Changes to the IVC Parents, Staff and Friends Association (PSFA)

At a recent meeting of the PSFA, my friend Susie Hargreaves and I (Liz Hill) took on the challenge of co-chairing the PSFA. We are parents of children in Years 9 and 7, and we think it is important that the College has an active and effective parent teacher association, so we have stepped forward to take the lead. Our aim is not only to significantly increase the amount of money raised for College resources, but also to enable the PSFA to become a valuable means for bringing people more closely into contact with the College, encouraging a deeper sense of connection to IVC and promoting closer interaction between parents, students, teaching staff and the wider learning community.

We aim to spend the next few months setting up better structures and processes in the hope that more parents, staff and friends will feel able to offer just a little of their time to get involved and support the organisation. The aim is to structure the PSFA in such a way that we can divide up the things that need to be done between a lot of people, so that no one feels that getting involved would lead them into an unreasonable commitment or onerous workload. Then, in the autumn, we aim to re-launch the PSFA with a set of fundraising targets to buy specific resources that teachers and other staff know would enhance the secondary school experience for our children; and we will announce a year's programme of events and activities that we hope people will really enjoy, as well as enabling us to reach these targets.

For this to happen we will be asking for just a little help from quite a lot of people – to spread the workload and take advantage of the wide skill base that exists among parents, staff and community supporters. We are writing to you as a parent who might be keen to see the PSFA thrive and be willing to give it your support – by getting involved, by supporting fundraising activities and/or by attending events.

It would really help us to make some plans if we knew how many people might be willing to help, and whether they have any specialist skills that might help with the running of the PSFA and its events and activities. If you could spend just one minute of your time filling in the very short form at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/IVCPSFA then this would be very helpful.

Thank you for reading this letter and we hope to be in touch with you again soon.

Yours sincerely

Liz and Susie