We celebrated Easter with a some serious chocolately fundraising fun!  Thank you to everyone who participated.

In our virtual Bingo Bonanza, those lucky enough to get 'First Line,' 'Corners' and of course, 'Full House' won Easter Eggs - and raised approximately £40 in the process!

We also held our 'Guess the number of sweets in the jar' competition, which proved very popular!  59 families submitted almost 200 guesses, meaning that we raised a total of £187.26 after payment service provider fees.   

The grand total of chocolates in the jar was 202, and the winners (who guessed the correct number right on the (Easter Bunny's) nose!) were Olive in Year 1 and her brother Sammy in Year 5.  Congratulations to them!

We were thrilled to fund three virtual workshops with authors and illustrators for all of the Key Stages, to support World Book Week (March 1st to March 8th). 

We funded two virtual author visits:  Emma Perry (author of ‘I Don’t Like Books. Never. Ever. The End.’) for KS1, and Andy Seed (author of ‘The Clue is in the Poo’ and many other funny books) for KS2. 

We were also able to fund a virtual assembly for the whole school from Sharna Jackson, author of ‘The High Rise Mystery.’  

We listened in on all of the events and they were wonderfully wordy, breathtakingly booky, page-turningly perfect – in other words, just plain fabulous!! Thank you to everyone who made these events possible!

Last week saw the first ADPS Virtual Balloon Race which took place over Ashley Down Island - a fitting activity for the home city of Hot Air Balloons! 

A total of 241 Balloons raced over the course of the week, racking up around 1,000km each in a nail-biting race beset by storms, volcanoes, and the odd whale!

The event raised approximately £600 for our school after fees and prizes, so a big thank you to all of the competitors who participated!

Many congratulations to our winners:

1st Place - Spinjitzu Master
2nd Place - Rhys C-W
3rd Place - NIGEL

ADPS PSA held our annual Christmas Tree Sale on Saturday December 5th, which was a great success.  This event was organised, run and staffed completely with parent volunteers, or should we say, elves for the day!

Despite the challenges associated with CV19, we used technology (an online ticketing system) to help us organise a pre-book, pre-pay and collect on the day approach.  This meant that people could pay and secure the type of tree that they wanted beforehand, but choose the right one for them on the day.  Coupled with strict social distancing measures (e.g. masks, a cleaning regime, limiting numbers on the site, one way system), we managed to provide a safe, but still festive, environment.

We sold a total of 155 trees, which beats last year's record of 125, raising in the order of £2,500 for the school.  Thank you so much to all who supported the PSA by getting your lovely, fresh Christmas tree from us this year!

 A huge THANK YOU to all of the ADPS families (40 of you!) who got quizzical with us last night!  And of course thank you to our resident Quiz Master Alex Furr for setting us the challenge!

With some tough rounds (including Disney, Music and Games) and some real head-scratchers provided by the teachers (thank you teachers!), not to mention an exciting tie break for first place, it was a really fantastic event which raised £190.92 for the school.  First place received a £20 voucher from Pizzarova (kindly donated by a school family), Second place received a box of chocolates, and everyone who placed received a certificate to commemorate their achievement!

BIG congratulations to our winners:

1st Place - Brown Hawks 🥇

Joint 2nd Place - Bunny Monster🥈
Joint 2nd place - Team Templeman🥈

And in Tied 3rd place:
The Millers🥉
Team Poopy Cat🥉
Joynt Effort 🥉
The Fabulous Furrs!🥉

We have been very busy this year funding a range of initiatives to help our school, particularly to help with the management of COVID 19.  Due to the generosity and support of the school community, we have managed to fund the following so far this 2020 - 2021 school year:

- A staff role (School Meals Supervisory Assistant) to support supervision of class/year group bubbles at lunchtime

- 280 books for Reception, Years 1, 2, 3 as well as an online subscription for school and home permanent access to all the Engage Literacy titles electronically online, to support remote learning (which follows on the purchase of 150 books for Years 4, 5, and 6 at the end of the last school year)

- A range of early learning resources for Reception and Year 1, including COVID 19-safe storage

- Sound-deadening materials (carpets, sound deadening felt and PVC table clothes) for Reception and Year 1, to minimise distractions and enhance learning, as well as provide a warmer, COVID 19 safe environment.

Thank you all for your participation in events, donations, and independent fundraising that makes this much needed support possible. 

Our first meeting of the year, the Ashley Down Primary (ADPS) Annual General Meeting (AGM) took place on Tuesday September 15th, and it was lovely to see many virtual attendees! A big thank you to all those who attended, as well as to those who asked questions and shared ideas. The option to join virtually worked so well that we are going to adopt this as standard practice for all PSA meetings going forward.
As a registered charity, we are legally required to have an AGM, where we look back at the previous year and elect a core committee for the upcoming year, who are nominated and voted in. The PSA Committee for 2020-21 is:
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• Chair – Ailsa Peron
• Treasurer – Hannah Waterhouse
• Secretary – Emi Carmichael
• Communications – Felicity Boyle
• Events Coordinator – Sandra English

If you would like to contact us, please feel free to email us ([email protected]), or please do speak to us in person – socially distanced, not in the playground and following the one-way system, of course!

We also had multiple offers to support with communications and events, so a huge thank you to all those offering their time and energy to support PSA initiatives! But we can never have enough hands, so please keep that support coming.

AGM Headlines – The Good News and the Bad News

Thanks to amazing support, hard work and dedication to all those that have got involved with the PSA (be that in organising or attending events, donating and / or helping out at events), 2019 – 2020 was set to be the biggest fund-raising year yet!

Sadly, due the cancellation of a number of events in the latter half of the last school year for obvious reasons, we are starting this year approximately £2000 down from our starting point in September 2019. But, we are determined to build on the energy and enthusiasm from last year, and to continue to raise funds (in creative and new ways!) with the help of you all, our brilliantly supportive PSA community.

Would anyone be interested in being a Trustee of the PSA?

By law the PSA has to have Trustees, who ensure that the PSA have proper control of funds where people are raising money on their behalf, and that funds are spent (or earmarked) for the purposes for which they were raised.

All Committee Members are automatically Trustees but we also have non-Committee Member Trustees. Two of our current Trustees are stepping down – would anyone out there be interested in filling the role? You would need to attend up to 3 meetings per school year.

Please email [email protected] if you are interested in hearing more about it.

Speaking of new and creative ways to fundraise, we need your help!

1. Do you have any ideas of how we can raise money this year? We need lots of minds to help us to recoup the money we have lost last year and set to lose further compared to previous years. All ideas welcome – even if you think it’s a bit mad, we’ll discuss it! Please email [email protected] with heading ‘Fundraising Ideas’.

2. Do you have an event that you’d like to organise to raise money for the PSA, but need help? If so, the PSA Committee can assist you in getting your event off the ground e.g. volunteers, health & safety, insurance and necessary licences.

3. Are you planning on setting yourself any personal challenges/fitness goals this year, and could raise sponsorship to donate to the PSA?

4. Do you have ideas of what the PSA should fund for the school this year? Again, please email us and let us know your thoughts! [email protected]
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A huge thank you to all those who didn’t reclaim their disco ticket money from March 2020’s sadly cancelled event, and therefore turned it into a donation to the PSA. This represents a whopping donation of £468!!
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Some of you may remember that we have a partnership with Elephant, who kindly donate £200 to us for each house of a member of the Ashley Down Primary School (ADPS) community that they sell. We have just received our latest donation from them for last year, for a fantastic £600!!

While we hate to see members of our school community leave, if you are selling your home with Elephant, please do tell them that you are an ADPS family and secure that donation for us!
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For those of you who are lucky enough to have an employer who allows you to have a % of your wage donated to a charity of your choice and matches your contributions via CAF Matched Giving, did you know that Ashley Down Schools PSA is a charity?

This means if you 3 donate £2.50 a month to the PSA, we get £5 a month in total! Over a year that adds up to £60 and if we had as few as just 30 parents who did this, we could receive £1,800 in a year!

If your employer does CAF Matched Giving and you’d like to donate, all you need is to specify a donation amount and give your employer our charity name (Ashley Down Schools Parent Staff Assoc) and charity number (1096007).
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You can also raise money for the school at no additional cost to yourself, just by purchasing from your favourite retailers through Easyfundraising, or registering Ashley Down Schools Parent Staff Assoc as your chosen charity on Amazon Smile. Just click on the respective links below.

www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/ashleydownschool
and
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/

We are also always incredibly grateful for donations via Paypal , using our email address [email protected]. If you select the ‘Friends and Family’ option, no fees are deducted. Please feel free to share the above info with Grandparents, friends and family.