About the PTFA

We exist to advance the education of the children at St Catherine's CE Primary School, by providing things the school budget cannot stretch to and by building the relationships between families, staff and the wider community that a good primary school depends on.

In practice that means two jobs. The first is raising money, through events, donations and grants. The second, which matters just as much and is easier to get wrong, is spending it: getting what we raise into classrooms and onto the playground quickly, fairly, and where the people who work with the children every day say it is needed.

Parents and staff at St Catherine's have run fundraising events at the school for years, as an informal association of volunteers. On 24 July 2024 that association was constituted and entered on the register of charities for England and Wales as St Catherine's Horwich PTFA, charity number 1209270, with its registered address at the school.

Registering changed what we are accountable for. A charity that holds on to money it was given to spend is not being careful, it is quietly failing the people who donated, and for a long time we were better at raising money than at spending it. That is what happens without an agreed plan: every request has to be argued from scratch, nobody is sure what is affordable, and the safest answer to any spending question becomes "not just yet".

The current committee took that on as its first task. In September 2026 we wrote down a full-year budget for the 2026/27 academic year for the first time, committing the great majority of our reserves to four named programmes, giving each one a named committee member to answer for it, and setting deadlines by which unspent money is reallocated rather than rolled over. Alongside it we opened an online request route so that a teacher can ask for something in about a minute and get an answer in days.

Anyone at the school can ask us for something. Year-group classroom items go through the online request page and need no paperwork. Larger projects use a grant application form, signed by the head teacher, which asks what is being bought and why, attaches quotes, sets out where VAT falls, and confirms that the school will own, insure and maintain whatever is installed.

Small requests are agreed between the committee member who owns that budget heading and the Treasurer, and reported at the next meeting. Anything larger, or anything outside an agreed heading, goes to a vote of the full committee. The Treasurer reports spent, committed and remaining figures for every heading at every meeting. Money unspent by a set date in the spring is reallocated by a vote to a programme that can use it before the end of the school year, rather than rolling back into reserves.

Anything left over from a funded project comes back to the PTFA, as does the whole grant if the project does not go ahead.

We are a registered charity in England and Wales, number 1209270, regulated by the Charity Commission. Our entry on the public register of charities lists our trustees, governing document and registered address. Our accounts and trustees' annual report are filed with the Commission each year.

All our fundraising follows the Code of Fundraising Practice. Almost everything we raise is unrestricted, meaning the committee decides how it is used so long as it supports St Catherine's. Money given for one named thing is restricted and cannot legally be spent on anything else, which is why our appeals always say that if we raise more than a project needs, or the project cannot go ahead, the money goes to the PTFA's general purposes in support of the school instead.

We are a separate organisation from St Catherine's CE Primary School and from the local authority. We do not publish photographs of children without confirmed written parental consent.