I've never been overwhelmed with the school photos and I'm sure not going to pay anywhere near the prices they are asking for unless they are stunning photos. They are even going to charge an additional £4 if you order after 7 days from when the photo was taken. When I went to their website to preview the photos it said it could take up to 7 days for the images to be available to preview!
So I may as well take some myself and have photos of my boys smiling and looking happy.
I think I still need to do some work on my improvised lighting but I think what I have so far is much better then the school photographers offerings.