Grants, fundraising and events funded a trim trail and a climbing frame at Newton Poppleford Primary School
When I became the chair of our PTFA, one of the first things I did was ask our headteacher for his wish list. He didn’t hesitate: a trim trail and a climbing frame for key stage 1 and key stage 2. Our playgrounds were just empty fields of patchy grass. No equipment, nothing!
We don’t see play as an add-on. It’s much more than just physical exercise for the children. Through play, they learn to negotiate, communicate and develop their thinking skills through teamwork. Children learn to calculate risks and conquer their fears, often without even realising they are learning. Play gives them the confidence to be bolder in the classroom – to have a go at that scary-looking maths question or express themselves fully in creative writing, for example.
Our PTFA’s initial figure of £15,000 was way off! Three different companies quoted for us: one local provider; Phoenix Play, who had supplied something similar at our pre-school; and a larger national company, who were really expensive. We decided to go with Phoenix Play again, as we knew their work and we were happy with the quote of £28,000, even though it was almost double what we had put aside.
There are plenty of grants available, but finding the right ones can be challenging as you have to match them with your intended spending. Some applications require lengthy forms, and you only realise halfway through that you don’t meet their criteria. Sometimes providers come back to you for more details or certain information. But it was worth the effort, as we were awarded a total of £11,000.
The Edwin and Joyce Hill Charity gave us £6,000, while the Gibbons Family Trust contributed nearly £1,000. Both of these are local charities. We received almost £1,500 from Waitrose and Asda, along with £1,000 from a county council grant, plus smaller amounts from local groups.
Our most successful event was our first colour run, which raised more than £4,400. Event Colour supplied the powder and did an excellent job helping us calculate how much we’d need. We were fortunate to have a local company, Southcoast Liquid Screeding, sponsor the event, which covered the cost of the powder before we even began our fundraising.
It cost £5 per person to participate, or £15 for a family ticket, and entrants raised additional sponsorship through SuperKind. The free platform made it easy to manage donations, track totals and handle Gift Aid. Children even created their own sponsorship pages linked to the main event page.
Our Christmas and summer fairs brought in more than £6,000, and regular cake sales raised £2,737. The remaining funds came from smaller activities, including a Sri Lankan curry evening, quiz night, termly discos and a Break the Rules day. In total, our event fundraising exceeded £22,000. We plan to use the surplus for other exciting projects.
It took two days to install the climbing frame and five days to build the trim trail during the holidays and INSET days. By the time the children were back at school, everything was in place. You can imagine how excited they were to see it.
Myla, a girl in Year 5, told me: ‘I love it! I wish we could play on it all day. We pretend we’re on a ship!’ MJ in Year 4 said: ‘There’s so much more we can do and I love climbing.’
- Georgia Trengrove is chair of Newton Poppleford Primary School PTFA, Devon (182 pupils)
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