Money spent over the past year includes a wide variety as usual....

Atlases and some GCSE software for Geography department, four Cordless Combi drills for Technology, various sports equipment for PE , reference books for the library, a colour printer and scanner for ICT, dictionaries for English, and tentt and backpacks to help out with the Duke of Edinburgh awards.

Money well spent, we are sure you will agree!

So what have we been spending the hard earned cash on?

Well, the Drama studio needed various equipment, so we helped out there.  We have paid for an MIG Welder for the Technology department, as well as making a contribution to a Cookset for the Technology department to take out to Primary schools.

We have helped out the Language department with some much needed Spanish grammar software.

Also this year we have paid for some new badminton equipment (rackets/nets/holdall) for the Badminton Club and made a contribution towards some headsets and microphones for the Dance department.

As you can see, over the years many departments have benefited from donations made by the Friends and we intend to keep helping whenever we can!

This term saw us receiving numerous bids for financial support for various items from the school, which was very pleasing!  It is the first time we have had to discuss which bids we felt we could support with our limited funds. The money raised from our events this term coupled with the funds we had already meant that we had just over £4500 to spend.  At our recent meeting we agreed to support various bids from the school which totalled £4600. The items we have agreed to pay for are:

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It has taken just over a year but we can finally report that we have now completed our donations of new PE kit for the football, netball, hockey and rugby teams!  This was done to ensure that the sports teams representing Notley High looked as smart as possible and we have even had some of the kit embroidered with the school name to help the teams feel more professioinal! Below are the pictures off the rugby and hockey team kits, very smart they all look too!

We are very pleased to report that the interactive whiteboard purchased by the Friends of Notley High School last summer for the Music Department has been up and running this term and is being used in all year groups.

It has enabled the teachers to demonstrate how to write melodies and what they will sound like as it is able to play the music back to the audience.  It now means that all pupils can see how music should be written using the correct symbols.

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We were extremely pleased to have recently purchased a pair of Timpani drums for use in the School Wind Band.  This has apparently made a huge difference to the percussion section of the band and the variety of pieces played!

A request was made by the history department for additional text books to accommodate the increasing popularity of GCSE history. This would ensure that each pupil had access to a text book. We were delighted to be able to donate £2000 to this worthy cause.

Following the recent purchase of kit for the PE staff, we were also delighted to respond to a further request from this department for £500 to provide football shirts for the Year 7 and Year 8 football teams.

Over the last 3 years we have raised in the region of £5,000 per year by running discos for Years 7, 8 and 9, Quiz Nights, coach trips, Summer Fetes and Grand Draws.

Recent requests from the school have allowed to us to provide:

• Lighting board for the Drama Studio
  
• PA system for the Sports Hall
  
• English dictionaries
  
• History text books
  
• Football kit for Year 7 and Year 8
  
• Instruments for the Windband and a donation towards their trip to Holland