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.