School Funding – Toilet Rolls Are Not A Luxury
Crowdfunding is a great alternative to fairs and discos, but it shouldn’t be a substitute for properly financed schools
Everyone knows that schools are funded more generously than ever before, because the DfE and ministers keep telling us so.
Yet heads persist in searching for additional income streams to supplement their school’s better-than-ever funding with luxuries – exercise books, pencils, toilet rolls and other fripperies.
School fundraising is more relevant than ever but, like government thinking on education, hasn’t moved on much since the fifties; cake sales, summer fairs, non-uniform days, sponsored corporal punishment and the like. So it’s about time we entered the 21st century in order to help fund our 19th-century schools system, and t’internet is the place to do it.
Some schools are already ahead of the curve and have successfully raised cash through a method that is new(ish) to schools – crowdfunding.
The essence of crowdfunding is to seek relatively small amounts of money from as large a group of people as possible. As a 12-year-old I hit upon the idea of writing to a million people and asking each of them to give me just one pound so that I’d accumulate a cool million quid. The prohibitive start-up cost of postage was an unforeseen hurdle which I never overcame, but now you just head to cyberspace.
There are many sites out there that will help you set up your crowdfunding appeal, most charging for the privilege. Some simply take the gift aid on any donations in lieu of a fee, so, for example, on a £100 donation they would get £25 for themselves.
One such site (which charges 6% of the total raised) shows hundreds of school projects: fund a refurbishment of a school hall, help get 150 children to the theatre (successfully funded to the tune of £4,690 by just 67 supporters, making the average donation £70), fund an outdoor learning tree hut – successfully funded too. Excuse me a minute while I set up a project for a trip to the Italian lakes for a tired, bewildered but deserving headteacher.
Projects benefit from being specific – ‘help us get three iPads’ is more likely to succeed than, ‘we’re skint, giz some dosh’.
Appealing to different sections of the community – parents, local businesses, alumni and so on – also avoids the risk of milking one group dry (usually parents).
School fundraising has traditionally been used to raise money for items thought of as non-essential but which add to the children’s educational experience. This used to be things like exciting playground equipment or, in the early days of IT in schools, computers or laptops.
My apprehension with all fundraising is that the definition of non-essential becomes ever wider and gives government an excuse not to fund schools properly so that we end up asking for money for pencils and paper.
Interestingly, one project I saw was to get sets of watercolour pencils for a secondary GCSE art class: £320 raised – job done. On the one hand this shows that crowdfunding projects do not have to be massive or high profile and can be set up by any enterprising teacher. On the other hand, pencils? In a GCSE art class? Surely they count as essential equipment.
And there’s the rub with charitable giving of all types – when does non-essential fundraising become essential? Fundraising is regulated and sophisticated but still, ultimately, ad hoc. When we start funding basics (and computers, tablets and pencils should be basics in any education establishment) it is the thin end of a very thick wedge.
How long will it be, given the parlous state of school budgets in times of rising inflation and stand-still budgets, before we see crowdfunding appeals such as, ‘Can you help us avoid sacking all our experienced teachers and replacing them with cheaper NQTs?’, perhaps accompanied by a photo of down-at-heel, sad-looking staff to induce sympathy in potential donors?
Several of the education projects I’ve seen on crowdfunding sites are for schools in third-world countries, which is an admirable and long-established tradition of UK giving – but is our education system keeping company with third world schools a rather chilling straw in the wind for our future?
In terms of its ability to galvanise the community and raise the profile of the project, crowdfunding is a brilliant tool alongside the more traditional fairs and discos. It engages people and makes giving easy. What it is not is an alternative to properly funded schools.
Kevin Harcombe is a Teaching Awards winner and headteacher at Redlands Primary School, Fareham. Follow him on Twitter at @kevharcombe.
