MINUTES OF PARENT COUNCIL MEETING 25 APRIL 2012

COWIE PRIMARY SCHOOL PARENT COUNCIL
 Meeting Wednesday 25 April 2012

·          Attendees and Apologies

Attendees: Anne Williamson (Treasurer), Vivienne Innes (Headteacher), Julie Moran (Secretary), Tammy Pollock, Jeff McGhie (Chair), Barbara, Christine Fairbairn, Amanda Arkell, Steve (Grounds for Learning Playground Project Group)     

Apologies: Sherry Houlihan

The minutes of the previous meeting on 22 February 2012 were approved and signed and no changes were made. 

  

• Playground Improvement Plan

A joint application, completed by both the school and the Parent Council, was recently submitted for £15,000 of government funding to help design and develop the school playground.  Three schools were successful in the Stirling district in securing this funding (Cowie, Borestone and Crainlarich Primaries).  We are delighted with this news and Steve from the project group came along to our meeting to discuss the next stages of the project.  He showed us some pictures of playground improvements carried out in other schools, to give us some ideas of what was possible with the money that is available.

Steve confirmed that his team will work closely with the school and the Parent Council, from the consultation stage to the design and construction of this.  The emphasis is on supporting the school, providing time, training and help from the start of the project to when this is finally completed.  Communication updates are important and will be regularly given to parents and carers, to keep them informed with what is happening.  Steve has a copy of the playground development plan the school had already drawn up.  This will be considered along with other ideas that are put forward for the development of the playground.  If any other funding is made available this can be used together with the £15,000 to complete the work we decide on.  

Steve has since been into the school and attended a recent assembly to speak to the children about the playground development project, which will shortly be underway.  It is hoped the work will be carried out from October 2012 to March 2013.

• Head Teacher’s Report

This is attached for your information.  As you know, the curriculum evening on 1 May was cancelled due to a low response and the school hope to run this event in June sometime.  Feedback given by parents on the traffic issues around the school will be discussed at our next meeting.

• A.O.B

Amanda spoke about the Bunny Drive in March and confirmed that this raised approximately £268.00.

We spoke about accessing other funding for playground development and Jeff confirmed that he would look at the Landfill Trust, as he did last year, as the school managed to get a small amount of funding from this.  Every little helps!

The Parent Council confirmed that they are able to subsidise school class topic trips, £5 per child for all children in Nursery to Primary 6, amounting to approximately £885.00.  They will also subsidise the Primary 7 leavers’ trip amounting to £148.00. 

We spoke about having an end of term disco for the children, Shorts and Shades, like we did last year.  The date mentioned was Tuesday 12 June and we will discuss details of this at the next meeting.  Christine will enquire to see if the DJ she used last time is available for this date/time. 

• Date of the Next Meeting

The date of the next meeting is Wednesday 30 May 2012 at 7pm in the school.  Hope to see you all there.