£800 'hidden cost' of sending a child to a state school - your experiences?

[TheLateKateMumsnet]

According to the Children's Commission on Poverty, many families in the UK are struggling to meet the 'hidden costs' of sending a child to school. They estimate that families need to find roughly £800 per child to pay for things such as school uniforms, lunches, and extra-curricular trips and activities - often more, once their child reaches secondary school.

What's your experience? Does this figure sound about right, when you add up all the extras - and are your family finances suffering because of it? Do let us know in the thread below.

P.S If you're looking for ways to manage school costs, take a look at our tips here

For all those really struggling with trips and activities and enrichment ......

please do not be ashamed to contact your local educational charity

there are THOUSANDS of charities with tens of thousands of pounds available for grants each year
who really struggle to find beneficiaries

use them - get your kids the chances that are available

My dd stated nursery 4 wks ago. Faith school with uniform. Does 2hrs approx every day.

I've had a total figure of 12 letters asking for donations of money, items and pta requests all of which say optional but very obviously are not. The dearest one being £25 for Xmas cards of a drawing she did all of which benefit the school.

It's a decent school in a decent area but really, 12 letters in 4 wks?!

£25!! Direct them to Cauliflower Cards. 12 for £5.50 with £1 going to the school. Are yours edged with 9ct gold?

Not at primary but reckon will easily be that at secondary.

I don't think school uniform reduces the wear and tear on other clothes. My children have clothes to see them through a week and they keep these clothes until they grow out of them. Wear and tear isn't so much the issue as growth.

Reading this thread I really love my dcs school.

At least one school trip every half term - 6-8 school trips a year. Total cost for all trips usually under £20 per child. They have a coach.

Music lessons currently behind offered after school free.

After school clubs are free. Because dc do them 3 days a week that is more then 3 hours per week childcare I do not have to pay for.

Generic school uniform fine. No rules on shoes or coats. PE kit shorts and a t-shirt. Second hand school uniform is sold for pence at school fairs or given out from lost property at the end of the year.

I don't buy school pictures or cards. I do get Mother's Day cards and special occasion cards and small gifts brought home. Each year each child gets a Christmas present from the PTA.

I buy school dinners, have no issue with that cost.

"But they're not really hidden costs are they? I mean everyone knows they will have to pay for Sch dinners and school uniform."

Exactly. Surely everyone knows that having children isn't a cheap option. The more you have the more it costs.

Or, I guess, it might reduce the wear and tear but that makes no difference to the longevity of children's clothes.

I think that's quite cheap. Ds had a residential at the start of the year which was £300. Two years ago he should have gone on one that was £190. We also get begging letters for "parental contributions" each year which amount to about £120 /year. And so it goes on ......

I've been flabbergasted by the constant requests for cash and DD only started reception in September. All parents are encouraged to donate £110 per child per year to help meet the shortfall in funding from the council and then there is £20 per year so they can do activities such as cooking in their lessons and £25 per year towards school trips.
Uniform I had factored in and obviously don't mind as I would have to clothe DD anyway but am annoyed at having to buy logo'd cardigans at £16 a pop, an extra set of wellies, waterproof trousers & coat and tracksuit for her to keep at school (somehow, the coat she walks to school in and wears at playtime isn't sufficient for when they do outdoor lessons and this tracksuit is different to what she has for PE).
We've been to a few PTA events as want to support the school but everything is so over priced. At the new parents welcome evening, you had to buy a £5 ticket which included a drink but subsequent glasses of wine were £4 each. I know they need to make a profit but it seems excessive.

£800 seems conservative to me. Given DC start school in the year they are 4 turning 5 and have to stay in education until they're 18 as things stand currently, £800 across 14 years is £57 a year. I could not clothe my children in school uniform for £57 a year, let alone trips etc. I'm not complaining though, children get so much out of trips - I can vividly remember school trips from my own schooldays.

I haven't seen if there's a breakdown of how the £800 has been arrived at and I agree with others that the sorts of costs given as examples in the OP can hardly be described as hidden.

To me a hidden cost is something you don't realise you're paying, everyone with a child at school knows how much they are spending on uniform etc. I find it hard to see how hidden costs could come to anything like £800

Is that a state school Laundry? That seems an awful lot. Although as a governor on the finance committee at a high school I know that all schools are suffering badly from the cuts. We still don't ask the parents to contribute.

I have found that demands for money come to a virtual full stop at high school. No trips and no PTA fund raising.

I'm another one whose dc go to school in a poor area. Their primary school predominantly took dcs from the local council estates (where we lived) and school uniform was cheap - nothing to stop us buying from Asda etc. School trips were only to a rural-ish field centre, and subsidised for those on benefits, which I found affordable. No expectations to buy extra school equipment, and no extra-curricular activities which demanded lots of expense. I think I would spend about an extra £50-100 on school costs per child annually.

DSIL always moans about the extra costs that her dc's school demands, but it is a better area, has lots of fund-raising activities and very wealthy families who are able to donate huge prizes for raffles. But on the flip side the dc tend to be better behaved, with naicer families and high league table stats, so despite all the grumbling she would rather pay all these so-called hidden extras than send her dc to a school full of council estate kids.

Gawd, uniforms hidden extras? Come on!
£4000 in school run petrol here plus all the usual things

I was going to say - nowhere near, but if you are counting lunch, then obviously that's going to be over £400, that you pay out, but then I wouldn't count that as a "hidden cost" - feeding your dc is a pretty expected part of parenting, surely ?

Talkinpeace wrote

" If you live more than a certain distance from the school you get free transport to and from school , regardless of income .

Not any more see the Oxfordshire cases
not if you live "out of catchment"
not if your kids are in 6th form college

If you are on FSM here you get a clothing grant for school uniform and you don't pay for school trips or music tuition

Maybe in your school but not in the ones in this county"

I understand that , hence the use of the word " here " in my post

I didn't claim that I was speaking for the whole uk. Like everyone else who has posted, I'm only talking about the costs are our schools /in my area . You might as well quote every single post on this thread and write " not in my area " afterwords , because it seems that every school and county is different

And Of course the local authority don't cover travel costs if you decide to send your child out of catchment . Or if they are college or university . Do you really think they should ? What if you decide to send your child to a school 25 miles away -is it the local authority's job to get them there ?

I work with children in special circumstances and am dismayed that pupil premium is not being used to help parents with this cost, it seems to be absorbed into the school budget.
I am hoping Ofsted will tighten up on this as some point.

I would say its more than that with the cost of residential trips with pretty much 100% attendance.
What infuriates me with the yr 5 and 6 residential trips is the lack of shopping around to provide the children with the same experience for a better deal.
They're paying too much for what they're getting -mine did a like for like out of school club residential trip for literally half the price of the school one.

School swimming alone has amounted to approx £300 between them for my two!

PP afaik has to be used for enrichment type activities so uniform wouldn't be covered. In our school it pays for an LSA to help with reading and maths. Not that a lot of them need it but the parents don't come up with any ideas themselves and this fits in with the LSA's other duties.

Ledkr, Ofsted are already very tight re pupil premium. Every school has to show what it's been spent on. Some schools will spend it all on resources and extra teaching assistants to provide a better education. It doesn't have to be spent on helping the parents, that's there job not the schools.

Primary school didn't cost anything like that .

Non uniform school - yay!
Lunches at about £44 per half term
I residential in Yr 6: £12
Entrance for PTA disco 50p, and any money for cake sales etc.

I think that was it! The school is in a very mixed area with lots of disadvantaged families and the PTA worked hard to fundraise. The school and PTA covered the costs of all trips and because everyone could see the benefit of the PTA input there was lots of help, running events, staffing stalls etc even if they couldn't contribute cakes etc.

Secondary ;
Uniform, initial outlay and top ups if shirts and trousers over 3 years: £200, so averaged at £70 a year, say.

Lunch: £1.90 a day so that's about £390 a year or £420 with about 3 added drinks a week.

Music lessons (individual half hour a week) £150 a year, £25 discount for paying upfront.

Music after school (2 hours a week band session) £90 a year.

Thorpe Park: £25 (optional , but a highlight)
Somme trip £80 (optional but a valuable experience, I think) £80
Activity Week: a choice, most at about £30 , most expensive, water sports , £80, some free options

Other sundry activities, readings by authors, a cinema trip, other stuff: probably £30-50 a year.

The music lessons and club are free to those on FSM. Some if the trips, too.

I think the school (well regarded, good results, S London, high ratio of FSM students) does a good job in offering good opportunities at low cost. But I find myself wincing every time I press 'confirm ' on ParentPay. and we are not brassic. DS does another out if school activity that costs about £600 a year. I don't know how families with 3 or more kids manage.

Our school asks for nothing much although parents could generally afford it as in nice mc area. Small amount donated for snack in early years classes. PTA events totally optional. Have logo uniform but only 50% wear it and anything sensible goes. No rules on shoes or coats. Lots of supermarket cheap options and huge amounts of kids in very worn hand me downs etc It's a fantastic high performing state school

I am gobsmacked by this thread and the amounts that some parents pay. When I first read the article I genuinely thought it was sensationalist as no way do I spend that amount of my DC at school - I doubt it is even as much as 150 over a year per child (that's a uniform bought from supermarket, shoes and trainers, plus one trip and a few very cheap things like 1 non-uniform days).

So for me a more interesting question is "how do some schools manage to do so much for free/cheap and other school can't?"