Selling cakes doesn't mean there's icing

Fran Abrams finds fetes and fayres now pay for a school's essentials. Meanwhile, Wendy Berliner has a ball in Bedfordshire

There is a tradition as close to the heart of the English summer as cream teas and Wimbledon. Listen carefully on a warm June evening and you will almost hear the groans as parents across the land wrestle with marquees, tombolas and white elephant stalls in preparation for their children's annual school fetes.

But the fund-raising activities that for years have provided extra equipment, books and even new curtains for the school hall are not what they used to be. The gifts that once put the icing on the cake are now essential to many schools, and parents are being forced to make ever bigger commitments.

This autumn the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations will publish a survey showing parents' contributions to schools have more than doubled in three years.

In 1992 the confederation estimated that pounds 55m was raised each year through parents' efforts, but things have changed since then. As the financial pressures on schools have intensified, opting out and local management have given many headteachers and governors a new entrepreneurial bent.

For many schools, the Christmas fayre, the summer fete and the Valentine's ball are no longer enough. Why stop at a few computers when what the school really needs is an extra teacher to cut class sizes, or even a new toilet block?

This business is no longer the province of the amateur. While schools in this country have not yet copied their US counterparts in producing glossy brochures advertising a wide range of school mugs, ties, scarves and paperweights, they are increasingly turning to the professionals for help.

Five years ago Sue Marsden, a school fund-raising consultant, worked almost exclusively with the independent sector. Now she is receiving four inquiries a week from state schools: some local authority, some opted out. Such is the demand for her skills that instead of spending days or weeks with each client she now offers to visit a school, analyse its answers to a questionnaire, write a fund-raising plan and move on. This service costs around pounds 1,500.

She aims at schools that want to raise between pounds 50,000 and pounds 500,000 for major capital works. Most of the money will come from parents, and she always has an eye to their wishes. Toilet blocks, office refurbishments and changing rooms are no-go areas, she says, while sports halls and theatres are far more attractive because they have obvious benefits to their children. Long-term projects will fail because parents want to see results before their offspring leave school.

"Schools are bringing parents in at a completely different level, sharing their plans and their hopes for the future. My mission is to try to give people the confidence to make them realise what they can do. There is nothing special about these schools but there is something special about how they go about it," she says.

Among her success stories is Turton High School, a local authority comprehensive in Bolton, which has raised pounds 155,000 towards the cost of a school sports hall. Parents were asked to make covenants to the school and the result was 300 pledges of between pounds 3 and pounds 25 per month. More than pounds 35,000 was raised from this year's new parents alone but the head teacher, Frank Vigon, admits it has been hard work. He also says he would not have embarked on the project if the money had been available from elsewhere.

"Yes, the state should have paid for our sports hall but they weren't going to. You have to be realistic. These are our children and if we don't do something for them, who will?" he asks.

Turton High's experience is small beer when compared with what some schools in the independent sector can do: Tonbridge School, for example, has recently raised pounds 2m towards the cost of rebuilding its chapel. But it is in the realms of fantasy compared with the experiences of schools in some inner- city areas.

At Rawson Road Primary School in Sefton, Liverpool, parents do their best but can raise only a few hundred pounds from a sponsored event or a fete. Helen Goodband, the deputy headteacher, says the money is needed for school trips because parents, who are often very poor, cannot be asked for contributions.

"We raised pounds 300 at one event and on the same day the school in the more affluent part of Sefton raised pounds 3,000. Our parents are very good at fund- raising but it's hard," she says.

The pounds 2,000 to pounds 3,000 raised each year by Rawson Road would have seemed a healthy amount a few years ago, but now most schools expect to raise more. Margaret Morrissey, spokeswoman for the NCPTA and also a schools inspector, says schools that would have been taking about pounds 3,000 from parents' events a few years ago are now taking up to pounds 15,000.

"People have become more organised and perhaps more professional or commercial in their fund-raising. What is worrying is that schools are relying more and more on the money, and it is a real responsibility to try to keep up the levels," she says.

But sometimes the success of parents' fund-raising events can have its negative side. At Springwell Primary School in Gateshead, a reserve of pounds 8,500 built up over several years has been spent in a year on helping to pay for a reception class teacher. Now that year is over, the teacher will be redundant in a few weeks' time and the school's class sizes must rise in September.

Peter McCarron, the head-teacher, says the parents' association's money, which used to be for "jam - computers and that sort of stuff", must now go on essentials.

"Now we are not buying jam, it's just bread and butter. It's a case of pack them in, stack them high and sell them short," he says.

WHAT DO THEY BUY?

Parents are believed to raise pounds 110m a year for schools. What will it buy?

5,500 teachers, or

20 million books, or

220,000 computers, or

11 million educational

day trips for school

children