This week, the Parent Teacher Association met to discuss the past year’s events. As with everything it has been a strange year, where we didn’t get to run some of the normal fantastic PA events. We did, however, endeavour to do what we could do during this time.

In December, we celebrated the 10 days of Christmas where we ran various fun events for the students. The Parents’ Association kindly provided doughnuts for every child in the school on one day, and on other days students brought in toys to donate to a local Christmas toy drive, wrote Christmas cards to give to residents of local care homes and raised money for charity through a Mufti Day. Our biggest event this year however was the school’s Easter Raffle. Amazingly, many of the parents of Francis Holland donated some incredible prizes that were raffled off to the entire school in a live draw. Around one third of all the pupils in the school won prizes! Everything from chocolates and luxury cosmetics to vouchers and clothing. This was an incredible and joyful event, and gave the whole school the opportunity to do something fun, whilst also staying COVID safe.

Although it has been a different year, it was amazing to still be able to raise money for various charities. One of the charities we have supported is Swiss Cottage School, who used the money to buy a COVID testing machine at the end of October, which allowed the school to stay open as normal for their highly-vulnerable students. We received a beautiful painting (shown here) created by one of the pupils of the school. A huge thank you to all our amazing parents at Francis Holland, whose support and contributions have allowed charity raising to continue and for us to support others as much as possible the past year. Looking ahead, we are planning a year of normality, with the Christmas Fair returning in its full capacity.

By Mrs Percy