£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

When the DCs are home, lunch for all three of us costs £1.50-£2. When they are at school, their lunch costs £2 each, per day.
It goes up around 10% each year too.
When they're home, they wear clothes handed down from friends, or from charity shops. At school they need specific logged items which can't be passed on or bought second-hand.
I consider that a""hidden" cost.

Can i include the mobility scooter i need to get them to and from nursery? Its walking distance, but only if you can walk...

Free pick up/drop off from the school only includes children with disabilities (not saying for a second they shouldnt get it!), no thoughts given to how parents with disabilities are going to get their children there!

"I think transport to school ought to be free for DC who have more than 2km to walk. I think DC ought to go to their local school in order to keep costs down and transport times to a minimum."

In our LEA if you live within the catchment area of a school , but more than three miles away the child gets a free bus pass. We are 4 miles from DD's school and the bus goes straight from our village to the school and costs us absolutely nothing.

Ds1 tried the local school. It wasn't the school for him.

Same here, Sparkling!

We're on our third state school system.

Uniform costs (inc. logo'd polos & sweatshirts) in the UK and various small fees for PTA type stuff. A few trips, I don't recall them being very expensive or frequent, but dc were fairly young. No costs for clubs etc. School dinners were rubbish so we did packed lunches for all of us.

In the US we were required to provide a whole bundle of stuff each year (including things like tissues and hand sanitizer, as well as pencils and paper) Expensive and a hassle to get. Also various small fees for PTA stuff. I think there was just the one trip, and it was fairly cheap (we were only there for 6 months). No uniform.

Now we live in Canada. At primary there was lots of fundraising activities but very few other costs because the PTA funded lots of it. In the last two years there was a residential and also skiing (but this is local so cheap). Most families opted for one or the other. I think it was $100 for three days (which was very good value). No uniform, and the only other school requirement was for indoor shoes in winter term (very snowy here).

At secondary we have to pay a fee at the beginning of each semester (two terms here) which depends on the course. Think it was $60 between my two this time. No uniform, no other kit required. School bus is free so long as you go to the local school (95% of children do), but we pay for bus passes as the times aren't great, that's $100 a semester. Very little fundraising, except for the food bank, which tends to be about bringing in no perishables and are totally voluntary (eg they did a 'scare hunger away' event for Halloween). School trips are rare, voluntary and a big deal (eg next year if ds wanted to take biology he could go on the trip to Hawaii).

Making families pay lots of money for uniform and kit is a hidden cost I think becasue it is totally unnecessary and also unavoidable as most people don't really have much choice of school.

My sons uniform costs £7 for a polo shirt, £7 for a logo'd jumper and I buy the black trousers from any shop. Barely £6 a pair. £100 max for about three years wear so £33.33 per year plus coat which gets worn anywhere. Really parents need to be getting harsh with schools spending a lot on uniforms!

Been in several sch systems and UK state by far the most affordable - no fees, relatively little fundraising, no textbooks or major stationery to buy, often free transport, many things free to those in need- school meals, trips etc. plus ebay et al make uniform much more affordable.
Adding it up, realise we spend £3000 x 2 on petrol, trips and sch lunches. None of it hidden though.

That figure includes uniform, shoes, extra equipment & fundraising contributions.

My child has just started state secondary. I was surprised to have to pay £16 for MFL books and a dictionary. It was particularly annoying as I have several A level dictionaries that would have been ideal. We were not given the option of the books only.

Other expenses have been for lockers, ID card and DT materials

I don't think it's costing me anything like that at the moment (1 DD in year 1). I probably spent £80 on uniform but much less this year as the cardigans still fit. The summer trip was £15 and she didn't do any after school clubs. I did pay for school meals some of the time (£120 for the year at a guess), but they are free now.

The uniform though is actually cheaper than the clothes I would normally buy (mainly supermarket and Next), probably wears better, and it means 'home clothes' wear out less quickly. Surely home schooling as a comparison must be way more expensive?

Well, school dinners are £2.20 a day - £75+ a term (old half term) so that's £450 a year. So last year that was £900 for the two of them - for DD2 it is free for this year and next now fortunately.

Yes, I would say that figure is easily accurate. The school is very active in fundraising, both for the school itself and chosen charities. Money is tighter this year, so I am cutting down the amount I give. But it is things like they did an educational trip to a museum. It has a shop attached. Children were told they could take spending money up to £10. There was also another list for a team-building day which asked children to bring a variety of indoor and outdoor clothing, including a tracksuit top in a certain colour, where you just think, fgs, my DD does not have a tracksuit top, never mind a blue one. Plus, the non-uniform days for charity which have a theme and you have nothing which fits. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Fits the theme, I mean. The children have other clothes which fit them!

I've just reread the information sheet about Duke of Edinburgh at ds' school: the £40 includes all the necessary "equipment", including boots and jackets - £16 to the council for admin costs and the remainder to top up supplies. I know the Parent Council contributed money (raised at a Mela involving local businesses) to buy equipment (tents etc) and the Achievement Fund will be exactly the sort of thing that would be used to ensure that kids who wanted to do DOE but couldn't afford the £40 could do so.

We live in a very middle class area and my d/c went/go to the local school. I have seen a big change over the years since ds1 (19) was there. At one time we would have been well in excess of £800 pa with expensive trips, fetes, book fairs, theatre company visits etc. but times have changed and there appears to be more local trips, less bussing children around to this and that.

I don't think you can include school lunches or optional extras such as music lessons in the calculation because they are, well, optional. Some parents will be paying for music lessons out with school. Dress down days, after school clubs and discos are also optional and they would have to wear clothes of some sort although I can understand the problem if the uniform is hugely expensive.

We have a second hand uniform shop, sweat shirts £2, fleeces and jackets £4 and polo shirts £1 so you can clothe them fairly cheaply if you wish. Our requested contributions are not voluntary. Generally you pay or your child doesn't go (school has some funds they can use in extreme circumstances) and I would say that this year this has been less than £10 for the year. Some parents are "up in arms" at the lack of school trips and outings but these tend to be the parents who can afford to do these things with their dc's anyway. I don't think the cheaper, in house, entertainment has adversely affected their education one little bit.