School Fund-raising
£1.5bn raised for the basics
Helen Ward
Published: 13 May 2005
Around £244 million of the total comes from donations from parents, businesses and churches, the equivalent of almost 8,000 teachers or four reference books for every child. Car boot sales, coffee mornings and fetes are raising funds to bridge the gap between government funding and schools? needs.
One state boarding school is boosting its income by charging Jehovah?s Witnesses to stay in the school while on religious retreats.
Head-teachers said this week that fund-raising had ceased to be for extras and was increasingly for essentials as the idea of free education was eroded.
The scale of the fundraising is revealed in Department for Education and Skills figures which show how much schools are raising to supplement the £9bn from the state. Schools are also generating cash by hiring out premises, charging for after-school clubs and vending machines.