We didn’t get any lockers in my school. They phased them out the year I started.
Name and shame. Make your local politicians know about it too.
I like the way you put extra text over the main text, really easy to read!
We had no lockers at school. Had to haul books for 8 or 9 subjects a day (plus copies) in and out every damn day. No wonder my shoulders are fucked.
Simple solution OP, fund raise from the community and donate a load of lockers to the school so there’s 1 per student.
Please email your local TD about this. This is their bread and butter kinda shite they love taking care of. Just a simple email will do it. Just go to whoismytd.com to find and then send them the screenshot and the schools details with a small message asking if there’s anything they can do.
They absolutely can help you with this.
If anyone see this and thinks, “sure it’s only a locker” you’re missing the point.
As a Canadian I am confused why lockers aren’t an automatic thing that every student gets? Can someone explain lol.
We had a separate fee to rent a locker for the year on top of the contribution.
The phrases “voluntary contribution” and “special military operation” starting to have some kind of commonality lol
That’s awful.
I’m Irish but I live and teach in France and over here, free education is taken extremely seriously. There would be war if a letter like this was sent out to parents, and rightly so.
My kids in primary literally only have to have a school bag and pencil case with markers and colouring pencils. Everything else, literally, is provided for by the local authority. In collège (junior cert cycle, basically), parents buy stationary but books are provided for by the school.
I’m amazed there isn’t more uproar about the sort of shenanigans OP is on about.
As someone who worked in a secondary school in Dublin I suggest that you put a letter in writing to the board of management. They can be pretty quick to resolve things like this because they don’t want the hassle of it going any further.
Our youngest has us signed up for an online payment system for all the stuff that crops up such as insurance and school tours etc. Has mandatory and optional payment categories. Voluntary contribution is under mandatory payments. Still called voluntary though. When will they just admit its not voluntary.
When I was in school I never paid that fee and just took one of the spare lockers and bought my own lock for it!
I refused to bring that voluntary contribution letter home in later years. Same with fundraisers where you had to go to neighbours looking for donations.
I got pulled up one day by the year head, who in fairness was always reasonable about whether or not I had an issue with the school or school spirit. I explained I had plenty of school spirit shown by the fact I represented the school with at least 3 teams every year I was there. My issue was hitting up my parents or neighbours for money.
He accepted that as fair enough and just asked for a small donation on the fundraiser -go ask my parents only for that, probably a 10er in total.
His back up on the otherhand was a prick about the whole thing. threatened to have me dropped from every team and had me bring my jacket to him everyday at the start of school and around breaks just to annoy me. suddenly he had a problem with me wearing a top over my jumper entering classes
We paid €10 for a locker and got it back at the end of the year if it wasn’t smashed to bits
I would love for someone to gather up all these kind of demands from all the schools and put them together in a big “WTF?!!!” list.
Seriously, is it the school making up these things??? Is it that they are being greedy/money hungry??? How can they not see families struggling with this when they know each and every family personally?!!! Where is the conscience in this?!!
Is it the government? The fact theyre not funding the schools enough?!
My kid isn’t school going age just yet, but it’s all ahead of me in the coming years! Dreading it!!
Robbed from every angle here in Ireland, everyday there’s something else to be absolutely disgusted at. Desperate need of some change…
Schools have been at this for decades. They tried to shame kids into shaming parents into paying the ‘Voluntary contribution’ – which was €400 in my already quite underprivileged school. They did ‘payment plans’ and everything as no one would have had the money otherwise. Somehow that just made it more grim.
When I was in school (and my parents were fucking skint) they did it in the most insidious way. They made the day where you’d come in and sign up for the ‘voluntary contribution’ into like a little meet&greet a few weeks before the first day of school, with loads of little perks for the richer parents.
So parents who’d signed up to pay it would be informed of this event. They’d go along, pay the fee (in a queue at the door) and then get a ‘thank you ceremony’ – which amounted to:
* A half-hearted speech & ‘breakdown of how we’re going to use the raised revenue’
* A place where parents could sign their kids up for a locker before all the other kids
* A place where parents could sign their kids up for wholesale orders with a uniform supplier (jackets were still mandatory though, so if you weren’t’ there you’d just have to source a lower-quality knock-off without a crest on your own from a non-wholeseller)
* A place where parents could sign their kids up for classes before everyone else – The principle said adamantly that they used a ‘computer algorithm’ to decide which kids got their preferred subjects if classes were at capacity – ‘but it never hurts to be in there first!’. I never believed it for a second it was random or fair – and you can bet your hole the best/easiest classes were full of jackets with crests on them every year.
* A place where parents could sign up first for after-school study – which filled up very fast.
* A chance to meet your year-head and several of your teachers.
So to summarize: The contribution was voluntary, but if you didn’t pay it you got: A visibly distinct/worse school uniform, last choice of the most in-demand classes (I had to stay after school several times a week just to do honors maths), sometimes no place in the after-school study program, a barely usable locker if any locker at all – and something I didn’t even notice until years later: On day 1 all your new teachers & the principle know the richer kids & their parents by name, and you’re just some grotty pov who didn’t contribute to the refurbishment of the teachers lounge or whatever it was this year.
Aodhán Ó Ríordán (Lab spokesperson for education) and more recently Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (SF spokesperson for education) are particularly outspoken proponents of change in this space, and both have submitted private members bills to tackle it in broadly the same way (get a clearer idea of the magnitude of funding shortfall being made up for by parents and where that money is going – then fund that through general taxation).
The first sentance is a grammatical shit show… bit embarrassing coming from a school
Should be illegal.
think we had to pay a fiver to get a locker key and we got our fiver back at the end of the year when we handed the key back in
Is anyone else worried that the increase in energy bills will really hit schools? They seem to rely on parents coughing up to even function.
It’s called “voluntary” as it is then deemed a charitable donation and so the school can claim the (income) tax back on it. If they called it by any other name, the school would end up ~30% poorer. Fund raisers are also “voluntary”, but because the individual amounts collected are low, the tax is not recoverable.
What is it spent on? Well, for all the extra bits and pieces, upkeep, and nice things that will be used by your children; the funding from the State only covers basic costs of the school.
Do you have to pay it? Well, no. It’s voluntary.
But should you? If you can afford to, then yes. It’s only a small weekly cost, maybe a €5/week, and is greatly appreciated by the principal and teachers.
Can it be got rid of? I recall that it would cost €100M to get rid of VCs and also fund all books in primary schools. That doesn’t seem expensive and would be a good political move. But, would such a law then ban fund raising? And would there be negative knock on effects? (can’t fund raise for a slide in the playground, for example)
Name and shame the school, not sure why you haven’t.
I would report this to the Department of Education. This is clear abuse of the voluntary contribution provision, and the school principal would likely get in some trouble for it, and probably therefore not do it again
I have never and will never pay the “voluntary contribution” I work my arse off and pay for it 10 fold in my taxes thanks
29 comments
We didn’t get any lockers in my school. They phased them out the year I started.
Name and shame. Make your local politicians know about it too.
I like the way you put extra text over the main text, really easy to read!
We had no lockers at school. Had to haul books for 8 or 9 subjects a day (plus copies) in and out every damn day. No wonder my shoulders are fucked.
Simple solution OP, fund raise from the community and donate a load of lockers to the school so there’s 1 per student.
Please email your local TD about this. This is their bread and butter kinda shite they love taking care of. Just a simple email will do it. Just go to whoismytd.com to find and then send them the screenshot and the schools details with a small message asking if there’s anything they can do.
They absolutely can help you with this.
If anyone see this and thinks, “sure it’s only a locker” you’re missing the point.
As a Canadian I am confused why lockers aren’t an automatic thing that every student gets? Can someone explain lol.
We had a separate fee to rent a locker for the year on top of the contribution.
The phrases “voluntary contribution” and “special military operation” starting to have some kind of commonality lol
That’s awful.
I’m Irish but I live and teach in France and over here, free education is taken extremely seriously. There would be war if a letter like this was sent out to parents, and rightly so.
My kids in primary literally only have to have a school bag and pencil case with markers and colouring pencils. Everything else, literally, is provided for by the local authority. In collège (junior cert cycle, basically), parents buy stationary but books are provided for by the school.
I’m amazed there isn’t more uproar about the sort of shenanigans OP is on about.
As someone who worked in a secondary school in Dublin I suggest that you put a letter in writing to the board of management. They can be pretty quick to resolve things like this because they don’t want the hassle of it going any further.
Our youngest has us signed up for an online payment system for all the stuff that crops up such as insurance and school tours etc. Has mandatory and optional payment categories. Voluntary contribution is under mandatory payments. Still called voluntary though. When will they just admit its not voluntary.
When I was in school I never paid that fee and just took one of the spare lockers and bought my own lock for it!
I refused to bring that voluntary contribution letter home in later years. Same with fundraisers where you had to go to neighbours looking for donations.
I got pulled up one day by the year head, who in fairness was always reasonable about whether or not I had an issue with the school or school spirit. I explained I had plenty of school spirit shown by the fact I represented the school with at least 3 teams every year I was there. My issue was hitting up my parents or neighbours for money.
He accepted that as fair enough and just asked for a small donation on the fundraiser -go ask my parents only for that, probably a 10er in total.
His back up on the otherhand was a prick about the whole thing. threatened to have me dropped from every team and had me bring my jacket to him everyday at the start of school and around breaks just to annoy me. suddenly he had a problem with me wearing a top over my jumper entering classes
We paid €10 for a locker and got it back at the end of the year if it wasn’t smashed to bits
I would love for someone to gather up all these kind of demands from all the schools and put them together in a big “WTF?!!!” list.
Seriously, is it the school making up these things??? Is it that they are being greedy/money hungry??? How can they not see families struggling with this when they know each and every family personally?!!! Where is the conscience in this?!!
Is it the government? The fact theyre not funding the schools enough?!
My kid isn’t school going age just yet, but it’s all ahead of me in the coming years! Dreading it!!
Robbed from every angle here in Ireland, everyday there’s something else to be absolutely disgusted at. Desperate need of some change…
Schools have been at this for decades. They tried to shame kids into shaming parents into paying the ‘Voluntary contribution’ – which was €400 in my already quite underprivileged school. They did ‘payment plans’ and everything as no one would have had the money otherwise. Somehow that just made it more grim.
When I was in school (and my parents were fucking skint) they did it in the most insidious way. They made the day where you’d come in and sign up for the ‘voluntary contribution’ into like a little meet&greet a few weeks before the first day of school, with loads of little perks for the richer parents.
So parents who’d signed up to pay it would be informed of this event. They’d go along, pay the fee (in a queue at the door) and then get a ‘thank you ceremony’ – which amounted to:
* A half-hearted speech & ‘breakdown of how we’re going to use the raised revenue’
* A place where parents could sign their kids up for a locker before all the other kids
* A place where parents could sign their kids up for wholesale orders with a uniform supplier (jackets were still mandatory though, so if you weren’t’ there you’d just have to source a lower-quality knock-off without a crest on your own from a non-wholeseller)
* A place where parents could sign their kids up for classes before everyone else – The principle said adamantly that they used a ‘computer algorithm’ to decide which kids got their preferred subjects if classes were at capacity – ‘but it never hurts to be in there first!’. I never believed it for a second it was random or fair – and you can bet your hole the best/easiest classes were full of jackets with crests on them every year.
* A place where parents could sign up first for after-school study – which filled up very fast.
* A chance to meet your year-head and several of your teachers.
So to summarize: The contribution was voluntary, but if you didn’t pay it you got: A visibly distinct/worse school uniform, last choice of the most in-demand classes (I had to stay after school several times a week just to do honors maths), sometimes no place in the after-school study program, a barely usable locker if any locker at all – and something I didn’t even notice until years later: On day 1 all your new teachers & the principle know the richer kids & their parents by name, and you’re just some grotty pov who didn’t contribute to the refurbishment of the teachers lounge or whatever it was this year.
Aodhán Ó Ríordán (Lab spokesperson for education) and more recently Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (SF spokesperson for education) are particularly outspoken proponents of change in this space, and both have submitted private members bills to tackle it in broadly the same way (get a clearer idea of the magnitude of funding shortfall being made up for by parents and where that money is going – then fund that through general taxation).
The first sentance is a grammatical shit show… bit embarrassing coming from a school
Should be illegal.
think we had to pay a fiver to get a locker key and we got our fiver back at the end of the year when we handed the key back in
Is anyone else worried that the increase in energy bills will really hit schools? They seem to rely on parents coughing up to even function.
It’s called “voluntary” as it is then deemed a charitable donation and so the school can claim the (income) tax back on it. If they called it by any other name, the school would end up ~30% poorer. Fund raisers are also “voluntary”, but because the individual amounts collected are low, the tax is not recoverable.
What is it spent on? Well, for all the extra bits and pieces, upkeep, and nice things that will be used by your children; the funding from the State only covers basic costs of the school.
Do you have to pay it? Well, no. It’s voluntary.
But should you? If you can afford to, then yes. It’s only a small weekly cost, maybe a €5/week, and is greatly appreciated by the principal and teachers.
Can it be got rid of? I recall that it would cost €100M to get rid of VCs and also fund all books in primary schools. That doesn’t seem expensive and would be a good political move. But, would such a law then ban fund raising? And would there be negative knock on effects? (can’t fund raise for a slide in the playground, for example)
Name and shame the school, not sure why you haven’t.
I would report this to the Department of Education. This is clear abuse of the voluntary contribution provision, and the school principal would likely get in some trouble for it, and probably therefore not do it again
I have never and will never pay the “voluntary contribution” I work my arse off and pay for it 10 fold in my taxes thanks
My fucking eyes,