Your kid is leaving school, what are you buying their head of year?

[dewne]

Especially if you regularly bought presents for the class teacher at primary school
Please show your working.

(NB I don't think any teachers should get or expect presents)

Nothing. Giving presents to teachers in primary schools is fairly widespread, in secondary schools it’s not. It never crossed my mind to give a present to any of DS’s secondary teachers.

Nothing - nobody buys gifs for secondary teachers.

I wonder why.

Nothing. Why would I?

After DD1 left, at the start of Sept all her GCSE teachers got a bottle of wine (I was delighted with her results, her teachers had really helped).
DD2 missed y11 so they got nothing.

Some absolutely do

The kids sometimes buy small presents or make a card.

presents from parents are rarer.

most parents wouldn’t have that much contact with head of year so unless they’d done an awful lot for your child then nothing.

if they had done a lot to support your child then chocs

Treats for the staffroom are always appreciated. Helping students through school is a team effort.

Nothing. I didn’t buy for primary school teachers either.

DS is in year 13 and he bought and wrote thank you cards individually to all of his teachers and form tutor. His messages were really thoughtful so I hope they were appreciated

We didn’t buy as in primary and senior the teachers and staff were not allowed to accept any gifts.
At the primary I was a Governor at, teachers were not allowed to accept gifts but the school asked parents to donate a book to the school library (one they no longer wanted, one from a charity shop etc) if they wanted to mark their thanks to the school.

We don't have heads of year at our school but people absolutely do buy gifts for teachers.

My colleague got an entire crate of alcohol just before we broke up for half term. She had done a fantastic job mentoring/teaching a particular student through their gcses and the parents wanted to say thank you.

I've had some lovely gifts from parents. Usually because of pastoral work rather than teaching tbh.

As ever, hand-written cards and letters are always the thing we appreciate the most.

Id struggle to tell you the name of my child's head of year.
So, nothing.

Is this a fucking thing now, too?!

Nothing.

I sent his guidance teacher a nice email though.

Absolutely nothing seen as he saw fit to let my DS leave school alone with no call home after he had disclosed to a teacher at school that he was suicidal. Then when we queried this said "well I didn't think he meant it".

Decent wine at the end of year 13, nothing the other years. Did the SEN department nice chocolates as they were amazing.

Dd is a secondary school teacher. See yes some lovely cards with messages of thanks from students and sometimes things like bars of chocolate or biscuits, but they are always bought by the students and never the parents.

When my dcs were at secondary school, they had the same form tutor from year 7 until year 11. Over the years we had got to know him quite well so I made sure to buy a gift we knew he would appreciate. We got him a rose bush and a bottle of his favourite wine.
DC is now a secondary teacher and their favourite end of year gift was last year when the students baked a chocolate fudge cake for him - they are it during form time on the last day.

My DH is a secondary school teacher and gets a wide range of presents from kids. We have only ever bought one secondary teacher a bottle of wine as he went above and beyond. My DH has had personalised mugs, socks, chocolates, meal vouchers, wine, beer, funny soap bars, collage of photographs, and more I can’t remember . A mixture of silly stuff from the kids themselves and more expensive stuff from parents. Whilst my DH is not always easy to live with or popular with management the kids in school love him!

People showing gratitude? Yes it's a thing but it's nothing new.

At the end of year 11 bought DS's form tutor a Costa voucher. She'd been his form tutor for 5 years and also taught him for one of his GCSE subjects, and was very supportive. No plans to buy anything for 6th form tutor.

Why does it need to be via a gift instead of, ya know, saying thanks?

Guidance teacher will get restaurant vouchers. Poor bloke has gone absolutely above and beyond though, so I don’t feel anything could express how grateful we are to him!

DS is just finishing Y13, he's written thank you cards for each teacher, important ones got a poem(!)