Friends at Bessemer

Friends at Bessemer

Bessemer Grange PTA

Chair and Treasurers’ Report 2016/2017

JUNE 2017

INTRODUCTION

F@B has had another successful year of engaging and supporting the community of our school. We have continued with a very similar program of events to last year, as we decided to build on that success rather than trying to ‘reinvent the wheel’. Fundraising has been a key focus for us this year, as the school’s reduced budget has meant that FAB funding has become more of a necessity than a luxury. We began the year by deciding, along with Miss Benjamins, on a set of funding goals for the year. These have been displayed in the school office on a ‘fundraising thermometer’, along with our progress towards meeting these goals. The specifics of the funds raised and spent will be discussed in detail in the Treasurer’s section of this report. Going forward, it seems that with the Government’s plans to cut school budgets even more, FAB’s contributions will become increasingly important in helping to maintain a full and varied curriculum for our children, given that art activities, workshops and trips are likely to be the first things that will be cut if money is tight.

FAB EVENTS HELD IN 2016/17

Ice-cream Fridays in the Nature Garden / Play Street were held every Friday after the May half term, continuing into the autumn term, weather permitting. We’ve found that attendance is variable, but there is a ‘regular crowd’ and we always make a profit. We decided to start the term with a ‘bulk shop’ as leftover stock can be stored in / close to the freezer in the basement, which avoids any issues with running out of ice creams (always a big disappointment). Play Streets are always more popular, presumably because a stall out on the street is more visible and easily accessible. That said, we decided (along with the Bessemer Bikes team) that perhaps it isn’t worth planning Play Streets for Dec-Feb.

New-starters’ picnic in the Nature Garden was held in June to welcome new Reception children and their parents / carers to the school. The event was very well attended and received. It was a shame about the downpour in the middle, which made us aware that we should have a back-up plan (we moved to the Upper Hall).

Summer Fair was held in Early July. Excellent weather again helped to make this event a great success and was appropriate for our ‘beach’ theme – complete with a desert island in the KS2 playground. Our new events of ‘penalty shoot outs’ against various teachers / staff / dads, and ‘sponge the teachers’ (very generously participated in by Miss Beard, Mr Capper and Miss Benjamins) were extremely popular.

Second-hand uniform sale was held in conjunction with the September Play Street. This was much less popular than in previous years, and we were left with a very large amount of stuff to dispose of (Miss Benjamins arranged for it all to be donated to refugees in Calais). It should be reviewed as to whether it is worth continuing, given the large amount of effort involved in setting it all up, and very small amount of money raised for FAB.

Festival of Light celebration in the Nature Garden was held in November. There were two fantastic Dohl drummers, and some traditional Indian snacks. F@B offered this as a free event, which felt in keeping with the celebration of Diwali. We asked for donations.

Pantomime – Miss Benjamins arranged for a local theatre company to perform a pantomime – Snow White – on 2 days after school in early Dec. While not organized by FAB, the idea was that by selling tickets, a significant amount of money could be raised for FAB. However, it turned out that far fewer seats could be sold than originally thought, so no profit could be made from ticket sales. That said, FAB ran a snack stall and also had donation jars, from which we made a decent amount. It was extremely popular (sold out in 3 days) and well received. If we do this again, we need to charge more for tickets and perhaps have more shows.

Winter Fair was held on a Saturday for the first time, in early December. Moving the fair to a Saturday proved to be popular and it was very well attended. We had good weather and so were able to have the bar as well as various games and activities in the KS2 playground, including ‘penalty shoot outs’ which proved just as popular as in the summer. As a committee, we made a decision to keep the event somewhat smaller in terms of expenditure than the previous year, in order to make more profit and hence funds for the school. The main attraction that we paid for was the bouncy castle, which is a fairly small outlay. We did notice this year a significant problem with the provision of food, in that people were mainly buying food from the homemade food stalls, rather than the kitchen; the consequences of which were that we threw away large amounts of food, and made very little money (since we charged only £15 for the food stalls). We will have to review this in the future and consider perhaps paying for ingredients but asking people to donate their takings, or asking for a percentage of takings. We agreed that it is lovely to have the choice of the delicious foods cooked by some of our families, and that we should offer less food from the kitchen to avoid wastage. In terms of sponsorship, we have noticed that Pedder is increasingly in demand, and that if we want them to sponsor the next winter fair, we need to get in touch to confirm this as soon as we have a date arranged, as they have a fixed budget for the year.

Easter Egg hunt and Cake Sale was held a week before the end of the Spring Term, again in the Year 5/6 playground, and with the egg hunt in the Nature Garden. We didn’t include a uniform stall this time due to the lack of interest in September. It has been noted that we ran out of chocolate eggs quite quickly and should buy a lot more next year. Thanks to lots of generous donations, including some lovely baking from Year 5, we didn’t run out of cake!

Street Food Festival was held to coincide with May Play Street and we had a great turn out. There were 4 stalls selling a variety of food from sweet and savoury waffles, to Italian arancini balls to pizza - homemade that afternoon by the Reception children. Ideally, we would have had more stalls, but due to sickness we were down on our numbers this year. Bunting makes a big difference to the feel of the event.

FAB drinks have been held once a term as usual, but with mixed success, the most recent being attended only by 2 of the committee. We are wondering whether it is worth the effort to organise if people aren’t interested in attending. Both this year and last, we have discussed organising an evening event for parents that would be something different to drinks at the pub, but we have so far not managed to achieve it. Options discussed include a quiz and a film night, but there are various obstacles to each option, mainly excessive costs and the amount of organization required, and also not knowing whether anyone would actually attend.

COMMITTEE / ENGAGEMENT IN FAB

We have found this year that the running of FAB has become increasingly a large amount of effort put in by a small number of people. Although several new Reception parents expressed an interest in being on the committee, this unfortunately didn’t materialize into actual involvement, and the Reception year in particular don’t seem to have engaged as much with FAB as in previous years. We are somewhat at a loss as to how to increase interest and engagement, but generally feel that for a school the size of Bessemer, we should be able to muster a group of more than 6 parents to run the PTA!

COMMUNICATIONS

New starters’ meeting to introduce F@B Team and what F@B do
Half-termly newsletters and regular updates of F@B section of school website
Regular emails and tweets (@bessemer_FAB) about F@B events
Publicity about Summer and Winter Fairs in local press and on local forums
Delivering flyers and posters in local community to promote Summer and Winter fairs
Regular meetings with Rebecca Benjamins about progress of PTA
Planning meetings and AGM open to all

2016/17 FUNDING GOALS

£250 for four new football goals
£1,000 for school workshop packs
£1,200 for Science Week workshops
£3,500 for travel costs for Year 6 School Journey
£1,000 for carnival workshops
£1,000 for samba instruments

TOTAL £ 7,950

2016/17 SUMS RAISED –

Ice cream sales Summer 2016 – profit £346 (2015:£445)
Summer Fair 2016 – profit £3,195 (2015: £3080)

Breakdown

JAGS sponsorship £1,110
Raffle £625
Fair day £1,460

New starters picnic
Ice cream sales / snack stalls Autumn 2016 – profit £288 (2015: £464)
Uniform sale Autumn term – profit £52 (2015: £450 – included cake and book sale)
Harvest Festival food collection
Diwali Festival – costs £185, donations £83. Net cost £102 (2015: £134)
Winter Fair 2016 – profit £2,792 (2015: £2225)

Breakdown

Pedder sponsorship £975
Raffle £756
Fair day £1,061

Pantomine stall profit £107 (2015: Christmas Carols – charity collection £96)
Snack stalls / ice creams Spring 2016 – profit £57 (2015: £66) – incl cancellation
Easter cake and egg hunt – profit £333 (2015: £470 – incl uniform sale)
Street Food Festival – profit £55 (2015: £90)
Nature garden parties 2016/17 x 7 – profit £300 (2015/16 to Jul 16 x 5: £210)

FUNDRAISING

Sponsorship of Summer Fair from JAGS boards - £975
Easyfundraising income 2016/2017, excl final quarter - £180 (2015/16 excl final quarter - £161.81, final £208)

SUMMARY OF ACCOUNTS

Summary of accounts 2015/2016

The actual total raised from the year’s events and grants was £16,201

The total spend was £13,397

Surplus £2,804

Balance carried over from 2014/2015 = £5,511.58

Summary of accounts so far 2016/2017

The total raised from this year’s events and grants so far is £7,437 (2015/16: £9,598)

The total spend so far is £10,291 (2015/16: £9,667)

Deficit -£2,854

Balance carried over from 2014/2015 = £7,240

Bank balance 21 June 2017 = £3,197.99

PLANS FOR THE REST OF THIS TERM

Ice-cream Fridays to continue throughout the summer term
Play Street – 30 June
New starters’ picnic – 16 June
Summer Fair – 8 July
Leavers’ Disco – 20 July

NATURE GARDEN

Work undertaken in the Garden this year

Continued regular maintenance: litter picking, cutting back ivy, brambles and nettles.
Two lorry loads of wood chip have been used to maintain the paths and teaching area.
Clearing duck weed from the pond along with sticks and stones which get thrown in.
A new tool shed has been built from salvaged materials, freeing up much needed space in the F@B shed.
Sheds have been treated with wood preserver.
An extension has been built to the chicken run, giving the chickens extra space when they are not able to roam free in the garden.
Fruit trees have been pruned.
Potatoes have been planted as part of the Potato Councils school project.
New composting areas have been constructed from pallets. The composting of all raw veg and fruit peelings from the school kitchen continues very successfully. The first lot of compost has been used to create a planting area between the pond and chicken house. Orphaned Christmas trees found after Christmas have been planted here.
A yew sapling grafted from a 1000-year-old yew tree has been planted. An Ash tree has been planted as part of the Conservation Foundations research into Ash die back disease. Laminated copies of the Certificates from the Conservation Foundation are on display in the school shed.
A seating area using the spare bicycle stands from the new building is in the early stages of being erected in the area to the left of the garden entrance gate.
A hosepipe has been put in place from the outside tap running along the rear chain link fence of the Year 5/6 playground. Hopefully this will help with regular watering as time will not be spent unravelling hosepipes and dragging them across the playground each time water is needed.
We have had a donation of garden furniture and we continue to try to create small secluded seating areas and areas for dens etc.
We plan to add some signage/posters explaining what the different areas are, hopefully in an educational tone, to encourage children to treat the garden with more respect.
The garden has continued to be hired out for children’s parties. There have been 8 so far and another has been booked. Donations go towards the upkeep of the garden.

Chickens

Three chickens were unfortunately killed by a fox on New Year’s Day and as a result of trauma, winter and only having three chickens, our egg sales have not been sufficient to cover the costs of keeping the chickens (food, straw, coop cleaner, grit, mite dusting powder, worming food etc). The school has generously been covering the shortfall. It was decided that a second hatching project would be run, with the chicks being kept in the Reception classes to go along with their ‘life cycle’ project, and that these hatched chicks would be gradually integrated with the current chickens in the nature garden. The cost of this project with Vauxhall City farm was £300, which has been covered by the school.

Plans for the forthcoming year

Over the summer holiday, the whole chicken coop will be dismantled and rebuilt in the Year 5/6 playground, to facilitate the children being more involved in their care.
The willow structures have suffered from lack of water and we hope to try and replant where necessary in the winter. This will cost in the region of £100.
Planting garlic and bluebell bulbs, and wood anemones, and some oxygenating plants in the pond.
Six new chicks are being introduced in to the garden on the 15th June.
We would like to get more people involved in the maintenance of the garden at the monthly gardening sessions, continue to promote the use of the garden by the school and for parties, and we need to consider that Maria – our garden champion for many years – will be ceasing in this role from Summer 2018.

EXPENDITURE

Postcrete£10.30

Trellis£45.94

Tree stakes£31.76

Weed suppressant membrane£28.99

Hosepipe and connectors£20.11

Cable Ties£ 5.99

Saw£ 8.08

TOTAL £151.17

BIKES AT BESSEMER

We have had another successful year for Bikes at Bessemer. We have continued to be able to offer a free cycling activity and cycle training to every child in school.

Nursery and Reception have used the bikes in the playground regularly throughout the year, with the pedal bikes being particularly popular. The Early Years staff have reported back that children are learning to cycle spontaneously, developing their skills on the balance bikes and learning to cycle from their peers. We are planning to increase our bike fleet next year and Paul and Steve have now trained as mechanics to help keep our bikes up and running.

KS1 had another sunny and fun-packed day in Dulwich Park. Huge thanks go to Amy Foster and Rebecca Benjamins for their organisation and to all the parent volunteers that made the day possible. Colin has also taken charge of monitoring bike use in the KS1 playground during play time, and the bigger school bikes are getting used on a regular basis.

Years 3 & 4 enjoyed Bikeability level 1, cycle training for beginners and a trip to the BMX track in Burgess Park. Years 5 & 6 were able to take part in Bikeability level 2 and also had a trip to the Velodrome in Herne Hill.

This year, all fundraising has been arranged by the school. We will continue to work closely with the school staff to make sure that we can run all of these activities again next year.

THANK YOUS

We would like to thank JAGS who sponsored the Summer Fair and Pedder who sponsored the Winter Fair. We have had some amazing raffle prizes donated by local businesses this year – too many to mention but a big thank you to all of them and to all those that helped source the prizes.

We would also like to thank all the parents, carers and families who have helped make F@B events happen and have made them such a success. We could not run our events without your help and support.

Finally, we’re very grateful for all the support we receive from the staff at school, and we would like to thank all the teachers, teaching assistants and support staff. In particular, we’ve worked very closely this past year with Rebecca Benjamins, Lawrence and Colin (premises officers), Sandra and Dee (kitchen), and Debbie and the team in the office. Thank you to all of you.

Helen Wood (Chair), Kate Abernethy (Treasurer), Jacqui Moseley (Secretary) Winnie O’Neil (Communications Officer), Etta Collier (Bikes at Bessemer) and Maria Parker (Nature Garden)