Schools are finally open and as per tradition some children have a list of requirements. The list varies from school to school but most of them have bond paper, and tissue as standard, but some have also added other questionable items like hula hoops and Bluetooth speakers to the list.
Many parents probably don’t think much of the requirement list when they get it at the beginning of every term. But when the figures are calculated with the whole school in mind, one can’t help but take note of the ridiculousness of such lists.
Tissue
Some schools require a 4-pack of tissue rolls per term. With a standard class of 40 pupils per class, 5 streams per grade and 7 grades, it would amount to 16 800 rolls per year. That’s a lot of tissue rolls!
It’s generally difficult to estimate how many times a student goes to the toilet per term but one can’t help but wonder what happens to the excess.
Bond Paper
Bond paper has been on the school requirement list for a very long time. ECD classes for instance, use it to print coloring pages. They may also use it to print school circulars, but somehow the numbers do not add up.
With a class size of 40 pupils, 5 streams and 7 grades that would amount to 700 000 sheets per year. If we include ECD A and B classes we would land at 900 000. That’s almost a million sheets!
We got in touch with a parent that chose to remain anonymous and he said “They told us that they use it for printing the children’s homework. My children often come back home with homework tasks written in exercise books.” Yet schools request a rim (500 sheets) of bond paper per year.
Hula Hoops
But the ridiculousness doesn’t end there some lists have Hula Hoops for ECD A and B classes. With 40 pupils per classes that would amount to 80 hula hoops per year. The request is made every year for all students. Wouldn’t the sensible thing be to request that parents replace broken hula hoops than to request new ones from all of them? What happens to the unbroken hula hoops?
Bluetooth speakers
This one is by far the craziest one on the lists we have seen. 40 Bluetooth speakers per class. Since children are not allowed to carry phones to school, what would they be connecting the Bluetooth speaker to? Even if the school had a computer for each child, would they be all using the speakers at once? That would be one really noisy classroom!
The lists vary. There are some other equaly ridiculous requests we haven’t mentioned in this article. The issue is not that the requests are made. The issue is in the numbers. It may not seem like a lot when speaking of one student. But the little things add up to big things when one looks at the bigger picture.