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Do you agree to this 'voluntary contribution' the schools ask for?

Andy From Sligo

My children are all grown up now but i remember this 'voluntary contribution' their schools were looking for around about this time when they went back to school after their summer holidays. - do you agree with it?

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Mountainsandh

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

ah right thank - i though it was saturday school for french kids - i didnt know about the other bits though.

could you imagine if the kids had to go to school on saturdays over here!

It's gone now, the Saturday in France, and there's a bit of an ongoing controversy about a 4 or 5 day week.

I went to school in the 80s, and did my baccalaureat in 1990 I think, or 91.
My timetable would have looked like this :
https://3eme2joliot.skyrock.com/1504065492-Notre-emploi-du-temps.html

[Deleted User]

Tegan Clumsy Fashion wrote: »

The local Educate Together secondary didn't intend to have a uniform as is the norm in their primary schools but parents insisted on one. Fashion shows and all were held to choose it. They chose a traditional uniform with a crested jumper in an unusual colour.

Compulsory uniform? If so, where is this ET school?

airy fairy

Apologies if this info has been shared already, I can't read back through some pages?!!

I was not aware the schools get the money listed below ....

The State pays a direct capitation grant of €170 per student to each primary school. The State pays the teachers' salaries. Enhanced capitation grants are paid for children with special educational needs in special schools or who attend special classes in mainstream schools. Capitation grants are used for the day-to-day running of schools and for teaching materials and resources.

Primary schools also receive a grant for caretaking and secretarial services (called the Ancillary Services Grant Scheme) and this is €153 per student or €77.50 per student, depending on whether the school gets the full-rate or half-rate grant.

A local contribution was formerly required but has now been abolished.

Each school also receives a book grant. This is €21 per pupil for DEIS schools and €11 per pupil for non- DEIS schools.

Each school gets a grant towards the cost of minor works.

andekwarhola

My wife is on the Parent's Association for our kids' primary school and the parental contribution (a very modest one of 50 quid a family as it's a relatively small school) genuinely is used to bridge budget shortfalls in the school, usually for extra curricular activities, sports and recent stuff like trying to build a new classroom.

Incidentally, there's nowhere near a 100% take-up on the charge (which is genuinely voluntary) despite no child every being left out of any activity.

The PA generally plug the gap by fund raising. The PA comprised of the same few mugs year in year out.

That's all despite it being in no way a deprived area and the plethora of nice cars outside the school. Such is modern life and priorities I guess.

Andy From Sligo

snor wrote: »

Voluntary contribution in one of Our local secondary school in Dublin is a very hefty €600 Per child (not per family). ....

wow :eek: - well that's the most highest voluntary school contribution I have ever heard of to date. - crazy!

screamer

rainbowtrout wrote: »

screamer wrote: »

Course they do....they write them for the greedy book publishers.... (For a nice fee I'd bet). What I am saying is that these books should be written for and published by the education department and done at a more nominal cost. With every child in every year having the same books the price would dramatically decrease.

Not sure why you are calling the publishers greedy. They are private businesses, the dept of education are perfectly capable of hiring people to write books if they want to and making them the standard text for all schools and choose not to. In the absence of department published texts of course private publishers are going to step in.
.

Have you seen the prices they charge... absolute bolloxollogy. You've obviously never had to shell out for them.... And you're a teacher, right? So you'll never see the point of view of the parents who have to pay for all the bolloxollogy.... therein lies the issue.

Hotblack Desiato

What's scandalous is that the books change when the syllabus hasn't. That's purely a money making scam at the expense of parents.

A year after I did the LC a neighbour asked if I still had a particular school book, turned out I did but it was no use to them as the "new edition" had EXACTLY the same content as the older one, literally word for word, but the page size was changed so that all of the page numbers would be off. So the teacher insisted that everyone in the neighbour's son's class had to have the new edition.

rainbowtrout

screamer wrote: »

Have you seen the prices they charge... absolute bolloxollogy. You've obviously never had to shell out for them.... And you're a teacher, right? So you'll never see the point of view of the parents who have to pay for all the bolloxollogy.... therein lies the issue.

You really have the knife in teachers don’t you? I doubt anyone could provide a rational explanation to you that you would accept.

Consider a new novel. Paperback, something by Dan Brown etc, sells by the shedload, doesn’t have pictures, isn’t printed in colour except for the cover, paper quality is what is standard for most novels, slightly rough to the touch. It’ll cost you about €15 on average. If you stump up for the hardback version maybe €25.

Now consider school books. Based on the number of junior cert and leaving cert students sitting exams each year, there are approximately 60,000 students in any one year group nationwide. A
Much smaller pool of customers. Not all of them do the same subjects. Books published are typically printed on good quality paper, it’s glossy, books are printed in colour which make them more engaging for the student, there are plenty of photographs in them which have to be paid for from stock libraries, illustrations and diagrams drawn to aid your child’s learning where an illustrator has to be paid for their work. The author will get a royalty for their work and the publishers will pay to market the book and make some profit on it. Your child will use that book for a minimum of one year, which is the most likely outcome if they are in primary school. They will possibly have that book for 2 years if it is for leaving cert and in junior cert while some courses like maths are split into two books, some courses contain the entire course in one book, e.g. science.

The book I teach from for one of my subjects costs €39.95 and my other subject is €29.95. However the student gets two full years education using those books. Consider third level, there is a registration fee for college of €3k per year, if you had to pay course fees you would be looking at least at another 7k. No books are provided. Students take lecture notes.

I don’t know many items that parents spent €30-40 on that their child has for two years that they can learn so much from and at the end can sell on the books if they bought them. If there is a book rental scheme in the school parents pay a fraction of the price for the books.

I think books of any type are a fantastic investment in a child’s life but many parents never seem to view them this way when paying for textbooks.

By the way you posted earlier in the thread about teachers changing the book every year. They can’t. Publishers are bound by an agreed code of conduct that they will not produce a new edition of a book for four years and when the new edition comes out the previous edition has to remain in print for at least two more years. So new editions are not printed annually. In my two subjects I’ve been using one book for the last 8 years and for my other subject it’s been 5 years

meeeeh

snor wrote: »

Voluntary contribution in one of Our local secondary school in Dublin is a very hefty €600 Per child (not per family). Seemingly a lot of this goes on heating the school. Would love to know the percentsge of parents who pay this - have never seen the accounts to calculate. Add to that an expensive, crested uniform including coat, books, money for photocopying, lockers etc and it works out very Expemsive. Seems to be large discrepancy on voluntary contribution amounts between schools.

That's ridiculous. They are using big tank of diesel per approximately two students. I don't buy this and it's actually unethical, it's public school trying to limit access like private school and working hard to avoid undesirable students.

snor

meeeeh wrote: »

That's ridiculous. They are using big tank of diesel per approximately two students. I don't buy this and it's actually unethical, it's public school trying to limit access like private school and working hard to avoid undesirable students.

Agree, but it's obviously working - school is way over subscribed.

Geuze

There are over 3,200 primary schools in Ireland.

This means 3200 principal salaries and principal pensions, as well as 3200 running costs.

If we insist of having hundreds of small schools, with high costs per pupil, then of course there will be less resources for the capitation grant to each school

LirW

Geuze wrote: »

There are over 3,200 primary schools in Ireland.

This means 3200 principal salaries and principal pensions, as well as 3200 running costs.

If we insist of having hundreds of small schools, with high costs per pupil, then of course there will be less resources for the capitation grant to each school

I get where you're coming from, I'm living rural and within the 10k from my house are 6 primary schools I know of, all serving rural small communities. I don't see the necessity of that many but then again it's simply a space problem, when you close 3 or 4 of them, you don't have the space in the remaining schools to accommodate the amount of children. Ours has around 100 children attending 2 years are together in one room. There wouldn't be any space for an additional 200 students. There wouldn't even be space for pre-fabs since the plots are usually not huge either. That's one of the reasons why they keep status quo.

Hotblack Desiato

Exactly, we have a school system which is needlessly balkanised on the grounds of gender and religion.

Bad news for taxpayers, parents and kids, good news for would-be principals.

Segregating children on the grounds of religion is a really bad idea which the history of this island has provided ample proof of. If we're not extremely careful a certain minority religion will take advantage of our tradition of religious segregation to effectively create a society within a society, rejecting the values of wider society and interacting minimally with it. There are ample examples of where that leads, too.

andekwarhola

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

What's scandalous is that the books change when the syllabus hasn't. That's purely a money making scam at the expense of parents.

A year after I did the LC a neighbour asked if I still had a particular school book, turned out I did but it was no use to them as the "new edition" had EXACTLY the same content as the older one, literally word for word, but the page size was changed so that all of the page numbers would be off. So the teacher insisted that everyone in the neighbour's son's class had to have the new edition.

Everything is 'workbooks' now.

Shorthand for expensive and non-transferable.

[Deleted User]

Geuze wrote: »

There are over 3,200 primary schools in Ireland.

This means 3200 principal salaries and principal pensions, as well as 3200 running costs.

If we insist of having hundreds of small schools, with high costs per pupil, then of course there will be less resources for the capitation grant to each school

You know that in smaller schools, principals are teaching principals, right? So where are these high costs per pupil coming from?

Andy From Sligo

can we not just get away from workbooks, and other books these days and let the children learn from internet instead - much better for the environment , cheaper, more modern , more exciting for the pupils we are in a modern society and i bet you can learn just as much (if not more) about history , science and whatever by looking on the internet instead of printed books these days.

Remember at one time in schools there used to be blackboards with chalk and erasers , quills with ink pots and loads of other things that have been taken over by modern practices - there are a lot of modern practices why are kids still going to school with bags on their backs full of books?

I dunno something like tablets or something should be used these days at every desk or something these days. will there ever be a day books are eradicated at every class? - some other countries around the world have done it , why can we over here not make the leap?

josip

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

My children are all grown up now but i remember this 'voluntary contribution' their schools were looking for around about this time when they went back to school after their summer holidays. - do you agree with it?

Yes

Andy From Sligo

josip wrote: »

Yes

oh , do please feel free to elaborate if you wish!

Geuze

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You know that in smaller schools, principals are teaching principals, right? So where are these high costs per pupil coming from?

Excessive running costs due to not exploiting economies of scale.

Example: one parish near me has 5 schools.

Reduce to two.

Energy / maintenance / insurance / all overheads - these will all fall, per pupil.

Principals are paid extra, these allowances would fall.

mloc123

Looking forward to the move from paying €12,000 a year in creche fees to only having to pay a few hundred on uniform and contributions. ..

evolving_doors

LirW wrote: »

I get where you're coming from, I'm living rural and within the 10k from my house are 6 primary schools I know of, all serving rural small communities. I don't see the necessity of that many but then again it's simply a space problem, when you close 3 or 4 of them, you don't have the space in the remaining schools to accommodate the amount of children. Ours has around 100 children attending 2 years are together in one room. There wouldn't be any space for an additional 200 students. There wouldn't even be space for pre-fabs since the plots are usually not huge either. That's one of the reasons why they keep status quo.

They seem to be ok with amalgamating secondary schools though. Maybe the 'local primary' is more of a political hot potato, whereas the secondary always had wider catchment areas.

Neyite

mloc123 wrote: »

Looking forward to the move from paying €12,000 a year in creche fees to only having to pay a few hundred on uniform and contributions. ..

Don't forget after school care from 2pm plus all the days that the school is shut - on my calendar for the school year 2018-2019 there's 58 days the school is shut - excluding bank holidays as I'm off those anyway.

As the school is a polling station as well, I can add in the days it will be closed for any elections and referenda. Then last year we had the hurricane and the snow which stopped buses running for 3-4 days so the school shut for those...

[Deleted User]

Geuze wrote: »

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You know that in smaller schools, principals are teaching principals, right? So where are these high costs per pupil coming from?

Excessive running costs due to not exploiting economies of scale.

Example: one parish near me has 5 schools.

Reduce to two.

Energy / maintenance / insurance / all overheads - these will all fall, per pupil.

Principals are paid extra, these allowances would fall.

Could you please explain how you've worked out that energy, maintenance and insurance costs would be less?

And you know you don't have teaching principals? So there will be more office based principals and more teachers?

Have you actually worked this out?

doolox

Because Ireland has a widely dispersed population pattern it has become necessary to have many small national schools widely dispersed in order to cater for the population without having onerous transport patterns impinging on young children's formation and education.

I am an example of this. I went to national school in a nearby city 6 miles from home in spite of there being a national school 300 yds away which my mother did not approve of, the teachers were alcoholics and the toilets were medieval in her mind. The distance to school and the limited bus service meant I could not avail of many after school activities such as sports and cultural events, music, concerts etc. that the local city guys could avail of, because of the better connections, walk or all day busses, which they had.

I went to secondary school in the neighbouring college of which the primary school fed into because they were run by the same order of brothers and so the transition was easy. Again people of a semi-rural background could not fully participate in after school life because of limited bus connections to our homes from schools.

Schools in those days were gender segregated, my three sisters had a much richer education and formation experience because there were good primary and secondary schools within walking distance of our home. Two of them were able to participate fully in the sporting and cultural activities of their schools. The eldest chose not to.

In those days, 50 yrs ago, parents did not have two cars and my father would have been very reluctant to act as taxi service in what today would be regarded as short distances for a lift. No mobile phones also made arranging pick-ups hard to do.

rainbowtrout

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

can we not just get away from workbooks, and other books these days and let the children learn from internet instead - much better for the environment , cheaper, more modern , more exciting for the pupils we are in a modern society and i bet you can learn just as much (if not more) about history , science and whatever by looking on the internet instead of printed books these days.

Remember at one time in schools there used to be blackboards with chalk and erasers , quills with ink pots and loads of other things that have been taken over by modern practices - there are a lot of modern practices why are kids still going to school with bags on their backs full of books?

I dunno something like tablets or something should be used these days at every desk or something these days. will there ever be a day books are eradicated at every class? - some other countries around the world have done it , why can we over here not make the leap?

Cheaper and more modern doesn't always mean better. In my experience students prefer working from a book.

Andy From Sligo

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Cheaper and more modern doesn't always mean better. In my experience students prefer working from a book.

that surprises me in a way. I would have thought students today would feel more comfortable with modern technology.

I personally hated reading out of books and filling out copy books when I was learning at school , but computers werent even around then - wow , if they were I would have loved it!

rainbowtrout

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

that surprises me in a way. I would have thought students today would feel more comfortable with modern technology.

I personally hated reading out of books and filling out copy books when I was learning at school , but computers werent even around then - wow , if they were I would have loved it!

They have their place, but they don't replace the ability to stick a pen between two pages to mark a different place in the book and be able to flick back and forth in an instant, or to be able to write a note in the margin, or to add in an extra note about a topic that isn't in the book and the teacher has given some notes on and stick the page in to the relevant section.

Ebooks are no where near as popular as you are just reading the same text on a screen as on a page. There's nothing magical about that.

freshpopcorn

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

that surprises me in a way. I would have thought students today would feel more comfortable with modern technology.

I personally hated reading out of books and filling out copy books when I was learning at school , but computers werent even around then - wow , if they were I would have loved it!

I've heard of people having to go off and buy a set off books after buying the tablet/ebook subscription because they found them hard
to study out of.

evolving_doors

A book is more interactive

Andy From Sligo

some exceptions have to be made these days though, some children have a short attention span find it boring reading or studying out of books - i know with my lad when he was young he hated history lessons in school, but he loved watching that horrible histories programme on TV lol and he learnt about history that way instead