PTA - Ashwell Primary School

Ashwell PTA
Ashwell School PTA Newsletter
Summer Term 2012
Thanks & Diary Dates
This PTA Newsletter is to say a huge thank you to all of you who have supported previous events
– for your time in helping set up, run or clear up afterwards; your donations for the event or simply
attending an event. And to give you plenty of advance warning of future events so you can get the
dates in your diary!
Many budgets are stretched at the moment, including the school’s. The PTA aims to organise a
variety of fun social and fundraising events with the purpose of funding additional equipment and
facilities for the benefit of our children.
Recent Events
Since September 2011 the PTA has organised the following, which were enjoyed by many and
importantly helped raise funds for the school (profit shown):
Events: Townsend House Concert £ 798.46
Firework Night £ 1,007.18
Turkey Dinner £ 1,352.05
Burns Night £ 2,047.65
Quiz Night £ 1,330.00
Kids Disco £ 529.00
Ashwell Show £ 1,600.00
Fundraising: Let Them Eat Cake £ 155.00
Christmas Wrapping Paper £ 90.75
Christmas Calendars/cards £ 199.27
Happy Bags £ 209.00
A massive thank you to everyone who has supported and contributed to these events.
What has been funded?
Thanks to the efforts of the PTA and the generosity of parents, the PTA has been able to fund a
variety of resources in excess of what the school budget will stretch to. These include curriculum
resources such as maths posters, games, practical equipments (e.g. scales, 100 squares,
calculators, plastic money), phonics resources, sports equipment (balls, electric pump), table top
storage boxes for equipment (‘toolboxes’), globes, R.E. DVDS, butterfly eggs, whole school topics
resources (‘Around Britain’, ‘Time Machine’, ‘Water’, ‘Take One Picture’ and ‘Science Week’),
swimming pool maintenance and dosing machine, library books and equipment, handwriting
scheme for foundation, Christmas musicals, new notice boards and white boards for classroom
‘working walls’ and finally pond maintenance.

A BUSY YEAR SO FAR
The PTA has had a busy year so far. It started with the Concert at Townsend House. It was a
lovely evening of music and great food. Thank you to Tina Angel for organising the food and a
team of helpers in the kitchen.
October saw the school turn back time to the 80’s, an era when music was great and the fashion
was even greater!? Our new resident DJ in town, Simon McCutcheon, kept the music going while
those attending rekindled their youth by dressing up and dancing the night away remembering the
good old (or not so old) days.
Firework night was a worry as it was held on a Sunday, and yes attendance was low compared to
previous years, but still a great night of spectacular fireworks, scrummy Crumps hotdogs and
delicious mulled wine.
The Turkey Dinner was a great night. A lovely Christmas dinner was prepared and cooked by a
team of cooks headed and organised by Claire Moynihan. Once again the room was transformed
from a school dining room.
There was our very successful Burns Supper in January. Thank you to Tricia Pritchard, Mandy
Ferguson and Lindsey Foulkes who organised a great night this year. The meal and speeches
went down a treat and then we had a good laugh trying the Scottish dancing to a live band this
year, flown in from Scotland.
The New Year brought yet more events, with a great kids disco held in February. We had a new
DJ, Simon McCutcheon, on board who played music and held dance competitions. The PTA
would like to thank Wendy Hepburn for all her hard work in organising the discos: the children
have such a great time. The next disco is planned for July.
The Quiz Night was held in March for a change this year. Attendance at the Quiz Night was
fantastic and it was great to see so many people from the village attending. The questions were
challenging, but we had a winner, after having a lovely ploughman’s supper to fuel the brains of
everyone. Congratulations to the winners and also a huge thank you to Nicole Rubio for organising
the event.
In between all the above events, other fundraising has been going on with Let Them Eat Cake
organised by the Class Reps for each year group. A big thank you to you for providing delicious
cakes to buy - we certainly have great bakers among the parents.
Northwick Wrapping Paper is ordered for parents every Christmas. A big thank you to Sam List
who has dealt with this every year.
We had a change from Tea Towels this year with a School Calendar produced instead, using the
children’s own artwork. The children had a great fun drawing themselves and the staff got in the
act too with some excellent drawings. Thank you to everyone who purchased one or two or
three……..
We had our Easter Egg Competition, which again produced some fantastic artwork and it was
immediately apparent that the children had spent a lot of time and effort on their designs. Judging
was extremely difficult and well done to everyone.
Diary Dates
Here are some forthcoming events. Please put them in your diaries and attend if you can! We
always need people to help with running events, so if you feel that you have time or talent to
share, please let us know.

Date / Time Event Location
Friday 25 th May Let Them Eat Cake
(Year 1)
School
Sunday 3 rd June Big Picnic Village
Wednesday 14th June Let Them Eat Cake
(Foundation)
School
Saturday 23 rd June Family Fun Day 12 - 4 School
Sunday 8 th July Ashwell
Day
Village Sports
Friday 13 th July School Disco School
Wednesday 18 th July Let Them Eat Cake
(Year 6)
Monday 29 th August Ashwell Show Village
Saturday 3 rd November Firework Night Hinxworth
Saturday 8 th December Turkey Dinner School
The next big event will be the Family Fun Day. It’s going to be a great afternoon to bring family
and friends to the school and enjoy what’s on offer. Lots of new attractions this year, together with
the same old favourites. There will a professional Punch and Judy Show, one not to be missed.
The swimming pool will be open, plenty to eat and drink, lots of stalls with games to have a go at,
beat the goalie and donkey rides.
New for this year is a Cake Bake Off, which will be open to all children at the school, their older
brothers and sisters and of course what we expect to be the most competitive class: adults. Open
to all the parents, aunties, uncles, grandparents etc. because we know there are some excellent
cake bakers among you. There will be infant, junior, senior and open class. Recipe details to
follow nearer the time. On the day the cakes will be judged and trophies presented, and we hope
you will then donate the cakes to be sold as our cake stall for the day.
There will also be an egg throwing competition. The aim is to play as a pair and see who can
throw and catch the egg the furthest distance, without it breaking. Again there will be trophies
awarded to the winners of Infants, Juniors and Open class.
Any other ideas for the day are welcome, but please put the date in your diary and come along
and enjoy yourselves from 12 – 4.00.
Ice Creams
Ice creams will be on sale in the playground after school from Friday 22nd June, then every Friday
after that until the end of term. The cost will be 50p per cone with a variety of flavours - sauce &
sprinkles available.
Thank You
For all those who have attended PTA events over the past several years, there has always been a
well stocked bar, essential to helping an event to be a great success. Liz and Shaun Kiernan have
spent many hours serving all of us from behind the bar. Their daughter is in year 6 and the next
event will be their last serving on behalf of the PTA. We are extremely grateful for all their hard
work. A big thank you to them and we hope to still see them on the other side of the bar at future
events.
The PTA Committee

Matched Funding
Many businesses run a matched funding scheme as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility
Programme. For an employee involved in running a local charity event, they will match funds
raised at that event. The employee involvement can be minimal and this potentially allows us to
double the money we raise at events throughout the year. Many companies do this, especially
banks, public utilities and large multi-nationals.
Some examples are:
3i
3i Deutschland GmbH
Abbey National Plc
ABN Amro
Accenture
Alfred Dunhill Ltd
Alliance & Leicester
Alliance Capital Ltd
Allied Domecq
American Express
Andersen
Anglian Water
Argos
ARM Holdings plc
ASDA
AT Kearney
AXA
Aviva
BAA
Bank of America
Bank of England
Bank of Scotland
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi
Bankers Trust
Barclays Capital
Barclays Group
BG Group
Booker
Boots
Boston Consulting Group
BP
Bradford & Bingley
Bristol-Myers Squibb
BT
Cable & Wireless
Camelot
Cap Gemini
Capital International
Research
Carlsberg Tetley
Centrica
Citibank Group
Citigroup
Co-operative
Credit Suisse First Boston
De La Rue
Deloitte Consulting
Deutsche Bank
DHL
Diageo, HSBC
Dixons Group
Dresdner Kleinwort
Wasserstein
EMI Group
Energis
Ericsson Telecom AB
Exxon Mobil
Fidelity Investments
First Bus
Ford Motor Company
GlaxoSmithKline plc
Goldman Sachs
Guardian Royal Exchange
Halifax
HSBC
IBM
IDEO
Industrial Bank of Japan
Invensys
Kingfisher
KPMG
Legal & General
Lehman Brothers
Littlewoods
Lloyds TSB
Marks and Spencer
McKinsey & Co
Mercury Asset Management
Merrill Lynch
Microsoft
Midland Bank
Midlands Electricity
Mitsubishi Research Institute
Mitsubishi Chemical
Corporation
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
National Grid
National Power
NatWest
NFC
Northern Electric
O2
Pearson
Philip Morris
Philips Singapore
PWC
Proctor & Gamble
Reuters
Robert Fleming & Co
Rolls Royce
Royal and Sun Alliance
Royal Bank of Scotland
Group
RSB Group
Sainsbury
Schroder’s
Seaboard
Shell
Siemens Medical
Sigma Securities
Southern Electric
Stagecoach Holdings
Standard & Poor’s
Sun Life of Canada
Swiss Bank Corp
Tesco
Thames Water
UBS Warburg
United Airlines
Vodafone
Warner Music International
W H Smith
Woolwich
Yorkshire Bank
Yorkshire Water
Many other companies will do this if asked, even though they don’t have a formal scheme. Please
check out your employer’s policy and get in touch with us if you can help.
This really is a way you can make a huge difference for minimum effort.