Chairperson's Report for 2024-2025
Good evening everyone and thank you for coming out tonight. My name is Eleanor Ryan and I am the current Chair of the Parents’ Group.
Other members of the 2024-25 committee here tonight are Antoinette Barry (cochair), Laura Dynes (secretary) and Rachel Avevor (treasurer), Indigo Carville, Gemma Crawford, Julie Crossan, Jordanna James, Kelly Loughran, Paula MorrowMcDermott, Agata Rudnik and Claire Whittaker.
The main purpose of our Parents’ Group is to raise funds to improve our children’s school experience and to provide facilities not normally provided by the Education Authority. We organise a range of events throughout the school year, both to raise funds and to bring together the members of our school community. As a charity, we are governed by the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland and must adhere to the guidelines issued by them.
Our 2024-25 events began in October with Parents’ Group volunteers supporting the school’s Masked Singer event by providing tea, coffee and tuck. On 25th November, we organised a Halloween Scavenger Hunt and Dress up during the school day for all children to enjoy before the half-term break.
The first school discos of the year took place at the end of November. P5-7 had an evening Winter Disco on Thursday 28th November and the following day P1-4 showed us their best dance moves in two separate discos with an option to do some craft activities for those who didn’t feel like dancing. Thank you to Julie Crossan for organising and running the crafts.
On 5th December, 10 parent volunteers helped out at the school Christmas Dinner, serving dinners to the whole school and helping the lunchtime supervisors, before sitting down together for their own festive feast. On 8th December our second Santa’s Grotto event took place, with photo opportunities with San0at in an inflatable grotto. Thank you to Matt and Mrs Devlin for their photography skills on the day. Other activities on offer included letters to Santa, games room, a crafts table run by Alison Cranney, make your own reindeer food, scavenger hunt and selfie station. The event went very well and we are extremely grateful to our army of parent volunteers and P7 helpers, without whom this event would not have been possible.
The Parents Group provided tea and coffee for visitors to the school at both Open Night on 9th January and a Digital Safety Workshop for parents on 30th January. On the evening of 6th February all pupils had the opportunity to attend a Valentine’s
disco. This was the first evening disco for P1-4 in a number of years, in addition to the annual P5-7 Valentine’s disco. Both were well-supported, both by pupils attending and parent volunteers.
Our most successful fundraiser of the year took place on 31st March and 1st April when all year groups took part in a Sponsored Fitness event, kindly facilitated by Evo Soccer Skills and Burns Skills School. The kids literally had a ball and raised nearly £5,500 in the process. We are extremely grateful to Evo and Burns for donating their time and to the whole school community for their generous support of this event. The Parents’ Group provided all students with a treat from an ice cream after Easter as a thank-you.
On 10th April, the Parents’ Group provided an Easter Scavenger Hunt for all pupils to complete on their daily mile. Upon completion of the hunt, all pupils received a packet of Smarties to introduce our Smartie Tube Appeal, which ran throughout the month of May. Pupils were asked to fill their empty Smarties tube with 20p coins and they raised nearly £900.
On 5th June the Parents’ Group provided tea, coffee and biscuits at the New P1 Parent Evening. A talk was also given to the P1 parents about the role of Parents’ Group and appealing for parents to get involved. On 11th June, the Parents’ Group provided tea, coffee and tuck at Sports Day and started selling tickets for our summer raffle. Our biggest event of the year in terms of organisation was the Summer Fete on 21st June. Activities included animal handling with C&J’s Animal Park, inflatables, facepainting, games, emergency services vehicles, penalty shoot-outs with Evo Soccer Skills, a range of stalls and live music. We also continued our summer raffle and ran a guessing booth and crack the code lock box. The event was a great success and there was a real buzz around the school grounds. We are extremely grateful to all the local businesses who donated prizes for the raffle. We finished the school year with the P7 leavers day on 24th June, at which the Parents Group organised inflatables and a barbecue to send our class of 2025 on to the next stage of their journey with a fun-filled day with their Bridge friends and families. All pupils were also given a framed class photo on behalf of the Parents’ Group as a memento of their time at Bridge.
I would like to conclude my report by thanking the many people who make all of our fundraising events possible, for their commitment, hard work and continued support of the Bridge Integrated Primary School Parents’ Group.
I would like to thank all our parents, carers and pupils who have supported our fundraising events throughout the year, as the proceeds raised help us enhance the experiences of our children at school.
I wish to thank Mrs Devlin for her endless support of the Parents Group and all our events. We are very grateful for her advice, guidance and willingness to
accommodate requests for use of school facilities. I would also like to thank all the teachers and classroom assistants who have helped out at or supported our events. We would like to thank the office staff for their administrative support and the canteen staff for their help with food preparation.
I would also like to thank all our parents, carers and grandparents who have volunteered at our events throughout the year. We greatly appreciate and rely upon our volunteers giving of their time to make our events possible.
I wish to thank all our sponsors for their support. In particular, thank you to David McKay, Community Champion at Tesco at the Outlet, Banbridge for his generous donations of vouchers used to buy supplies and prizes for our events.
And lastly, I would like to thank our 2024-25 committee members for their time, enthusiasm and dedication to the Parents’ Group; for their tireless work in the planning and delivery of all our events this year and for the many laughs along the way.
The Parents’ Group is always grateful for any support our parents and carers are able to give us - by joining the committee, coming to our monthly meetings when you can or by volunteering at any of our events. Half an hour of your time can be the difference between an event running and not.
I will now hand over to Rachel to give us the financial report for 2024-25, which will be followed by the election of our new committee.