Minutes

Minutes for PTA meeting on Thursday 26th February 2026

Attendees: Miss Jennings, Candice, Chelsey, Lilia, Laura, Karla, Sam, Shade

Mothers Day

Discussed options for a Mothers Day celebration and fundraising opportunity. Reflected on what we have done in previous couple of years - what worked, what didn't work as well. Settled on following:

Date: Friday 13th March
Bundle will be available to pre-order - will include card + plant @ £5
Alert to go out ASAP. Pre-orders to cut off on Tue 10 March
A small amount of card + plant bundles will be available to purchase on the day (Chelsey said as an example amount, if we have 100 pre-orders, we would order 130 plants to cover orders and a few spare. Miss J mentioned that any unsold plants are replanted on school grounds)
Agreed we will not sell cards and plants separately this year
Chelsey to organise the plants
Unlikely we will need to order cards - still have large number in the office from last year
Will also hold a cake sale on same day - no pre-order required, will be 'pay on the day'. Will ask parents to donate cakes to this.

Actions -

School to send Piota alert about Mothers Day
Laura to create Mothers Day poster
PTA to draft note to PTA group/wider class groups also mentioning the mothers day plans + asking for cake sale donations

Easter Egg hunt

Briefly recapped details for this. School to organise the egg prizes.

Laura to create the volunteer sign up sheet [not discussed at this meeting but I remembered why volunteer sheet hadn't yet been set up; we previously said we had to work out the exact slots for each egg hunt session - will need to know timings in order to get volunteers signed up.]

Eid

Discussed plans for Eid celebration and connected fundraising opportunity. Discussed previous year's plans and noted sweet sale had been v popular and sold out last year. Lilia presented some Eid related items she was given as a donation for school eg Paint Your Own Masjid kit, cake toppers, hanging decorations. Agreed this might be interesting to explore buying more of these in bulk to sell - TBC. Settled on following details:

Date: Thurs 19th March (as likeliest date for people to celebrate Eid / be away for Eid is Friday 20th)
Sweets will go on sale after school at each site @ £1.50 per cone (in line with cost / cone style as sold at the Christmas fair). No need to pre-order.
To keep the sale cost effective, Chelsey looking at buying sweets wholesale + plastic cone bags + Eid stickers. She and X have volunteered to assemble the cones
We would also like to offer henna but can't guarantee any teachers can be spared for this so will only be possible if we have parent volunteers for this. If parents who can do henna are available, this would be offered on the afternoon on 19th March (morning not possible because of clash with SAT exams)

Actions -

School to send an alert about the Eid sweet sale
Laura to create an Eid poster
PTA group to contact class groups to check whether any parent volunteers will be available - didn't discuss this but if there are volunteers available will need to agree cost/how many spaces we can offer in the space of an afternoon. TBC once we know if there are any henna volunteers!

Non-uniform days

Miss Jennings reminded the group we have dress up days coming up in three consecutive weeks (for World Book Day, STEAM week and Comic Relief Day respectively plus a 'wear your best clothes' for Eid day). No action required from the PTA.

PTA engagement

Discussed ideas around improving parents engagement with PTA and increasing support for PTA activities. Ideas/discussion points included:

Including info about the PTA in the new starter information in summer for the new reception intake. Include a form parents can complete to register their interest and make sure this is passed to PTA to follow up
Possibly have PTA members at the new parents meeting, available to talk more about what PTA does and why it's so important for the children to have a strong PTA
Work on better awareness of what PTA does (maybe who the PTA are) and what we achieve.
Miss Jennings refloated the suggestion that having specifically named outcomes in fundraisers could be more persuasive - eg instead of just asking for money 'for the school' we could state more specifically what we are aiming to buy with it - such as Chromebooks. Group agreed that although sometimes money is needed for things like repairs, it was more compelling to focus fundraising on educational/inspirational items such as tech equipment or activities for the kids
Candice mentioned a PTA 'fee' that is charged at her older child's secondary school (£10 per month to be paid towards PTA fundraising) and Shade mentioned a similar fee charged by another primary school in the area. Miss Jennings had a concern around doing something similar at Mission Grove and whether it was allowed/might draw complaints from parents and Laura noted that in theory some kind of fee could raise a lot of money but would be difficult to enforce and that it is already difficult to get some parents to pay low fees for other activities.
Lilia mentioned that having an updated 'donations' letter would be useful for securing external donations for school events
Laura mentioned the PTA posters at the summer fair (about the various ways parents can support the school - PTA meetings, volunteering at events, paying for kids to take part in school events, donating to cake sales etc etc) - had encouraged several parents on South to ask about PTA (poster attached for quick reference)
Miss Jennings noted Easyfundraising is a good source of additional income but does not have high uptake. Think about ways to encourage participation in this

Actions -

No set actions for next couple of weeks but an ongoing discussion point and something we will need to revisit and keep working on

Internal PTA good news :)

Chelsey shared the news that she has passed her driving test (and on first attempt!). Congratulations Chelsey!