**St Joseph’s Primary School PTA** Charity number 108594 ## **Trustee’s Annual Report and Financial Statements** ## **1 September 2024 - 31 August 2025** St Joseph’s PTA is a charity registered with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, CCNI (Charity number 108594 ). The organisation is governed by constitution and produces annual Receipts and Payments accounts. It is now three years since the PTA became a charity registered with the Charity Commission for NI on 17 January 2022. This is our second annual return. The school year 2024/2025 was extremely successful for the PTA, in all aspects of social, educational and financial terms. There was also a welcome influx of growth into the PTA committee with parents who are new to the school. Our goal this year was to raise money for interactive whiteboards for the school. The PTA committee are a group of parents and teachers who volunteer to raise funds that can be used to support and enhance the education and school experiences of the children attending the school. We are committed to raising as much money as possible through a range of events and activities for the school community. The PTA also aims to be a forum to enable the sharing of views on extra curricular matters between parents and teaching staff. The continued success of the PTA is due to the dedication and planning of the parents and teachers on the PTA committee, and especially the wider group of parents, teachers, and caretaking staff who assist and volunteer their time throughout the year to ensure the safety and success of all PTA events. The PTA would like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved for their efforts. Our aim for this year was to provide five interactive whiteboards to the school to enhance the classroom experience. In this school year, the PTA were delighted to be able to hand a cheque in November for £4500 to Mr Donaldson, school principal, and full details of all funds raised and how the PTA spent its funds are found in the treasurer's report. A further cheque was given for £3600 in January, £3500 in March and a further cheque for £5000 was transferred in May. A final payment of £3000 was made after the summer fair in June 2025 In September we moved our communication with all parents across from class connectors to a community system on Whatsapp, which led to more streamlined communication, particularly for those with more than one child at the school. It also allowed parents to opt in to community announcements. This took a good bit of work from Olan, Naomi and Claire and seems to work well. Our treasurer Lorna also did great work in transferring our bank account across to a new bank and this is working very well for us. We held our first pop up shop for Halloween costumes, Mrs. McKinney organised this in school and PTA volunteers helped staff it on a Friday afternoon and it raised a great amount As part of the parish community we were invited to take a stall at the parish engagement weekend which Claire organised and helped man throughout the weekend, promoting the work and events of the PTA for the school to the parish community. The annual fundraising events are spread out throughout the school year: We ran our welcome drinks event to welcome new parents for Primary 1 parents in September. This is a lovely way to introduce the new parents to the school community and also resulted in some signups to the PTA committee and to volunteer lists. October saw our Halloween Disco, this fancy dress disco has a low entrance charge where the kids are supervised by volunteers and teachers and provided with snacks and drinks.. This year the p1-3 children had their disco in school and this worked well, the older children danced their socks off in the evening! Christmas saw several big events in the PTA fundraising calendar. Our Christmas craft fair and our Christmas raffle were both very well supported. We had a great team running the Craft fair, and lots of new great ideas. Some of our Primary 5 children also took a stall at the Christmas craft fair selling bracelets they made, and their sales - and sales skills - were phenomenal. 2025 started with the PTA quiz which took place in Horatio Todds, arranged by Tierna and was a great night for parents to get together and win prizes and buy raffle tickets - raising funds on the night and a draw. We also hosted a tea for Grandparent’s day for the first time. There was a great uptake in volunteers for baking and this was a great success. We had so many cake donations, we were able to have an honesty box cake sale in school the next morning. We started concentrating on passive fundraising initiatives such as easy fundraising and Asda Cashpot, both of which have been a welcome addition to our fundraising. We said goodbye to our long serving Principal Mr Donaldson in March and the PTA were delighted to be able to organise a retirement present from the parents and to host a tea for parents and guests in a lovely celebration of his career. In May we had lots of focus on the Marathon. The children did a Marathon relay in school and were sponsored by family at home. In addition, the PTA sponsored a team of parents and a team of teachers for the Marathon relay, and money was raised by sponsorship by the school community. This year the parents narrowly beat the teacher’s team, safe to say there is a friendly rivalry! Also in May, the PTA hosted the First Communion Tea - The school community donate baked items and volunteers provide a lovely event of tea and buns in the church hall for the First Communicants and their families. This is always very appreciated by all the families. Naomi coordinated and cajoled baked goods which were very appreciated. Also in May we were able to make a payment to the school of £5000. We were also able to secure sponsorship for our sports day from Eurospar through Martina, and this was a great benefit as this provided water and medals for the children. Naomi and Claire also prepared new starter guides for the incoming Primary 1 parents for their open day in June. We also sent our congratulations to our new Principal , Mr Donnelly who has been acting principal since March and has been a great support to the PTA. The biggest event in our calendar is our Community fun day in June. It involves the whole community with stalls, inflatables, BBQ, live music from our p7 talent show winner. Parents and the school community came together to volunteer to run stalls, and to support in their droves. This was a particular challenge this year as it was pouring rain, and we had to pivot to a wet day plan, reducing the numbers of inflatables and moving everything inside. We were grateful to be able to use the Scout Hall for this. We used pre-paid tickets again as well as bundles of tickets for sale on the day. Using tickets really helped streamline the entry to the event, and helped raised more money, as the tickets were mostly bought in advance. This year we branched out to new stalls such Human Fruit machine, Free the Teddy and Minecraft target stalls, all of which were a great success. We also trialled a prize stall, where the children could redeem stickers for prizes, This was a big hit! Naomi secured corporate sponsorship for our bouncy castles which freed up a major expense. We are very grateful to our p7 parent Michael McTiernan who is retiring from BBQ duties after several years of providing all our BBQ facilities! At the end of term we had our Summer disco. The junior school had their disco during the school day and the p4-7 pupils had a great time dancing outside and it stayed sunny! The PTA also arranged for Primary one parents to purchase commemorative tea towels with their self portraits as a lasting memory of their first year, An appeal went out to parents before the end of term for Uniform Recycling, the PTA take donations of good used uniforms- and in July the PTA had a morning where parents came and made a donation in lieu of school uniforms for the next year - especially helpful for those fast growing kids and good for the cost of living crisis and the environment We were able to transfer £19,600 to the school this year, which was used to purchase 11 interactive whiteboards for the school, a phenomenal achievement by the parents and indicative of the great support in our school community. Chairperson - Claire Kennedy Deputy Chairperson - Jonny Redpath