Meeting Minutes 9th September 2025

Lisa Gammon
5 days ago
8 min read

09/09/2025 – The Claremont Pub - 8pm

Attendees present:

Axelle Joos de ter Beerst AJ (Chair), Natalie Jolliffe NJ (Vice chair), Lisa Gammon LG (Secretary), Jenny Brown JB (CM), Gemma Ferguson GF (CM), Marta Zielinska MZ (CM -Teacher), Ami Parker AP2 (CM), Becky O’Brien BO, Lucy Prior LP (CM)

Apologies:

Candi Roberts CR (CM- Headteacher), Shagun Bansal SB (Treasurer), Claire Summers CS (CM), Jennie Maslin Fong JMF, Carmen Di Cara CD, Julia Beath JB, Nicki Webb NW (CM), Emma Butterworth EB (CM), Anna Pearson AP1 (CM), Zoe Phillimore ZP (CM)

1. Chair’s Opening and Reflection on 25/26 (AJ):

Axelle opened the meeting reflecting on her first year as Chair and how proud she is of how it went, thanking everyone for their time and hard work in making it successful.
PTA donated a huge amount to the school during 24/25 school year- £50,814.
One thing that stood out is that the summer term is very busy, with increased requests for volunteers to help at summer events. The feedback given to Axelle through various channels, was that parents don’t have as much time to give to PTA events. Therefore, to take the pressure off parents perhaps we should consider stretching out events.
PTA to raise more awareness of how much we donate to the school and what it’s used for.
Samantha Walker resigned from the committee. A big thank you to Sam for all her time and hard work over the years, contributing towards the success of the PTA funding.
Natalie Jolliffe put forward Becky O’Brien to join the committee. The committee members present at the meeting voted yes. Becky will oversee New Parent events.

Action Point: LG to enquire with the office to sync PTA calendar with the school’s online calendar.

Action Point: AJ to include within the AGM, PTA’s efforts during 24/25 to be more inclusive

2. Financial Summary (SB/NJ):

Unaudited Figures for 24/25 school year (New Financial Year started 01.09.25)

£41k Cash in bank as at 9.9.25
-£2,701 Total income
£56,178k Income / £22,337 Expenditure / £33,841 Profit
£50,814 Donations to school
£13,955 Donations received
Top five profitable events: Clarefest, Summer Fete, playground sales, secondhand uniform, cinema club.
Brilliant year of events. All expenditure on budget. Summer Fete even came under budget- expenditure £1000 less than planned.

Action Point: NJ to double check Fete’s expenditure due to under spend.

Action Point: NJ to find comms that went out for Payrol donation scheme

3. Succession Planning & Vacancies (AJ/NJ)

Natalie is looking to step down to make way for a new Vice Chair in preparation for her final year at Claremont.
The Fete team, who has run a super successful summer fete for the past two years are stepping away. Thank you to everyone involved for organising such memorable and successful fetes.
Jenny Maslong Fong is stepping down from leading playground sales. Jenny has led successful playgrounds sales for a couple years raising consistent funding for the PTA. We thank you Jenny for the time you committed to this and the hard work you and your friends put in.
Cinema Club: Sam Walker has left the school. New cinema club lead required.
Christmas cards: Emma Doward stepped down from the committee during 24/25 school year.
All committee members present confirmed they are staying on the committee for another year.
Mark Lester confirmed he’ll remain as licensee.
Andrew Gray confirmed he will continue as auditor.

Action Point: LG to list all vacancies

Action Point: LG to communicate cinema club opening with the Friends of the PTA

Action Point: NJ to write comms for Vice Chair opening

Action Point: NJ to find out how much the Fete’s Silent Auction made.

Action Point: AJ to check with those stepping down from certain events, are they going to stay committee members.

Action Point: LG to check with those committee members not able to attend the meeting, are they staying on the committee for another year.

4. Events:

a. New Parents (BO): Becky represented the PTA at the New Parents’ Morning, from which she received lots of positive feedback from the event. New Parent Drinks schedule for Friday 10th October at The Claremont Pub. The committee discussed ideas for the evenings raffle prize.

Action Point: BO to check tank room for gifts to add to the hamper. LG to check files for freebies sent to PTA.

b. Playground sales:

Action Point: New lead required. Consider scaling back number of playground sales to just cake and donut sales.

Juliette Hatchman will continue to lead the ice lolly sales during the summer term.

Christmas Party (CS): Booked for Friday 12th December. Claire is happy to organise. Initial thoughts: September - advise parents its coming/that class reps don’t need to organise. October - issue save the date. By November - launch tickets sales after half term (?). £15 (max- could be cheaper if get free DJ) per ticket including welcome drink & DJ

Action Point: CS to arrange comms, discuss ticket costs with committee and getting ticket sales up and running.

c. Christmas Cracker

Secret Room (JB): Date booked for Thursday 18th December. Donation collection week- 1st week in December.
Xmas cards: New lead required. JB will contact Emma to find out what’s involved and perhaps take it on.
Xmas Lunch: Lucy Lamb confirmed she will lead this again this year. This is booked for Wednesday 17th December.

Expenditure voted and agreed by committee members present: £350 in total (£200 secret room + £150 xmas hats)

d. Wreath Making: Ami confirmed she will continue to lead this event. Ami will check current costs of material to help determine ticket prices. Committee agreed to put a raffle item together again. Proposed date Friday 5th December.

Expenditure voted and agreed by committee members present: £700 as per last year.

e. Disco: Nicki Webb confirmed she will continue to lead these events. This year we agreed with Nicki’s suggestion to have silent discos for years 5/6 & 3/4, no DJ lollypop and hire disco lights instead. Also, to save money on silent disco headphones- Nicki will ask school for these discos to happen on back to back days. For reception and Years 1/2 disco, will be keep the original format and hire DJ lollypop.

Expenditure voted and agreed by committee members present: £950 as per last year.

f. Cinema Club: New lead required.

g. Easter Egg Hunt: Lucy Prior confirmed she will continue to lead this event.

Expenditure voted and agreed by committee members present: £700 as per last year.

h. Summer Fete: New team required. Action Point: BO to drum up new volunteers at parents’ drinks.

i. Clarefest: 10 sub helpers required to join Carmen’s team. Feedback from GF was that the SEN area wasn’t clearly marked out on the day. Action Point: BO to drum up new volunteers at parents’ drinks. CD to review how we can improve visibility of SEN area.

j. Grants: Emma Doward may continue helping with this area.

k. Craft Events: Cat happy to help with themed craft events after school, conversations are continuing. New idea- to have Art and Tipple nights.

l. Quiz Night: Ami Parker to look at arranging a quiz night in the school hall February / March time. Action Point: AJ to raise the idea with Candi Roberts

5. Comms Team (AP1 & ZP)

a. Ways of working 25/26.

There are some changes within the comms team this year. Zoe Phillimore is going to continue managing the WhatsApp messages collated and sent to the Class Reps. Last year, Zoe very kindly dedicated a lot of her time creating wonderful weekly newsletters, this was very time consuming and became unsustainable. Zoe provided some valuable feedback and suggested that the newsletter be a monthly or termly piece, with key developments and announcements. As a result, the committee discussed uploading a monthly blog to the website. Going forward, every event leader must be responsible for uploading the event WhatsApp comms required into the live comms spreadsheet by midday on a Monday for comms to be sent that Thursday.

Action Point: AJ to ask Zoe and Anna for an update on the comms video and what Candi intends to do with the material.

b. Roles and responsibilities

Action Point: AJ to discuss with Anna Pearson and Zoe Phillimore their intentions regarding being committee members and roles within.

6. Policy Updates & Reminders (NJ)

Natalie has some new policies that she will ask Claire Summers to check through before uploading to Dropbox for everyone to read.

7. School Uniform (JB)

The school uniform shop remains a valuable resource for families. Thank you, Julia Beath, for confirming that she will continue to run the shop this year.

8. Chip- In relaunch (LP)

Numbers have held up during the school year. 70 people sign up to monthly donations, this number remains the same.
£10k raised from regular donations / £1k raised from one off payments.
The funding scope behind Chip-In remains the same this school year. Next year, the committee may consider widening the scope.

9. Zoe’s Feedback Survey (ZP) No update at this time.

10. FSM Families (CS)

Free tickets for families entitled to free school meals-

We conducted a survey in summer 2025 to canvas interest. We received 5 responses, some did not know the offer existed and all were interested in a 100% discount code they could use directly on the website. 1 family had concerns re use of their personal data. We ran a trial for cinema club using a 100% discount code which we gave to eligible parents & a few tickets were successfully claimed.

It is recommended to roll this out going forward though only with the Committee committing to:

Committee members who have access to the back end of the website should treat the information there in accordance with the PTA privacy policy e.g. not shared and only use for any required purposes.

Before an event if creating a download/ printing off a guest list the columns that show free tickets must be deleted.

PTA should continually review its processes around this to ensure confidentiality

Action Point: Before first event - Claire to review privacy policy covers the collection of this personal data & ensure that Wix guest log in doesn't identify those who got free tickets.

11. SEN (GF) No update at this time.

12. AOB

1. AJ- Emma Doward arranged for Claremont School to take part in Tesco’s Golden Grant Event. Tesco customers could choose which school to donate their tokens to. The PTA is thrilled to announce

that Claremont won the customer choice, and we have been granted a generous £5,000 to spend on school equipment and/or activities. AJ will liaise with Emma and Candi Roberts to move fo with the process for obtaining the funds.

2. AJ to find out from Candi Robert what the school’s annual project request are for this year.

3. AJ- School funding request from Mr Greaves for the annual Christmas Panto held at The Trinity Theatre for Years 4-6. There is a small increase in ticket cost this year. As a committee we agree this annual festive experience is a valuable and much-loved cherished memory.

Expenditure voted and agreed by committee members present: £2,400

4. Action Point- LG to list all committee members and their roles.

Next Meeting Date: 14th January 2026

Location: The Claremont Pub

Time: 8pm

Signed by Chair

Axelle Joos de ter Beerst

08/10/25