School - Money for this and that

jellyhead

Our school asks nowhere near as much as yours though OP! It really does cost around £6 per child for a coach trip though, even if they just go down the road.

One thing I've noticed that our school does is have a FAMILY amount, not just an amount per child. If the cost is £1 then they say 'or £1.50 per family' and that seems to work okay.

Perhaps you could bring it up with school as a suggestion

carlislelass

mountainofdebt wrote: »

Like many other posters I can remember is the annual charity week and that took place at secondary school level - at junior school level I can't remember much taking place although I do seem to remember having a book of phootgraphs of young children to sell - though I can't remember what that particular charity was !

I think part of the problem is that charities are now big business and as such have high profile events - think of all the publicity that goes into children in need, comic relief and sports relief for example. It wouldn't surprise me if charities even had some sort of school liaision officer.

Also I suspect that the heads take part, not to raise their own profile but don't wish to appear to the one that won't take part - after all someone has to organise things, count the money and bank it etc and this all takes time.

were the photos "sunshine" something or other...must be going back to the 60`s

mountainofdebt

carlislelass wrote: »

were the photos "sunshine" something or other...must be going back to the 60`s

Might have been - though wasn't in school in the 60's :rotfl::rotfl:

From what I remember they were black and white photos of the child's face and the pages were perforated so that who ever bought the picture have it from the booklet.

Gingham_Ribbon

sneezyboots wrote: »

This is a joke right. You want to keep tabs on what is bought through school vouchers? The vouchers sent in by everybody? If you are that bothered don't send them in! I think someone has too much time on their hands. Not to mention the time you are taking away from a teacher being productive to go and find the catalogue, last order and copy it all just for you.

Why not? We don't need to know exact details, but my son's school certainly tells us how they've used money raised - just an outline is perfectly sufficient - new art equipment, new reading books, some new IT resources, a fish tank for each class, a kit for the rugby team - we don't need to know how much was spent on painbrushes and how much on paper, but we do need to see that these things help - it makes us more likely to continue to do so.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

I had a fit when I had a letter demanding £22 for a trip to the Natural History Museum - they went on public transport, so they used their own Oyster Cards plus £1 on it for the train, they brought their own food and the entrance was free. Where did this money go?

To add further insult, the teacher in charge took them all to Starbucks and bought them a hot chocolate each and had to pay out of his own pocket.

We never found out where all the hundreds of bottle of wine went at the primary school either.

jellyhead

That was nice of their teacher are you sure it wasn't included in the £22 though?

do all the kids have oyster cards? what sort of insurance would the school need to take the kids on public tranport?

I'd expect it to cost something, for insurance if nothing else but I've never paid £22 for a day trip with school, even when there's an entry fee for the place they are visiting.

I have one in high school and there isn't a PTA to help subsidise coach fares etc. but even there the most expensive trip he's been on was £17.50 for a whole day inclusing coach fare and entry.

The school gave them a choice of 3 science trips in year 8, one of which was free entry but the coach was £6.50. A trip in year 7 cost £5 for the coach.

It's all quite reasonable, and I want him to be going on trips with other kids

I don't know if it's being in a 'deprived' area that makes our schools ask for less money than others. wearing red for valentines day (for haiti) was only 50p suggested donation per child.

mandragora_2

If the school is a state school, the local authority will have insurances in place to cover trips and visits (well, they do in my area, anyway) so that shouldn't be an extra cost passed on to parents.

However, this is some distance from the original post, which I think was a good one - it's the contributions to charity event after charity event that are a particular problem. I think trips is a whole other can of worms!

hazelgirl44

All the children in my ds3 primary school received a letter and it mentioned that they had received an "unimpressive £60 out of a total of 122 pupils" towards sports relief. I must admit I was fuming as unknown to the head teacher I had already donated to this charity outside of the school. I did confront her (something I wouldn't normally do) and she didn't like it one bit. i asked her "how did she know that I hadn't already given" and she didn't know where to put herself. She was trying to answer me whilst walking away at the same time.

Anyway, my point being that, the school should of been grateful for any donation received and not made to feel like you never give any money for any kind of fundraiser.

jellyhead

So that's around 50p per child - what's wrong with that? my school only asks for 50p donations for stuff, sometimes £1 but then there are the families with more than 1 child who pay per family rather than for each child, and some who don't pay at all.

That's just really rude! my school would never refer to donations as 'unimpressive' !!

esmy

When I was asked for £10 for DD2 to go on a trip to a local (as in 3 miles away) museum that has free entry I asked for a breakdown of the costs as I could take her myself for the price of the bus fare. I never got it so I never paid it. Why can't schools be transparent about such things?
Oh and I never never send cash in to school for anything - cash 'not paid', ie lost by the school, no receipt ever given despite clear requests for one. Considering the amount the average secondary school takes in from it's pupils I think it's reasonable to expect some basic accounting???