Would it worry you if your 13 year old's classmates sold sweets at school every day on the sly?

[tigermoth]

My son regularly buys sweets from several of his classmates who bring them in to school to sell at a profit. There is a thriving undercover trade (st least they are not selling drugs).

My son tells me some of the parents supply their children with wholesale boxes of sweets to trade with. Other children use their pocket money to buy large bags of sweets, then divide them up to sell. Parents apparently turn a blind eye to their teenager's little business.

Teachers see this trading going on every break time but rarely intervene. AFAIK the PTA is doing nothing either (I have seen no letters or petitions etc).

The school (a grammar school fwiw) has no sweet or fizzy drink machines, and encourages healthy eating at lunchtime (salad bar, fresh fruit, milk bar etc and chips only served twice a week).

I am far from wringing my hands in anguish while throwing them up in horror at this lax attitude to undercover sweet trading, but but even so....

At Dh's school they had an underground porn trade going.
50p to rent a mag for a night.
Don't think I would worry about sweets too much.

Well, my ds is obviously not going to be the next Alan Sugar as he seems happy to buy the sweets, not sell them. I don't give him that much money but have hope he doesn't scoff sweets instead of lunch. He likes good food, but it's all on trust at his age.

Sorry, but I would not be happy about him regularly bulk buying sweets to sell at a profit at school. Now and again ok, but not as a regular thing.

The parents who let their children buy wholesale boxes of sweets to take to school (not saying this is the case with anyone here)just seems wrong, wrong, wrong to me. Knowing your child is actively enabling kids to up their sugar intake at school, possibly at the expense of having a proper lunch is a bit off. The money your child ends up with is the money their friend's parents have given them presumably for proper food.

Call me a spoilsport!

But if he is 13 then he should be able to make sensible decisions by now. In 3 years he will be an adult.

At our school we often have little wannabe entrepreneurs setting up to sell things in school: cans of pop, sweets, elastic bands (caused mayhem in classes for a few days), whatever the latest craze is.

Our SMT does clamp down on any sort of trading that is discovered within school; as it can lead to all sorts of problems.

I just wish one of them would set up selling pens, pencils, rulers, and other basic school equipment!

Very true, ladymuck. It's difficult to get too worked up about sweet buying when I know he could legally get married in three years.

When my son started the school I was relieved to hear that all the sweet and fizzy drink vending machines had recently been removed. I know my son is easily distracted in class so I don't think that sweets and fizzy drinks will help his concentration. Even at his age and size I think too much junk at school will affect him.

And it just seems odd that a school can remove the vending machines but not do anything about the sweet selling. Mind you, perhaps the teachers know they are fighting a losing battle.