Schools get heavy on 'voluntary' contributions

In another example of how the vast amount of money Britain hands over to the EU towards its lavish costs - £115 million every single week on average - is depriving essential public services, a new report has revealed that schools are increasingly having to send heavy-handed demands to parents for 'voluntary' financial contributions.

Quote a parent who received such a letters, the Guardian reports: "It read like a letter from a debt-collector ... "Our accounts indicate you have not made a contribution," it stated. "Our records indicate you have not contacted us." In fact, it was a letter from a state primary school. And it was asking for "voluntary" contributions of £40 from parents to its annual fund".

"I recognise that you may feel unable to pay the full amount," the chair of governors went on. "We always invite parents to write to us to explain their circumstances and propose an alternative."

Another parent told Education Guardian that her child's state school in Buckinghamshire had rung her "several times" when she did not immediately pay its annual voluntary contribution.

A report by the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) on the cost of schooling last year found that three in 10 parents were asked to make voluntary contributions.

Secondary schools tended to ask for £44 a year, while primaries asked for £27. Nine per cent of the 1,500 parents surveyed said they were asked to contribute £100 or more to the annual school fund.

Clarissa Williams, president of the National Association of Headteachers and former headteacher of Tolworth Girls' school in Kingston-upon-Thames, says voluntary contributions enable schools to buy things without tapping into government funds.

"We used to run the school minibus, buy wheelie bins, and kit out the library with the money," she says.

All things which many of us understood were supplied out of the taxes we pay.

But in truth, huge amounts of that money is now being sent to the EU instead, since Tony Blair agreed from 2007 to increase our payments by 63%. This was despite the failure by auditors to give a clean bill of health to the EU's accounts for 14 years in a row.

Now schools are having to make up the shortfall.

NHS 'faces huge budget shortfall'

The BBC reports today that the NHS is facing the most severe and sustained financial shortfall in its history after 2011, according to a report by health service managers.

The NHS Confederation report says the health service in England will not survive unchanged and conference attendees have been told that they face an "extremely challenging" financial outlook.

The report reveals that the NHS in England is facing a real-terms reduction of between £8bn and £10bn over the three years after 2011.

During the same period the government plans to hand the European Union £30.6 bn (gross) or £18bn (net), despite EU auditors criticising the accuracy of the EU's accounts now for 14 years in a row. These audit failures are accompanied by regular reports of waste and fraud involving very large sums.

The report says that the cost of new treatments and the ageing population are two of the factors causing the inflation in the health service.

According to the OHE, the £8-10bn at stake would cover the costs of family or mental health services for one year, 2 years of cancer treatment, normal births for 27 years or over one and a half years of prescription charges.

When is the government going to take seriously the major funding threats essential public services face, and cut this scandalous and unjustifiable waste of billions of pound on an organisation that cannot tell us with any certainty how that money is being spent, yet whose employees and bureaucrats and MEPs clearly live a lavish lifestyle?