Welcome to our PTA

What is our PTA?

The PTA (Friends of Halsford Park) is a group of parents and staff who dedicate some free time to help, plan, organise fundraisers and events within the school throughout the year. As a parent in the school you are automatically a member of the PTA and you can get involved as much or as little as you like.   It is a great way to get to know other parents and have a say in how we fundraise and support our school. We are a different set of parent to those that attend the School Forum which is designed to liaison between the school and parents on school run matters.

Why does the school need our PTA?

The fundraising events raise money for the school to pay for much needed ‘extras’ which are not provided by the school’s shrinking budget. Sadly the budget provided by the government is forever being cut.  These ‘extras’ benefit all of our children and support their education, funds are raised for the good of all students from Early Years to Year 6.

Charitable Status

Friends of Halsford Park is a registered charity which enables us to receive charitable donations from local and national companies. We can also apply for gift aid, give as you live and match funding schemes. Our charity number is 1103845.

How your PTA works

How is the money spent?

The money we raise goes towards buying new equipment for the school, subsidises school trips and helping fund major school projects. We have purchased learn pads and sports kits and most recently we have bought new playground  tables and benches and a new PA system for the KS2 Hall.  We are currently raising funds for the purchase of ever important IT equipment to support teaching and learning as well as an defibrillator and literacy resources. On an annual basis we provide funds and organise an Autumn Family disco, a Summer School disco, Christmas lunch with crackers, Christmas decorations, Easter Eggs, Sports day ice lollies, Year 6 Leavers gifts and more.

What happens at meetings?

We chat, we decide how the money is raised and how it is spent.  We discuss ideas and organise the events and when the school needs us to help out.  Event planning meetings are held in a local pub in the evenings. If you have any suggestions or ideas and/or would like a say in how money is raised and spent, please come along to the meetings. 

How we get information to you!

Parentmail – monthly emailed newsletters, Notice Boards in the playground and next to KS2 hall as well as Facebook groups eg Friends of Halsford Park.  Most year groups have facebook pages, please see your year rep for relevant info.

How you can help

• Offering to help at events or at other times during the year is so valuable.  It doesn’t matter if it cannot be on a regular basis it can be painting parties, decorating playground, Christmas dinners, school disco, selling event tickets, buying tickets, baking cakes, make props, wrap presents.  We just need help!  For our biggest events, the Summer and Christmas Fair, we ideally need … volunteers.  Whether it be helping to set up, running a stall for an hour or helping tidy up, volunteers are essential.  Without your help the Fairs will not take place.
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• Simply support the PTA by attending our events and bringing along family and friends. 

• Become a Committee Member or year group Rep, come along to our meetings, we need your ideas, creativity and suggestions.  Class Reps act as the link between your class/year group and the PTA and will help to co-ordinate fundraising activities. 

• Give as you live and Easy Fundraising.  Do your online shopping through either ‘Give as you live’ or ‘Easy Fundraising’ and nominate Friends of Halsford Park as your charity.  Once you have registered you can then shop in all of your favourite stores even Amazon, Ebay, and most High Street Shops and Department Stores.  You can book holidays and flights in fact you will find everything that you buy online can generate a contribution to the school. It's so simple and costs you nothing extra. Take a look at their websites to see how easy it is.  www.giveasyoulive.com or www.easyfundraising.org.uk

• Join the 200 club.  Sign up! It costs £2 a month and you could be in with a chance of winning £80 in a monthly draw.   You are allocated a number which is entered into the prize draw, if your number comes up then a winning cheque is yours. The profit from this goes directly into the school. 

• Sponsor a Stall at our Fairs.  If you are a business big or small we will advertise your business on the programme and newsletters and display your advertising board.

• Donations. Donations from parents are extremely important.  You can donate time, money, items for sale, raffle and tombola prizes or skills.

• Company Match Funding. Company matched giving is a very simple.  Companies or businesses pledge to donate to a charity such as ourselves an amount of money relating to the amount that an employee(s) donates or fundraisers for us.  Do you work for a company that could Match Fund?

What the PTA means to our school

School Governors

The Governing Body of Halsford Park are glad that we have such a dedicated and proactive PTA. We support their work in providing a range of activities and equipment that further enrich the experience of our children and our school community. It is a great way to get involved and have fun!

School Council

'They are really helpful.. if we need something they help us to do a fundraiser so that we can buy it'.. '..they care for the school and all the children..'

Headteacher

"Our PTA work very hard to raise funds to support a wealth of activities in our school and provide additional resources to supplement our resources to support teaching and learning as well as our inside and outside environment. Both the Summer Fair and the Christmas Fair are highlights in the PTA calendar which provide wonderful opportunities for children and their families to enjoy a really special day out.

Our PTA always welcomes new members, so if you are interested in joining us please use the contact information below."  

Claire Spencer

Contact us

halsford.pta@gmail.com 

On Sunday 31st May, the PTA organised a 'Socially Distanced relay' with the school community. The route had 50 relay legs using the school catchment area in and around the Gardenwood and Imberhorne Estates. Finishing at the school gates seemed like a nice idea, so they planned the route around the addresses of the children taking part, and the eventual goal of finishing at the school. 33 of the relay legs started from outside the homes of children taking part. 17 runners came from outside the area of the relay route, so they were slotted in to gaps between other runners addresses.

The PTA planned the route out on a big paper map, then plotted it in Map My Run, online, to work out the total distance. It ended up being exactly 10km from start of finish, so the children each had an average of 200m to run. We ended up with 64 children participating, as we had 14 sets of siblings taking part, as well as 36 individual runners. Each child was sent a runner number, to represent the ‘leg’ of the relay they were going to run. The PTA also set up a WhatsApp group for parents, so they could all coordinate and update on progress on the day of the run. 

The relay started at 10am, and it finished at 10:48am, which was super speedy! This is where the WhatsApp group came into its own, as parents communicated with each other throughout the event, updating the group with who was running, or had just finished running. After the event, the PTA members collected together photos and video clips of all the children, and made the video, which you can enjoy below.

Each participant was encouraged to set up a fundraising page on Virgin Money Giving, to collect sponsorship. In addition to the money the children raised (over £5,000 and counting), we were kindly offered £100 sponsorship from one of the Halsford Park parents, so we put his company logo on the runner’s race numbers by way of thanks.

The event was a resounding success, and PTA have received so many lovely comments from people whose children took part, or who came out to support the relay. In particular, parents of Year 6s were thankful that their children got to participate in such a positive primary school event, which involved children from across all year groups.