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Message from the Chair

Hello and welcome back to the new year at Goldsworth, particularly to all those new parents/carers in Reception. I hope you all enjoyed the fabulous summer and that everyone has settled in with their new teachers.

With the new starters in mind I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to detail exactly what the Friends do and how we rely on the help of parents and carers to enable us to help the school.

The Friends of Goldsworth School is the parent-teacher association (PTA) of Goldsworth Primary School. It is a registered charity which is composed of parents, teachers and staff that is intended to facilitate parental participation in school and to provide extra resources to enrich a child's experience at Goldsworth, both in lesson time or at play. Although the majority of these resources are financed by the Friend's fund-raising activities it can also simply be a parent or carer's time to help out with their child's class either in the classroom or on school trips.

Each class will have, ideally, 2 class reps who facilitate the communication between the class teacher and parents as well as organising parental help for fund-raising activities. There is a Friends meeting once a term, which the class reps are invited to attend, where we discuss all aspects of the Friends activities. On top of these duties, certain year groups also take on the responsibility of organising our largest fund-raising events, the Christmas Fayre (Year 2) and the Summer Fayre (Year 3). Further volunteer teams are created for events such as the annual Yearbook and the Disco team.

The Friends committee liaise with the school to decide which items/events the Friends' raised funds will support. At the moment we have a very healthy bank balance, the majority of which has been ring-fenced for new all-weather play equipment.

The expansion work is well under-way now and although it is anticipated that this may force us to change some of our usual events, we will endeavour to try the keep the same balance between fund-raising and providing entertaining events that the children all enjoy.

Our Annual General Meeting is set for Monday 14th October at 8pm at the school and it would be brilliant to see lots of new faces. This year we are lucky to have no vacancies on the committee as myself, Neil Hampton, Kate Howard and Neil McPherson are all willing to carry on in their respective roles. We have a number of vacancies for some of our smaller organisational teams which we would love to see filled as soon as possible, but don't worry, there are lots of old hands who can help out should you be new to the school – no help is refused!!!

Out first social event of the year will be the Quiz Night on the 18th October. It's a fun evening which is a great opportunity for you to socialise with other parents/carers without children around. More details will be coming out shortly, but put the date in your diary. It would be lovely to have a table from each class to really up the competitiveness!

Clare Charrier - Chair
chair@goldsworthfriends.org.uk

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