced that £466 million had been approved through the CIF 2017 to 2018 main round for 1,435 projects. Following the appeals process, we approved a further 75 projects, totalling £30 million

www.gov.uk/government/publications/condition-improvement-fund-2017-to-2018-outcome

I get the impression that many of the schools asking for monthly parental contributions use the money for 'nice to have' items rather than pressing need though. One school I've just looked at is aiming to raise £100,000 from parents this year and "to be one of the best schools in the country." They were also one of the schools given a grant for roofing replacement.

admission. Our school did not have a dedicated business manager, but they sent the accounts person "on a course"! Not all places in the senior school were taken, leading to a loss of funding, but this was never discussed.
noble. Our sixth form didn't get sent to other schools for lessons, thank goodness, but there were some very small classes.
PettsWoodParadise. We had scrappy books too. How can a child do their homework when they can't take the textbook home? If you were shown figures that a minority of parents donate the monthly payment then it will dissuade other parents from donating. Why pay when others don't? No thought to how to market it effectively.

Sorry Clavinova but I can't big up roof repairs. Such repairs should have been done years ago, with no fanfare. Capital projects have been ignored for years.
'Nice to have' things. No, sorry, they are asking because they are extremely short of cash, whether due to less funding or due to less funding + a lack of good financial management.
Are you a friend of DH?

Clavinova didn’t mention the thousands of requests for repair money from the school improvement fund which were rejected.

•The redevelopment of the music block and the purchase of top of the range equipment*
Paid for out of last year's contributions - sounds like a 'nice to have' to me.

Clavinova didn’t mention the thousands of requests for repair money from the school improvement fund which were rejected

So, they can reapply the following year.

Such repairs should have been done years ago, with no fanfare. Capital projects have been ignored for years.

True story:

School needs extension.

LA puts work out to tender and hires builders. Has to be LA because "new construction".

Builders' guarantee runs out after 2 years.

Six months later, roof starts leaking because badly fitted.

Roof has to be mended out of school op.ex. budget because "maintenance".

Roof continues to leak for five years. Because badly constructed. Repeatedly mended out of school's dwindling budget.

MrsHathaway
Have you looked to see if your school could apply for a grant from the Condition Improvement Fund? Two thousand other schools have been successful in the last 2 years.

£3 a week for snacks and toys.

I'm staggered at some of these figures.

We are comfortably well off but if we had to pay in the £100's per child then we'd be skint.

Tbh, I'd consider changing school if they were harassing parents for funds.

£500?! WTAF

The cuts have been brutal and schools need all the help they can get.

The answer to that is for no-one to pay and everyone to campaign (and vote) for decent funding for education.

I haven't looked, but will when if the issue arises again, so thank you.

It's an example of the absurdity of budget management, though: in e.g. a household you could choose a more expensive builder and a longer guarantee period ... but at a LA school the school isn't in control of that kind of capital spending so can't make decisions or longer term plans about its maintenance costs.

Aside from the normal non uniform type days we've never been asked for any money- primary and secondary both RC schools. I could never afford some of these figures quoted here.

The school I work in asks for £15 per year (£5 per term), entirely voluntary and not chased at all.
The school DD attends asked for £10 for school fund for the year, it wasn't chased.
The school DS attends asks for nothing, because it's fee-paying.