I call it senior school and not high school as I don’t live in the USA.
It seems not only are we adopting America’s titles, TV and god knows what else, but also we are adopting America’s corporate costs in education!
The joys of leaving primary school and moving to a nerve racking, but exciting time in a new senior school, were short lived.
Once the huge, needless expense of buying a whole new school uniform, with their must have this type of tie, this badge, this blazer, this PE kit, etc. were out of the way, then new stationery for the expectant books and we were good to go… not quite.
Just prior to starting senior school, the cost bombshell was dropped on us, from a great height.
“You will need an ipad!”
What?
Books, stationery, specified uniform, all the usual, a little on the expensive side, but to be expected.
But an ipad?
There were two options.
Option 1: You could conveniently buy one from the school, an older ipad, but updated and ready to go, for a “simple monthly fee” of £16 (plus insurance)
At the end of the third year, you would be able to keep the ipad you’ve been renting (to all intents and purposes) from the school and it’s your forever.
Option 2: You could go out and buy a new ipad (or second hand one, online)
Well it would be used for all 5 years of our sprog’s “learning journey through senior school” and I didn’t want to shell out the best part of £750 (plus insurance) for an old tatty ex-rental ipad, that you couldn’t update anymore further on down the line.
So we were faced with spending all our summer holiday brass (read: time off work weekly shopping money) and borrowing a couple of hundred quid, to buy a spanking new ipad for the sprog.
It was the latest thing, it was theirs outright and they could do what they liked with it.
When it was taken into the school, to set up on the system, with not only logging on to their system (so it would work with software that they use), but also they installed monitoring software that keeps an eye on her searches and usage, etc.
All’s well, until we started getting near her third year and options.
Once again the head teacher started sending out “messages” about how great it was that the school were running a scheme to provide Chrome books to their options students!
Hold on a moment… the ipad was fabulous and would enable students to improve their learning and make it easier for them to work from home if needed, all through their senior school learning journey?
Now we have the head teacher sending out these “messages” and telling us that the school had a discount scheme if we want to buy a chrome book via the school, plus they’d get a small commission as well.
To give you an idea of how much chrome books are, a basic chrome book, with just 8gig of ram and 128gig of storage (uses an i3 processor, which is very old) prices start from £449
Then we started getting the unsubtle hints from the sprog that her friends were going for a mac book, instead of the chrome book… you get the picture.
More hints came and went, the tone of the gob changed, more and more needy.
It is a flat out No!
We live on less than £200 per month disposable income after all the bills have been paid, it’s not great, but we don’t eat out, have holidays, have very few days out, make clothes last, second hand if needed, we get by, just.
We don’t owe anything out, we live within our means as much as we can.
We have fruit trees in the garden, recycle loads of things and grow veg where possible.
Home cooked meals are the basis of our family life.
So when some jumped up, out of touch, head teacher starts spouting absolute crap about this wonderful deal for buying a chrome book (out of date processor and generally pants memory, both storage and ram) just hold on a minute!
When a child goes to school, they should be able to learn in an environment whereby it doesn’t cost the family of the child the best part of a thousand pounds from day one and it certainly shouldn’t be the case where after spending this hard-earned brass, to be told less than three years later, that they now need another computer for their chosen option subjects, you are taking the proverbial piss!
Has this school never heard of peer pressure?
It’s hard enough to manage pressure with all the extra work coming the sprog’s way, but to factor in school trip abroad, new ipad, new chrome book, etc. and the challenges that families will face paying out for this new equipment and trip money (plus spends) it’s time this head teacher would his neck in and got in the real world!
The only way to make children equal, is not offer up/or claim that children need new computer equipment (that make’s school staff lives easier) but to stick with books/stationery/ for ALL children.
As a compromise, we’ve just had to shell out any spare Easter holiday money, for a keyboard to go with the ipad… again not cheap, but cheaper than a new chrome book.
As you can no doubt tell, I’m getting a little bit tired of all this nonsense and extra costs coming from the school.
I work damned hard for a living, every single penny counts.