It has been a crazy year hasn’t it? Since the national lockdown last March we as a PTA made the difficult decision to cancel all events and focus on getting our families through the pandemic. Since schools returned in September we have been working behind the scenes to raise much needed funds for the pupils to help provide them with some sense of normality whilst also supporting the fabulous teaching teams as they navigate the new challenges of remote teaching. We would like you to join us in celebrating the amazing team at The Hills Academy and encourage you to support them and our school as we continue to find novel ways to fund raise, have fun and maintain our amazing community.

To recap PTA activities in the Autumn term the children enjoyed a mufti day, designing Christmas cards and decorating themselves; we also heard that Santa sent our children some video messages and even found time to hide gifts in all the classrooms! In addition to all the Christmas excitement we were able to hold some pre-loved uniform and clothing sales and raised in excess of £700.

A number of ideas have been bounced around since our December meeting, where we have agreed long and short term fundraising goals, which we will achieve through fun activities for all the family, either online or out and about in the local area.

Long Term Goal – The pandemic and switch to remote schooling has highlighted the need for digital learning and shown that not all pupils have access to devices that enable them to join in with their online classes. As schools embrace these new challenges and move towards more digital learning platforms the PTA want to commit to enabling the school to provide all pupils with devices that will enable this new way of learning. The PTA would like to set the ambitious goal of raising £10,000 over the next 5 years to be used exclusively for providing computers for children in the school. JustGiving Digital Learning

Short Term Goals – Lockdowns have highlighted the importance of physical and mental health to maintaining resilience. To help support our children with their physical and mental wellbeing at school the PTA want to raise money to improve the outdoor sports facilities and renovate one of the garden spaces. We aim to raise £1,000 to provide sports equipment to augment our existing indoor and outdoor facilities and £500 to renovate one of the garden spaces to provide children with a space to enjoy all that nature has to offer. JustGiving Garden & Sports Equipment

As always, we will be relying on your and the wider Bedford’s generosity to help us raise this money and we are pivoting (much like the school) to using online tools to help us. We are establishing ourselves as a charity on Amazon, eBay and Easy Fund Raising and creating a new JustGiving page. Buying from Amazon, eBay or Easy Fund Raising will generate donations as you shop, and we will use JustGiving to raise money for future events or any one off donations you may wish to make. Please also follow our Facebook page where we will advertise upcoming events and welcome your