Shh we wont tell anyone (school)

Zziggi

JodyBPM wrote: »

Money for the trip is separate. As far as I am aware, there is no entitlement to free school trips due to low income or eligibility for free school meals, although some schools or local authorities may choose to offer some help.

At our school, they clearly state on the school trip letters that if you have trouble paying to contact the school office, and they will arrange for you to spread the cost out in installments, but you don't get out of paying for them. If you are having difficulty finding the £7.50, I would talk to the school office, I am sure they will have options for you.

Jody, I'm not sure about this but my friend is a teacher in a deprived school and she has said in the past that when calculating the cost of trips, her school make the assumption that no child in the class on FSM will pay for the trip and the cost for those children tomgo on the trip will be met out of school funds. This is all part of the cost calculations. Of course if some FSM children do pay,and that's all the better. I am not sure if that is an assumption made by that school only or the LEA or a general assumption.

Re: contact the school office
I believe this is a bit of a sly move by the school. I believe (please anybody, correct me if I am wrong) but schools are not allowed to question parents on why the have not sent in the voluntary contribution. If a parent simply returns the consent form with no cash (and if it isn't a case that the child has left the trip money in their bag) then that's the end of the matter. HOWEVER if the parent goes to the school and if the parent chooses to discuss the issue of school trip cost with the school then the school, legally, can discuss the matter with them because the parent brought the matter up first. Also the school can also offer paying by instalments (I.e. the school gets the cash out of the parent eventually rather than the cost being met from school funds). So the simple advice to someone who cannot or doesn't wish to pay the "voluntary contribution" is to return the consent form and not approachnthe school nor enter into discussions with the school about the "voluntary contributions".

I found this out after I stopped paying for trips. My kids' school also now try the "please come to the school office to discuss paying in instalments" sentence in school trip letters. I never have and they have never approached me after I asked my child's teacher to check up on the legality of quizzing me in a crowded playground why I had not sent in the full amount for DDs school trip and nor have they approached me after i questioned the legality of not stating in school trip letters that the cost was a "voluntary contribution" and not "a charge".

msb5262

Zziggi wrote: »

Does anyone know if this extra funding schools get due to kids with FSM status is actually ring-fenced?

As far as I know, it's not ring-fenced as in "must be spent specifically on educational interventions/support/activities provided exclusively for FSM pupils"...I think it goes into the school budget and is spent on increasing staffing, improving resources etc with a view to making sure that the FSM children in particular fulfil their learning potential.

HTH

MsB

P.S. I am horrified to hear how your daughter was treated, Zziggi - that is totally unacceptable.

JC9297

Zziggi wrote: »

Jody, I'm not sure about this but my friend is a teacher in a deprived school and she has said in the past that when calculating the cost of trips, her school make the assumption that no child in the class on FSM will pay for the trip and the cost for those children tomgo on the trip will be met out of school funds. This is all part of the cost calculations. Of course if some FSM children do pay,and that's all the better. I am not sure if that is an assumption made by that school only or the LEA or a general assumption.

Re: contact the school office
I believe this is a bit of a sly move by the school. I believe (please anybody, correct me if I am wrong) but schools are not allowed to question parents on why the have not sent in the voluntary contribution. If a parent simply returns the consent form with no cash (and if it isn't a case that the child has left the trip money in their bag) then that's the end of the matter. HOWEVER if the parent goes to the school and if the parent chooses to discuss the issue of school trip cost with the school then the school, legally, can discuss the matter with them because the parent brought the matter up first. Also the school can also offer paying by instalments (I.e. the school gets the cash out of the parent eventually rather than the cost being met from school funds). So the simple advice to someone who cannot or doesn't wish to pay the "voluntary contribution" is to return the consent form and not approachnthe school nor enter into discussions with the school about the "voluntary contributions".

I found this out after I stopped paying for trips. My kids' school also now try the "please come to the school office to discuss paying in instalments" sentence in school trip letters. I never have and they have never approached me after I asked my child's teacher to check up on the legality of quizzing me in a crowded playground why I had not sent in the full amount for DDs school trip.

So do you think everybody should refuse to pay the voluntary contributions? That would mean that there would be no trips out of school. The children's education probably would not suffer in that academically their attainments would not be adversely affected, but education is about more than results. For many children this is the only chance to visit museums, castles or whatever because their parents won't/can't take them.

I personally think even if you cannot afford the full cost a token contribution is better than just saying I'm not paying at all.

Zziggi

msb5262 wrote: »

Some excellent explanations here ^ - Svenena has nailed it.
To all the people who are querying the extra money for schools based on how many children are entitled to FSM, properly known as the pupil premium and set at over £600 per child in the coming financial year, I'd just like to share one piece of information...
...the single most reliable predictor of a child's reading ability in primary school is parental income.
Children who come from poorer homes need more money spent on them at school to try to close this gap. As a teacher I know that an important part of my job is to try to make sure that FSM children make progress, because statistically they make less progress than the other children.
HTH
MsB

But is the extra money spent on "them" or is the money spent on those children who are not achieving the bare minimum (not the same thing is it?). The assumption made is that children with FSM will statistically make less progress. This may be the findings in some research, however speaking purely for my kids who, based on the last statistics released from the school, must be/have been the only 2 kids receiving FSM in the whole school since the stats showed only 2 kids on FSM (a well-heeled school). Well my DD is quite clearly top of her year group and my SEN DS is somewhere between top 25% and 50% academically. I accept though that we're probably not typical.

MrsB I've equally read that the most important factor in children's attainment in school is parental support, interest and encouragement. The documents i've read are not news reports but full research papers. Our LA E&W service quote (unnamed) figures and reports that apparently indicate that the biggest factor in a child's progress is school attendance.

There are so many different research papers with different findings all saying something slightly different. I think it is naive to say just parental income influences a child's reading age in primary school. Is this just a quote you have been told or have your read the research paper from which the quote comes from? Have you read other research papers? I think we have to accept that income, school attendance, parental support and aspirations, environmental factors, cultural views about education as well as innate ability (have the PC brigade banned that yet?) ALL play a role in child's attainment. I think it is difficult to pin it down to one main factor. In fact if it could be pinned down to one factor then there wouldn't be such a range of opinions in current educational research circles!

JC9297

But it's not just about schools having extra money to spend on the children who qualify for FSM. These children are more likely to have SEN, more likely to have behaviour issues etc and need more input and support - this impacts on all the children in a class.

Zziggi

JC9297 wrote: »

So do you think everybody should refuse to pay the voluntary contributions? That would mean that there would be no trips out of school. The children's education probably would not suffer in that academically their attainments would not be adversely affected, but education is about more than results. For many children this is the only chance to visit museums, castles or whatever because their parents won't/can't take them.

I personally think even if you cannot afford the full cost a token contribution is better than just saying I'm not paying at all.

No, I don't think everybody should refuse to pay the voluntary contributions. What I do think though, is that each parent should make their own mind up based on all the information. That includes the school following the law and stating that the money they are asking for is a "voluntary contribution" and not "a charge". Schools seem rather good at providing selected information and allowing parents to reach an incorrect conclusion when it is to the school's advantage. Whilst we're on the subject of school trips, aren't they supposed to be innovative, challenging and have educational value? If you lot saw what my kids' school does I doubt you'd agree they fulfilled this criteria. For example, taking year 4 children to a local, second-rate, glorified 'petting farm' for their annual (single) school trip. Bearing in mind the social demographics of the school population (only 2 kids on FSM in whole school) and the fact the farm is in the vicinity of the school, I'd like to bet that there wasn't a single child on that trip who hadn't been to that petting farm at least half a dozen times since they were a toddler.

Just to be clear, yes my kids have FSM and up until my DD's humiliation, I have always paid for school trips as I believe parents should. However my DD's treatment when I was unable to pay (along with school's fining of term-time holidays which I disagree with although it doesn't affects us) meant I dug my heels in and I no longer pay anything.

Zziggi

alsoinhd wrote: »

exactly- is it not enough that your children are being paid for by benefits - at best it is stingy.

Yeah, yeah I'm just a no-good benefit scrounger.... In fact probably in your head a fraud, cash-in-hand, single-parent, immigrant, chavvy scum.......

Obviously if I was a "hardworking taxpayer" (is VAT, fuel duty etc etc not tax?) but was not paying for school trips then OBVIOUSLY that would be completely different and potentially a justifiable stance to take.

So if I had originally said I couldn't afford to pay for DD's trip out of this month's wages so I only sent back the consent form but the teacher humiliated her repeatedly about the matter. So now I ain't giving the school any of my wages voluntarily and if they want the costs covered for the school trip then they can take it out of school funds. Does that make the situation so different?

PS. I feel so honoured that you have created a new ID just to make a nasty post.

Zziggi

alsoinhd wrote: »

'IF you were a taxpayer'

you work part time so pay little if no tax. Vat, Fuel etc are paid from your benefits silly!

*yawn* Do I really need to point out that CB, WTC, CTC, HB and CTB are also essentially benefits and full-time workers may also be able to receive these benefits. It's so ironic that "hardworking taxpayers", whilst moaning at "benefit scroungers", may also be claiming a fair ol' chunk of benefits... But we conveniently ignore that fact when trying to be nasty.....

There really ought to be a benefits equivalent to Godwin's/Goodwin's Law.

jellyhead

Out of 8 children in the catch-up class and on the bottom table, the last to learn to read etc. in my son's class only 2 of them are on benefits and some are actually from quite posh families. Both of my children have needed a lot of extra help in the first few years of school - I think being a summer birthday makes a bigger difference than being on benefits.

It might be statistically true that being FSM correlates with struggling to read, but it seems really rude and unkind to stereotype people on benefits in that way. Just because somebody's OH has walked out doesn't mean the parent on benefits doesn't do their best for their children.

sassyblue

daska wrote: »

Would you like to be the child that has to go into the dinner hall first and therefore be labelled as 'poor' - not kidding that's what DS2's school was doing as recently as 2 years ago. Just because people are on their uppers it doesn't mean they want it made known to everybody. Or do poor people not have the right to privacy?

Oh grow up, why do some of you make this out to be a war between the haves and have nots?

You are assuming l have more money than l know what to do with, isn't this a moneysaving board? so why am l here? deary me.