PTA - Friends of Leighton Academy
Friends of Leighton Academy is a parent led group that work with the school to organise events and raise funds for the children who attend the school and nursery. The profits raised through fundraising are directed back into the school, particularly for little treats and extras for our pupils. In recent years we have been able to fund a mix of:-
- Year 6 Leavers T-Shirts or contribution towards Hoodies (2023 onwards)
- Year 6 Leavers Autograph Books
- Year 6 Leavers Do Items
- Nursery Leavers Gifts
- Christmas Presents for all nursery children
- Christmas Discos for the whole school
- Christmas Craft Day
- Sports Day Ice Lollies
- Rainy Day Games Sets
- Bingo Machine and prizes
- Stronger Together Prizes
- Panto Online
- Booster Seats for Pupil Transport
- Archery Sets x 2
- New Ice Cream Freezer / Slush Trolley
Fundraising / What We Have Done
We enjoyed a brilliant first term of 2023/2024 - the run up to Christmas is always fun! We did Xmas card designs, panto online with popcorn, Christmas disco with snack packs and had a fantastic Christmas Fair with an amazing inflatable Santa's grotto. Our nursery children enjoyed a special visit from Santa himself who brought them all a book as a gift.
We are looking to support the school this year with some of our favourite events such as the school fairs, funding sports day ice lollies, frozen fridays in the Summer. We continue to work with staff/pupils and ask them to let us know if there are any areas we can help out. We will be purchasing a pop up gazebo soon that can be used as needed at fairs, as cover for Frozen Fridays, by staff for class events and will be invaluable to take along to sports events - Leighton has had amazing success in all sports and excels with their teams so this will be a well used all round addition.
FOLA funded a number of booster seats to ensure pupils are safe when being transported to a selection of the many events our pupils join in with on an extra curricular basis.
Sadly our ice cream freezer broke just as we were about to wheel it our on a regular basis so we have purchased a new one ready for Frozen Fridays and the Summer Fair - this is also used for Sports Day for keeping the many ice lollies cold for our pupils. We also bought a new slush trolley as the old one was very well loved and straining a bit. The slush machine is one of our most used items - it is used at fairs and for Frozen Fridays plus it is a hugely popular Stronger Together reward choice for winning classes and can be used for a treat at special times such as during leavers events and for a thank you to some of our pupils for helping at different things.
We have added a 'Wheel of Fortune' game to our school fair stock which was popular at its first outing at the Christmas Fair in Dec 2023. We are always trying to slightly alter / change up games and try to have each fair a little different to keep things fun.
We have a number of ongoing schemes where you can support the school with all funds raised coming back to be used for our pupils.
Click on the name of the fundraiser below to go directly to their page for more information and to register.
Your School Lottery - A fun way for adults to have a flutter and a chance of winning the £25,000 jackpot, a small weekly cash prize linked to just the people playing our lottery and raise funds all in one go! Your School Lottery also regularly runs prize competitions with every player entered into a draw for extra great items - join now to be entered into their current offer, to win an IPhone 14!
Easyfundraising - Raise donations for Leighton Academy whenever you shop online. Turn your everyday online shopping into FREE donations at NO extra cost
Appeal For Help / Join Us!
Friends of Leighton Academy is changing this year. Having been relaunched from the old PTA by two parents in 2019 we are pleased to be starting to attract new members as the older members are looking to move on as their children leave Leighton soon. It is fantastic to have new faces and ideas but we always need new members - the more people the better!
From personal experience it is a great thing to be part of, a little busier at key time, but always worthwhile. During our time our children have always loved seeing us in school getting things ready and are really proud of us - they also love giving us a hand as PTA children helping us to do bits and bobs. As parents we get the odd 'behind the scenes' glance at our mini ones whilst onsite and have had a chance to build relationships with the staff and try to make a small difference to our children, their friends and all the fab 
pupils at Leighton. Seeing them all enjoy things that we arrange is always a fantastic feeling.
As a team we can arrange as little or as much as we choose - we have great support from school leadership and the staff - and work together to fit things in around our lives/jobs/families as for all of us that always comes first.
There are many benefits to being involved and if a group of people joined together it can have a great social element too. We are positive there are some amazing skills and ideas amongst our parents/families that would be a great asset to FOLA and we encourage people to come and have a go. It is also great on a CV so has personal benefits too.
If you can’t offer time, think about other ways you can help – Does your company do match funding? Do you know anywhere that might donate a raffle prize? Have you heard about any good community grants or initiatives we could apply for?
Let us know any good ideas or if there is something you think would work at Leighton.
Don’t be afraid to interact with us we can’t do it without you and we promise we won’t try to recruit you just by speaking to us :-)
Contact us directly by emailing us at this link - friendsofleighton@yahoo.com.
Please follow our Facebook page where we will be keeping you up to date with future information about anything we are planning or need help with and share it with other Leighton families. We love it when you interact with us so keep any comments and likes coming :-) Access our page via this direct link - Friends of Leighton Academy Facebook Page
FOLA Recycling Schemes
Friends of Leighton have a couple of ongoing recycling schemes.
Cartridge Recycling - Please help the environment and our funds by sending any used cartridges into Leighton where they can be recycled. If anyone requires anymore bags please let us know. We have larger recycling boxes within school where items can be deposited - ask at reception about these.
Clothes Recycling - Leighton is the owner of its very own clothes recycling bank. This is located at the far end of the school car park against the fence and is accessible when school is open to pop in and drop off any items. This is a great way for us all to declutter, direct our unused items to a new home and to raise funds for FOLA.
Watch this space during the 2023 - 2024 academic year to hear about our new initiatives. We hope to be able to keep popular events and fundraisers and introduce and try a few more this year with it always being a bit of trial and error to see what is popular.
Next Spring Events 2024
Spring Non Uniform Day - TBC
Easter Raffle Launch - TBC
Easter Fair - TBC
Finally...
Can we say a huge thank you to all our pupils, staff, families and friends for your ongoing support.
Friends of Leighton isn't just about running events for profit although of course we do fundraise so monies raised can go towards things our pupils enjoy - however we also try to include some events where we just cover the supplies/prizes (or even make a loss) to join in.
We hope as you come to our fairs and look at our events you think they are good value for money compared to other similar events elsewhere. We are proud to run what we call fair price fairs - we could probably double our prices and they would still be competitive compared to other fairs but to us we want to make things affordable and make a smaller profit but ensure everyone can have fun. The fairs are about getting our pupils and families together as a school community and having a nice afternoon together and we hope the fairs achieve this.
We will continue to do our best to build FOLA up and hope we will get some new helpers onboard to share their skills/ideas and get even more things going for our pupils and families in upcoming years!