PTA News
The story so far.......
Our Parent Teacher Association (“PTA”) has been active at Stretford Grammar School since 2007. In that time, we have been able to enhance the children’s education by refurbishing the school library, providing state of the art computing and technology equipment and supplying the specialist paraphernalia for every child to be able to participate in the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Our most recent fundraising project has been helping to raise funds for the new boys and girls toilets in the main building. We have also continued to hold our annual ‘Good as New’ Second Hand Uniform Sale, which is becoming more popular each year, with the most recent sale raising over £1,500!!
We work hard to raise money, but some of our events are also aimed at bringing the school community together: families, staff, students and the local neighbourhood. This makes us a strong and effective force for the benefit of all the children.
As a parent, you are automatically part of the PTA. Please feel welcome and support our work.
December 2021 Update
We have not held any in-person events since the COVID pandemic began. However, we have still been able to raise hundreds of pounds via parents and supporters signing up to our easyfundraising and AmazonSmile accounts (read more about this below).
When we hold in-person events, we are very grateful to receive help from parents and carers. If you can help in any way (see below), please contact janeraiswell@ntlworld.com.
Your time
Can you spare any time to help out before or at one of our events? We usually need between 10-30 volunteers, depending upon the type of event. Are you able to help out on a stall or serve tea and cake? Ideally, we would like to have enough volunteers, so each person only needs to help out for 30 minutes and is then able to enjoy the event with their family and friends. Without parental support (mums, dads, grandparents), we can sometimes find ourselves at risk of not being able to offer all the activities and stalls we would like to. If you would like to help out for 30 minutes at one of our events in the future, please contact us and we will get in touch with you before an event to ask if you are available. If you would like to volunteer to help with a friend, please let us know and we can ensure you are both placed on the same stall or activity at the event.
Skills request
There are usually only a handful of us who regularly attend PTA meetings and lead on our events and activities. We would like to bring new ideas to the table and ask if we have any talented parents out there who would like to suggest and lead on any new ideas for fundraising activities e.g. crafts, cooking, baking, organising sporting events or anything else! The activity can be a stand-alone activity such as a lunchtime cake sale or be part of a larger event – for example, having a craft stall at one of our events. If you can help, we would be delighted to hear from you.
Raffle prizes needed
Does anybody have a business or know of anybody who has a business, who would be willing to donate a prize to the raffles we hold at our events? We would be very grateful to receive any donations of suitable prizes.
Cakes needed
At a number of our events, we also have a refreshments stall, where we sell tea, coffee, soft drinks and cakes. We often have a shortage of bakers for our events and would be very grateful if anybody could bake a large cake or some small cakes for our stall. If you contact us, we will add you to our list of bakers who may be able to bake a cake for an event. If you are on the list but are unable to make a cake when we contact you, this is fine. It would just help us greatly to have a list of ‘possible bakers’ to contact.
easyfundraising and AmazonSmile
Help us by collecting FREE donations every time you shop online
Did you know that one of the easiest ways to help raise funds for Stretford Grammar School is by shopping online via easyfundraising and AmazonSmile. We receive free donations for our PTA every time you buy online.
easyfundraising works with over 5,000 shops and sites including Sainsburys, Waitrose, Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Argos, e-Bay, John Lewis, Asos, Clarks, M&S and Booking.com. We can receive donations on everything from your weekly shop to your annual holiday, and it doesn’t cost you anything! We even receive an extra 50p when you raise your first donation.
It is really easy to sign up to easyfundraising and AmazonSmile - just follow the steps below and if you have any problems at all, please contact janeraiswell@ntlworld.com.
As of December 2021, the Stretford Grammar PTA easyfundraising account has 130 people registered to it and has raised £3,130 for the school. Can you imagine what we could raise each year if we had 400 people registered!
easyfundraising
Follow these easy steps...
- Head to www.easyfundraising.org.uk
- Click on Search for a good cause - choose Stretford Grammar PTA and click on Support this cause
- Create an account and choose to Get the donation reminder. This donation reminder will ask to be installed - please click Allow and then Install. Now, every time you go on a website which donates to easyfundraising, you will see an Activate donation button in the top right corner of that website - click on it and if you buy anything from that website, we will receive a donation.
- You are now ready to start collecting donations for Stretford Grammar PTA.
AmazonSmile
Amazon no longer donates to easyfundraising. They now have their own fundraising initiative called AmazonSmile. It works in a very similar way to easyfundraising though, and our School will receive 0.5% of the purchase price.
Follow these easy steps to get started ...
- Head to www.smile.amazon.co.uk
- Create your Amazon account.
- Search for Stretford Grammar School Pta and click on Select.
- Tick the box next to Yes, I understand that I must always start at smile.amazon.co.uk to support Stretford Grammar School Pta..
- Click on Start Shopping and shop away …