In 2025, our school celebrated its 50th anniversary. Our dedicated chair, Claire, whose three children had all attended the school, was also moving on, and we wanted to mark these milestones with something special. To kick off the celebrations, instead of a traditional summer fair, the SSA threw a birthday party for the school. We had live bands, a bouncy castle, a barbecue and a bar, creating a festival vibe; people brought camping chairs and sat in the sun. The excitement and energy of the event helped generate anticipation around the idea of doing something important for the school’s anniversary.
The funding crisis
Around the time we started planning the anniversary celebrations, I found our wonderful school caretaker assembling a kind of Franken-Hoover from the parts of old, broken vacuum cleaners. It made me realise that there were lots of invisible needs in our school that the SSA could help with. The funding crisis in schools is real and immediate. It makes no sense for us only to be funding the ‘extras’ when our dedicated staff team have insufficient resources to cover the essentials. Some might think it isn’t a PTA’s role to buy a good Hoover, but it seemed obvious to us, including me as the SSA treasurer, that all pupils benefit from being in a clean environment and from staff time being freed up by the provision of appropriate tools.
So, we invited the teachers, support staff and pupils to make a wish for Southcott’s 50th birthday. Over the course of the year, we’d grant as many as we could, aiming for at least 50. This gave us a scheme where we could balance buying things the children would love with items that would make the day-to-day lives of the staff a bit easier. The Hoover was the first wish we granted, then we bought a space rocket playset, wished for by some of our youngest preschool children.
Compiling the list was a huge eye opener about the ways in which parents are willing to engage. One said to me: ‘I am never going to run a cake stall… but I am happy to buy some of these things and call it done. Now I don’t need to feel guilty any more!’ And just like that, she’s going to purchase six digital cameras and grant one of our wishes. It doesn’t fit with stereotypical ideas of what we imagine a PTA to be, but it means the children get what they need.
Making an impact
Much of what PTAs provide is unseen: parents know they paid £15 for a workshop or trip, but they don’t realise we subsidised it. With the 50 Wishes scheme, I wanted to show our supporters where their money was going, so our ‘headline’ birthday wish became to refurbish the playground. We started by replacing the Reception digging pit, which had been out of action for some time, and then replaced the rotten wooden sleepers at the edge of the playground and the play bark around the trim trail. The visual impact was immediate and significant, and we used this to inspire the next stage of fundraising with a ‘this is just the beginning; look what else we could do with your support!’ approach.
We were lucky to secure a spot in the London Marathon charity ballot. Loads of parents applied to run for us, and we chose the one with the strongest fundraising plan. There was a huge buzz of support for her around the school and she raised £2,500 through her JustGiving page, all of which was ringfenced for the 50th anniversary ‘50 Wishes’ fund.
Young fundraisers
To build on this excitement, we launched a fundraiser called ‘50 for 50’. Our runner, Kayley, came and spoke to the children in assembly, and we invited them to create their own sponsored challenges based on the number 50. They could do 50 of anything they wanted. While raising money was important, my aim was to inspire the children as young fundraisers. We wanted to teach them that they are capable, that their contributions are valuable and that through taking collective responsibility, they can have a meaningful impact, even at a very young age.
The children came up with lots of creative ideas: some wrote 50 rhyming words, and one boy completed 50 sums that added up to 50; others cycled an impressive 50 laps around the park. A couple of talented bakers made and sold 50 cupcakes. Some children took part in a sponsored silence, one boy learnt 50 Spanish words, and another played 50 holes of golf with his dad. My eldest child swam 50 lengths of the local pool; my youngest swam 50 metres.
It was important to us that the initiative was fully inclusive, to show the children that their unique interests, talents and abilities are useful. One of the most memorable challenges came from a boy who emptied his entire bucket of Lego on the floor and completed 50 Lego walks across the pieces before tidying it all up himself!
We put a printed document about the challenge in each child’s book bag. We explained to parents and carers how to create a JustGiving page, which made it easy to share the link with friends and family who live far away and don’t usually get the chance to support the school. For those who preferred not to set up an online page, we gave an option to take part in the challenge offline. To promote a sense of collective responsibility, we suggested each child aim for a modest fundraising target of either £5 or £10. In the end, the amounts varied widely, with some children raising £20, while others raised several hundred pounds.
A feeling of pride
Every week, our headteacher held a ‘Wow Wednesday’ assembly where she read out a roll of honour of the participants. We never disclosed how much money each child had raised – instead she celebrated the pupils who had either set up or completed their challenge that week. It was noticeable that lots of new children joined the initiative on Wednesday afternoons. By the end of term, 97 children had completed a 50 for 50 challenge (a third of the school) and we held a special assembly to award a medal and a certificate to every child who took part. Their pride was tangible; lots of children who may not normally receive academic or sporting accolades flourished in this project and it was wonderful to have a way to celebrate each pupil’s unique contribution.
The next generation
Although I had hoped for more participation, the children who took part collectively raised a staggering £10,321. Now, the school council are leading plans to spend the money raised in a way all the children can feel really excited by. We are planning to create a 50 for 50 ‘thank you’ wall, with the name of every child who took part recorded as having contributed to this significant project in the history of the school. I hope every child who took part will be able to look at it with pride and say: ‘I helped make that happen.’ I’d like to think they might just grow up to be the next generation of PTA volunteers.
Holly Byrne is chair of Southcott School Association (SSA) at Southcott Lower School in Bedfordshire (300 pupils in Years 1-4, plus a preschool)
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