Do School Trip Fees subsidise non-payers?

nodiscount

What's with all the melodrama?

Nobody on this thread said (or even implied) that kids could be sent up chimneys, people sent to workhouses or anything like that!

Excuse me if thinking that child tax credits, free school meals and child benefit was more than enough to ensure parents pay for their own children to go on trips. How wrong of me. Perhaps school (and other parents) should also be paying for more stuff no? Where do you draw the line?

bloolagoon

I'm going to give a real life example from my own perspective. My husband lost his job and we struggled on my part time wages and his JSA for 4 months. No tax credits as had earned too much prior to his redundancy. He hadn't been at the company 2 years so no payout.

It was a very tough 4 months, I was humbled and wished many times I could turn back the clock and had wasted so much money on irrelevant items over the years. It's true how you take things for granted.

Anyway they decided to do swimming lessons, lessons free but £5 per week coach hire charge. I sat my son down and said I could not afford this, especially as he could already swim and had passed the level the lessons went up to by the age of 5. There was no advantage to him going and that £5 per week for a term was best spent elsewhere. Maybe if he had gained from it I would have tried to find the money, but he wouldn't gain anything.

Speaking to other parents and embarrassed I told them why J wasn't going. One by one many others dropped out too, they too thought that it was a pointless exercise as their children had passed stage 7 and could swim.

The Head Teacher called us in and informed us we were denying other children who couldn't swim the right to learn as they needed our donations. I pointed out that I didn't have 5p let alone £5. But wasn't on FSM so no additional funding.

In the end the school ended up offering a huge subsidy to selected parents of £2 per week to make up the shortfall. There was uproar and those parents who went from free to £2 refused to pay.

I still remember how embarrassed I was that I couldn't contribute but also thought it so very wrong that I was expected to pay for something that had no benefit to my child, to subsidise others. I was made to feel like I was personally responsible for stopping children learning to swim.

Roll forward 6 months, I'm in a better financial position and their first away from home trip comes up. £385.00. No subsidy for anyone on residentials. Only half the year went as money for lots was tight, it increased by £40. However, the parents who made me feel guilty that their child was denied swimming nearly all funded this trip.

There are two sides to everything, just because you are working doesn't mean you have spare money and it should not be up to working patents to subsidise others.

Now my child started high school last year. They have a points system for good behaviour, uniform correct, volunteering, fund raising etc. the points can be used for trips amongst other things. It seems a fair way to allocate funds.

Soleil_lune

Person_one wrote: »

I've said it before, but there are people on tho board who won't be happy until people on benefits start looking and acting like proper peasants, shuffling around workhouses and crying silently into their gruel.

Redouble, get an outfit like this and practice your best grovelling and you might be considered to be acceptably abject:

LOL, I love that film!

Seriously though; it is a very complex subject, and no two stories or cases are the same.

It is true that in some families when people are working - (in some cases two adults working full time) - they are no better off than people are on benefits, as people on benefits get a lot of stuff paid for. But that is the fault of the system and not the people on benefits.

And yes, you do seem to have this hard-core minority of people on benefits who seem to complain about everything, moan that they can't afford this and that, and yet still find money for 20 fags a day, internet bingo, 4 rottweilers and designer clothes, but then you have the ones who can barely afford to top up their electricity key, need to go to food banks to feed their children, and can only shop in charity shops. I know a few single mums on benefits who go to aya napa every year, wear the best clothes and smoke and go to the pub every night, and other ones who haven't got a pot to p1ss in.

I still think that having a go at someone for having a contract phone and a telly when they're on benefits is a bit daft though. As I said, you can get a mobile phone for as little as £7.50 a month, and to some, it's a lifeline.

As for this:

nodiscount wrote: »

What's with all the melodrama?

Nobody on this thread said (or even implied) that kids could be sent up chimneys, people sent to workhouses or anything like that!

Excuse me if thinking that child tax credits, free school meals and child benefit was more than enough to ensure parents pay for their own children to go on trips. How wrong of me. Perhaps school (and other parents) should also be paying for more stuff no? Where do you draw the line?

I have no idea, as I have - fortunately - never been in the position of being on full benefits. Maybe some people on full benefits (maybe people living alone: single mums or single dads,) can answer the question!

We all know somebody who swings the lead and seems to have much more than someone who goes out to work has, (I know a few!) but to tar everyone with the same brush and assume that people are loaded and can pay for everything themselves, just because they have a phone contract is unfair.

jellyhead

I've seen other threads where the bus to go swimming had to be paid for Mine went in year 3 for around half a year which amounted to roughly 15 lessons. There's a school bus (I'm not sure how it is shared out, but it seems to be available to take all children in the county swimming) that we don't have to pay for.

It's nice that it's free because my son said there were a lot of kids wearing armbands, at age 7-8, and a few said they'd never been swimming. Mine had had some lessons but was only on stage 3 so he benefited from the extra lessons because he's very clumsy and uncoordinated. If we had been charged £5 per lesson I'd have paid it but would have stopped his after-school lessons for a term or two.

Maybe school uses their budget to allow free coaches for all to go swimming, I don't know.

bloolagoon

jellyhead wrote: »

I've seen other threads where the bus to go swimming had to be paid for Mine went in year 3 for around half a year which amounted to roughly 15 lessons. There's a school bus (I'm not sure how it is shared out, but it seems to be available to take all children in the county swimming) that we don't have to pay for.

It's nice that it's free because my son said there were a lot of kids wearing armbands, at age 7-8, and a few said they'd never been swimming. Mine had had some lessons but was only on stage 3 so he benefited from the extra lessons because he's very clumsy and uncoordinated. If we had been charged £5 per lesson I'd have paid it but would have stopped his after-school lessons for a term or two.

Maybe school uses their budget to allow free coaches for all to go swimming, I don't know.

I think for me personally it was waiting until year 6 to do the swimming lessons and expecting the coach subsidised I had an issue with. Other schools had free coach travel, I think it was possibly a poor decision of the school on how they allocated funds but also the schools argument is that they get little premiums.

We have never received free coach travel anywhere.

Dunroamin

Soleil_lune wrote: »

I have no idea, as I have - fortunately - never been in the position of being on full benefits. Maybe some people on full benefits (maybe people living alone: single mums or single dads,) can answer the question!

You don't need to be living on "full benefits" to receive child tax credits, the earnings threshold is £26k for a 1 child family - higher for more children.

jellyhead

It's around 32k threshold if you have 2 children, and higher if you have three.

A social worker advised me to claim for a teenager I'd taken in, and I was surprised to see that I'd have got more than £50 per week in tax credits for him, plus child benefit and even housing benefit if relevant, and that's on a good wage. The only thing that's not 'full benefits' is that you don't get free school meals if you are a working family, afaik.

Soleil_lune

Dunroamin wrote: »

You don't need to be living on "full benefits" to receive child tax credits, the earnings threshold is £26k for a 1 child family - higher for more children.

Either you misunderstood me or I didn't explain myself properly.

I know that many people get tax credits... even many working - sometimes full time.

However ,the whole subject matter in this thread is based around people getting their school trips paid for if their kids get free school meals. And the ones who get free school meals 'are' the ones on full benefit. Certainly where I come from anyway.

That's why I said to 'nodiscount' that she should ask someone on 'full benefits,' why they don't pay for the school trips out of their tax credits and child benefit etc, as people who are 'not' on full benefits, would not be getting free school meals for their kids. Ergo no free school trips.

Acc72

nodiscount wrote: »

Excuse me if thinking that child tax credits, free school meals and child benefit was more than enough to ensure parents pay for their own children to go on trips. How wrong of me. Perhaps school (and other parents) should also be paying for more stuff no? Where do you draw the line?

It is 2 weeks since you started this thread, and you still seem to be very angry about it.

Why not just ask the school ?

You can then choose to either make the voluntary donation, or not.

jellyhead

Often the schools actually state on the trip letter that those on FSM don't have to pay, so that's why many don't.

Our letter about the residential asks for a small contribution from those on FSM, but doesn't suggest how much. The trip will still go ahead, so presumably there's a pot that pays for those children. The whole class is expected to go, and it would would pretty horrible if somebody couldn't go due to financial problems, at age 8.

Let people miss out if they don't pay when they're older, fair enough, but not at age 8.