Supporting your Child’s Education for a Dollar a week.

Background: As many of you will be aware, our school has been on a wonderful journey over the last few decades, helping so many young people to achieve their dreams. We have been recognised as ‘The Sunday Times Southwest State School of the Decade’ as well as an Ofsted ‘Outstanding School’. We are proud to be a state comprehensive school and offer the widest possible opportunities to all. Nevertheless, state education funding alone does not enable us to provide all the benefits that we believe we should provide for your child.

The Balcarra$ Plan: You doubtless receive many requests for money, however, we hope this one may be a little different. We would like you to consider whether you could contribute $1 per day (that’s about 75p), whilst your child is a member of our school. That equates to £3.75 a week and £15 per month (based on a five-day school week) – around the price of a posh cup of coffee a week! You may ask what possible difference that will make. Given the large number of families in our school community, if 500 families were willing to contribute a cup of coffee a week, that would raise £90,000 each year. Remarkable! We already receive donations from many families – we remain grateful for those donations, thank you.

What will the money be spent on? We want to make it clear that the money contributed will not be used to pay for basic school running costs. It will be used to provide advantages for your child beyond those which we could afford to provide using government funding alone. But as real terms government funding falls, we are finding it tough to keep up with things we used to take for granted. To give a few specific examples:

• In recent years we have spent money on the school grounds, making sure that they are beautiful, stimulating spaces which enhance the wellbeing of all who use them. 
• We have also been able to upgrade classroom spaces, notably making a new DT room and kitting out our new music block.
• We continue to invest in our IT estate making sure that we are not using worn out computers
• We use the contributions to pay for the school minibuses

Providing such excellent facilities is a challenge in the current school funding environment and we would love to be able to keep improving. This plan will only work through scale. We appreciate that not all families can afford this, and we fully acknowledge and respect this; the scheme is of course purely voluntary. But if you do support it then we are confident your support will encourage others to see just what extra can be achieved for your children.

How do I sign up?

If you are keen to support us with our ‘Balcarra$ Plan’, there are two ways that you can sign up:

1 – Set up a Standing Order yourself on your online banking

We think this will be the easiest method for most people. Simply set up a Standing Order using the following details:

School Bank:                       Lloyds Bank
Account Name:                 Balcarras Opportunities Account
Sort code:                            30-91-87
Account number:               14471463
Payment amount:              £15         (or any other amount you choose)
Frequency:                           Monthly
First payment date:           Preferred date in October 2025
Quote reference:                Provide your full name

2 – Complete this Standing Order form (this can also be downloaded below). If you would like us to claim an additional 25% on your donations using the government’s ‘Gift Aid’ scheme then please use this form. Send the form to the school reception desk or to a form tutor.

As soon as the first payment has been made, you will receive correspondence from the school to thank you for your support.  

3 - If you would like to make a one-off donation then you could use the option on SCOPAY.