We opened the year with our Seasonal cards fundraiser (organised by Caroline and Hannah). This is the fundraiser where the children do their personal seasonal art in school, which parents can then order printed onto cards and mugs etc.  This went well and raised £937.33, which is more or less what we’ve raised previously.

In December, we had a wonderful and festive Seasonal Fair (lead by Shiri), together with, a few days later, a couple of flash sales in the playground of the seasonal goods left over from the Fair.  Children and parents alike seemed to really enjoy buying the lovely gifts and the homemade biscuits lovingly made by a team of baking parents! Thank you to all those bakers who gave their time to produce the 750 or so biscuits required to make sure every child got the chance to buy a bag! Altogether, the fair and sales raised £3,505.20. You can see some pictures here!

• Income from our Uniform Sale Provider, Uniform4Kids, was £555.61 (which is 50% of the total raised, the other 50% being for the Juniors).
• Lottery income was down last year, raising £509.96 for our school.
• Amazon Smile raised £199.74. This is less than in previous years owing to Amazon in fact ceasing their scheme to donate to charities from customer purchases in February 2023.  Although we have had some final money come in, we are not now expecting any more.
• Stikins (named labels) raised £68.78
• 2^nd hand book sales raised £22.14
• We also had generous donations from Waitrose and from parents (separate from any events) to the tune of £1,036.00.

Sports coaching (provided by Adamos and Jan, and colleagues from "Fun in Sport" who many of you know) has been a terrific addition to the sports provision at the school and one the PTA has been delighted to fund, both in the 2021/2022 year and this financial year (2022/2023).

The coaching falls into 2 categories, being the “school time” coaching sessions (i.e. PE time) and the additional “lunchtime sessions”, where the coaches are also available in the playground during the lunchtime playtime, concentrating on difference year groups in weekly rotation.

Of the £5,257.00, £2,827 was from the summer term of 2022, when the PTA paid for the school time and lunchtime coaching sessions.  The remainder (£2,430.00) relates to the period September 2022 - March 2023, when the PTA paid for the lunchtime coaching sessions only. From April 2023, the cost of all the coaching sessions has in fact moved to school funding (sports funding) so the PTA is not currently expecting to contribute to that particular cost in the coming year. It was a pleasure to fund it in previous years, however – a great addition for the children.

This was for additional books for the new reading scheme, which the PTA purchased last year.

This is the cost of text messages sent by the PTA as reminders of events and deadlines etc relating to PTA events.

The school has invested significantly in new IT equipment this financial year.

Of the £15,452.48:

£2070.00 was used to purchase a new interactive whiteboard for Purple Class.  This is part of a rolling programme to replace the white boards as they break down.

The remaining £13,382 was used to purchase 30 new laptops for the children together with trolleys to store them in.  These have been in use since September 2023 and have significantly enhanced the school’s IT provision.  In particular, they enable the children to practice important keyboard and mouse skills.  Children are talented at touch screen technology(!), but it’s important also to enable them to master the key skills of dealing with a keyboard and mouse.

The school arranges some terrific workshops (in school, but by external providers) and trips (out of school) to enhance the children’s learning and experiences of particular topics.  The PTA has traditionally funded some of these, particularly workshops, out of its Gift Aid account (which you can see below). Sometimes though, funding over and above the Gift Aid donations is needed.

Of this expenditure, £1,500 was used to fund the ceramics workshop held for the jubilee celebrations in May 2022.

The remaining £939.44 was used to “top up” the funds needed for other workshops and out-of-school trips, which the school didn’t have enough from parental donations to proceed with.  It is usual for the school to ask for parental donations for workshops and external trips. This financial year, however, on a number of occasions the money received was not sufficient to cover the costs of the workshops/trips and, absent the PTA funding, those events would have had to be cancelled.  The PTA was therefore pleased to be able to provide the “top up” to ensure that the children did not miss out.  The money went towards supplementing the costs of (1) the Spirit of the Wild workshop; (2) the Toy Workshop; (3) the trip to the RAF Museum; and (4) the trip to Kew Gardens.

The Income was received from the following:

• Oneoff donations: £350.00
• Donations through regular giving: £148.00
• Bucket collections on the door for various charitable days: £1,144.72
• Tax reclaim: £343.31
• Junior Gift Aid: £1,380.41 (this is a reimbursement to the Juniors as the money comes in from the government to one elected bank account (which is the Infant Bank Account) and we reimburse the Junior Gift Aid Account.

In terms of expenditure, we have traditionally used Gift Aid money to pay for or supplement the funding for workshops and extra-curricular activities for the children to support their learning, as mentioned.  This year was no different.  The money paid for or supplemented the charges for numerous fantastic activities, in particular:

 

• Diwali Dance Workshop: £400.00
• Drumming Workshop: £200.00
• Tennis Sessions at Mercury Tennis Club: £810.00
• Kings & Queens Day 2022: £90.10
• Dragon Day: £23.50