Why do you hate the PTA?

[Rororo1]

I am part of a group of parents who are in the process of setting up a PTA at our primary school. When I mentioned this to a friend, she went on a long rant about how she dislikes the PTA at her child's school, and I feel like hating on the PTA is a common thing.

If you dislike your schools PTA, please can you tell me why? So we can try to avoid doing whatever it is that seems to make PTA groups so unlikeable 😅

Also please vote:

You are being unreasonable - I have no hard feelings towards the PTA at my child's school

You are not being unreasonable - I have negative feelings towards our PTA

I donot want to spend time baking a cake. Say the ingredients cost me a tenner, you sell it for £1 a slice and make a tenner.

Can you just ask me for £££ at the start of the year then leave me alone?

Also- I don’t know what it’s spent on. Maybe if the school had a list of stuff in priority order, we could buy stuff off there rather than just hand over cash

Same reasons here.
Children with different needs are just not considered or catered for....the ice cream van on the last day cant cater for my child so they go without.
Cake stalls etc the same.
Summer fayre this year £5 per ticket, then money for drinks/snack/raffle...the bloody ice cream van...and no siblings allowed so there is room for every school child - where am.i supposed to leave the others while I take 1 child to an after school fayre?
And they only talk to you when they want something....otherwise you are ignored.

Oh and just remembered i've paid £5 per ticket to watch my own kid in the Xmas & summer play too.
No idea what the monies taken are spent on!

My friend joined the PTA when her DC started primary school as she works part time, and found it quite difficult tbh in general, which gave a different perspective of parents with younger children just entering into school life. She struggled to know what to contribute it committee meetings but also struggled with the lack of clear instructions at events when she didn’t know her way around the school, and was also made to feel guilty that she couldn’t help set up or run a stall at the school fair as she actually had her 4 year old to look after at the same time.

They're extremely cliquey, very patronising, and very guilt tripping. It's like a cult, and their children are usually very intelligent but quite rude and no discipline, induldged by the teachers...who are more often than not besties with the PTA 'people'.

I volunteered to sell tickets to the school fund raiser fireworks show one year. I was standing at one of the entrances taking payment off people and a ridiculously rude woman came to check on me and as she walked off said "Mind you've paid for yourself". Never volunteered again.

It's absolutely not everyone. But they do seem to attract a certain, highly annoying 'type'.

Our PTA is ok, though I recognise a lot of the negative stereotypes from some of the people in it. In terms of constructive advice, be ruthlessly focused on equity and recognise you have no idea what’s going on in other people’s lives and families. Someone up thread said ‘it’s no trouble adding an extra Mr Kipling to your shop’ - for some families in our catchment they wouldn’t have that money. Some wouldn’t have the mindspace to remember this among all their other responsibilities. Some are caring for sick parents, some for mentally ill kids, some are in abusive relationships and trying to work out how to get out of them, some are overworked single parents whose kids depend entirely on their income, some have spouses with terminal illness. Never assume if something’s easy for you it will be for others, be grateful for any support, and be transparent how the money you raise is helping fund experiences and materials for everyone. If you’re doing this for the community, people will see that and respect you for it. If you’re doing it because you get a rush out of feeling like a ‘better’, more engaged parent than other people, likewise it’s easy to see that.

Personally for me it was the attitude of the Chair person. I used to be on the PTA, but he was really a horrible human. He was on the PTA as a mechanism to have 'power' over others, did not seem to understand it was a voluntary role, tried to manage those who were on the committee like they were his employees, make demands with unrealistic time scales (wanted things done immediately), talk down to people regularly etc. I left as soon as I could once I saw who he really was, I hadn't known him before.

So it wasn't the PTA per se, or most of the people involved, but the one person who wanted to lead it. Unfortunately I do think PTA's can easily attract that sort of person as Chair, as it is a voluntary role and most struggle with time. So those that step forward don't always do so for the right reasons. I wasn't in a position to be Chair, just didn't have the time. But tried to help when I could and just felt like he treated me like crap as a volunteer and absolutely didn't have to put up with it! He didn't like when I stood my ground either!!!

I am sure plenty of PTA's can be absolutely fine, as long as you have a nice, genuine group of people involved, and don't allow power hungry dictators to take charge!

I detest women taking on additional mental labour. I hate women - often with jobs/careers/also running their family’s entire mental load - chasing their tails at the end of year doing teacher gifts and various shite.
show me a PTA with 50% dads in it.

But this is a point many of us are making. Many of us would prefer to and be willing to give money, but we are time poor and get attitude because of it.

Yes this is true. Even volunteers. I think at both discos i volunteered at, there was 95% women.

Ours constantly look for money for something and they are really cliquey. They asked for volunteers all the time and one time I volunteered to write bids for funding (which is closely aligned to what I do for a living). I completed one bid and was never invited to the funding meetings again and they later asked for volunteers to write funding bids. I think it’s because I’m not in their clique. They also try and take over events that are organised by the school and nothing to do with the pta (reserving front row seats at the nativity, giving a speech at the p7 leavers assembly).

@trotterstrot100% this

I joined the PTA for 2 years and my fellow PTA parents were lovely and tried their best.
we got criticised by parents who didn’t want to volunteer for things and then expected extra stalls to be delivered & manned. I also worked full time as did the majority of the parents.

Largely we did our best. Most of which was appreciated by parents and students alike. We tried to make good enrichment decisions about the money raised and the head had a large input into things too. It was hard work too but worth it.

Because it raises a shitload of money for the school and the kids love it?

Ours was very cliquey and they all reserved the best seats at any events.

Wow the PTA at my son's primary school was fantastic, organising Christmas and summer fairs, discos, cake sales etc. I was at the school for 11 years and they worked really hard and the children loved all the events.

Out of interest, please can I ask:

How did you all fit this in with your full time jobs? What ages were your kids?

What kind of things did you spend the money on?

I loved the PTA at two of my girls’ primaries; at the third they seemed to be rather a closed shop and not want anyone else involved which was a shame.

I refused to get involved in ours. I served as a governor for about 3 years so I’ve done my service for the school.
I can’t bear all the weird small town cliquey stick up nonsense. This isn’t the lifestyle I aspire to. I didn’t send in the chazza money either after about year 2 and whilst a governor post Covid I told the school to pack that in too. People were broken and poor.
interestingly after primary school ended the pta psychos transferred their toxicity to the dance school dd went to and I got all the same grief because I work Saturdays and I didn’t help out with ballet either. I don’t feel bad and the world still turns.

I was on the PTA for 5 years and although some of it was fun, it’s thankless, annoying and frustrating.
You always get quite a few strong characters who always want their own way, parents complain when funds don’t get spent as they think they should but never come to a meeting to vote.
it takes up so much time and energy and because of the budget deficits in schools the pressure to try and raise money is endless, with school requesting funds for loads of things without truly understanding the mammoth effort each penny raised takes.
One of ours is heading to secondary now and at the information evening they asked for people to join the PTA, my husband gave me a nudge, he got a harder one back and told quite firmly that he could always join as I’d done my time already!

Complete agree with you! I’m on a PTA and would have given a couple of years and then someone else take their turn but it doesn’t work like that because most don’t seem to want to do it so I’m still volunteering. We have a fab set of mums on our PTA and we all have jobs too (that seems to be an assumption)

we spend our own time (and often money) doing it for the kids so they have fun and memories and the school to have money for things they otherwise wouldn’t get from the council! and I’m SO sick of seeing whinging posters on here having a pop at PTAs.

DH volunteers for a local charity.
I also volunteer for a local charity and about 70% of the trustees are men . Plenty of men volunteer

I partly joined the PTA to meet other mums though and have made some great friends that way. Perhaps not the most altruistic reason to join but it has reaped rewards for me. Contrary to the stereotypes being trotted out on here I am quite shy and introverted and so are most of our PTA. I think a lot of us volunteered to make friends/meet people

@HJBeans I was the person who mentioned buying a box of Mr Kipling cakes.
I completely accept and understand that for some families they literally can't do that for the many reasons you said.
My comment was kind of aimed at the "I'm far too busy to bake cakes" crowd - which usually translates as having a full time "important" career. The type of people who can just tag a box of cakes onto their supermarket order and it's not going to financially affect them.
(Sorry if that sounds bitchy 😂)