FUNDRAISING – 50 wishes
‘We granted wishes to celebrate our school’s 50th birthday’
Teachers, support staff and pupils were all invited to make a wish before the PTA stepped in to play Fairy Godmother
Holly Byrne is chair of Southcott School Association (SSA) at Southcott Lower School in Bedfordshire (300 pupils in Years 1-4, plus a preschool)
I
n 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
The funding crisis in schools is real. It makes no sense for us only to be funding the
‘extras’ when our dedicated staff have insufficient resources
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
School Fundraising SPRING 2026 23
AS TOLD TO CAROL ROGERSON
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