Dear Parents and Carers
One of the keystones of our school community is FOMS – Friends of Myton School. This is a group of volunteers drawn largely from our parents but can include anyone who is a “friend of Myton School”. FOMS work hard to support fundraising projects that benefit all our students and these projects include running the bar and refreshments at productions, school discos, non-uniform days, quiz nights and many other events. Over the years this group of very loyal volunteers has raised thousands of pounds which have paid for technology equipment, specialist groups visiting school to deliver curriculum freeze days and additional equipment for students to use in school. Every child and teacher have cause to be grateful to our Friends of Myton School for what they have achieved.
With attention being diverted away by COVID, FOMS has had to pause many of their activities and school-based meetings over the past 2 years, however, FOMS is ready to return. We are looking for new volunteers with creative and fresh ideas on how to fundraise and bring our community together, helping to steer the activities of this group and make a difference to our students. FOMS also has influence on the strategic direction of the school. As the group is largely made up of parents they have, over recent years, been an extremely useful consultative body when senior leaders make decisions on school priorities and strategic changes. It is not unknown for us to bring an idea to FOMS during a school-based meeting and ask for feedback before we go out to all parents and Governors. This helps us to evolve and improve plans prior to them being introduced.
At the most recent FOMS meeting, the group decided that what they need, post pandemic, is a big project to focus on. This is great news as, when talking to students and parents about education and wider provision at Myton School the hot topic always comes up – the state of the school loos! Students identify our two main sets of toilets in lower school and upper school as the area they want changed the most. For several years we have been bidding to get grants to sort these areas out (we are very good at bidding for grants winning millions over the years for new roofs, new windows, new buildings, new pipes and new boilers) but alas with no success. We have been advised that toilet refurbs never get the grants so we have decided that we must find the funds to pay for this ourselves. This sounds easy but in order to meet the spec we require costs around £200k and so this project will run over two or three years and costs will be met by the school, with help from FOMs. We also need to continue refurb work in science and in food tech and neither area is cheap!
We are determined to get this work done, and whilst toilets may not be the most fascinating of projects to support, it is the area the students want addressing most urgently. We have some reserves that we can use to get this project started (we are aiming at next summer to begin) but the support of FOMS would speed up the process. I hope you would like to support our Friends of Myton School group, you can find more information on their website . If you would like to volunteer to join the group or even if you can only provide ideas for fundraising, please email Mark Simmons, FOMS chair, on [email protected].
Best wishes
Andy Perry, Head Teacher
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