By Miss N Hulmes and Mrs Distin Webster, Teaching Assistants at Micklehurst All Saints Primary School
AT Easter we successfully ran our first holiday club supported and fully funded by Fuel 4 Fun.
Fuel 4 Fun has been organised through a partnership between Tameside Council, Active Tameside and the Department for Education to offer holiday club places for primary school children who qualify for pupil premium funding and/or free school meals.
The scheme is also focused on tackling food poverty and social equalities by providing the families of participating children with food hampers packed with enough ingredients to make four nutritious family meals five nights a week for each week of the club. Children also enjoyed a healthy lunch while at the club, which were prepared by staff members.
Formed through Tameside Holiday Activity and Food Funding (HAF) up to 25 children had the opportunity to take part in daily sports and craft activities delivered in-house by a team of committed Teaching Assistants.
The programme can be run by Active Tameside Coaches, but as a school we felt we could best meet the needs of the children by delivering the club ourselves using our knowledge and experience of the children.
Miss Hulmes assumed responsibility for planning and delivering the sports programme and Mrs Distin Webster the arts and craft activities.
Hayley Simpson, Active Tameside Senior Sports Coach and a sports coach in school, visited us to audit our provision and she was impressed by what she saw.
The children told Hayley it was the best Easter holiday they had had and could not wait until the next one.
Hayley said: “It was lovely to visit the Fuel 4 Fun camp at Micklehurst. The staff had worked extremely hard to provide the children with a variety of activities including creating their own ‘beast’ bird feeders.
“Every child commented on what a fun week they were having and all children were enjoying the meals provided.
“We look forward to supporting Micklehurst and many other Tameside schools over the summer holidays.”
Miss Trelfa, Headteacher at Micklehurst, said: “We’ve wanted to run holiday clubs for our pupil premium children for some time but the costs associated with it have been prohibitive.
“The Fuel 4 Fun Programme and the associated funding means schools can now be in a position to offer this provision to those children and families who will most benefit from it.
“We are hoping that with the continued support of Fuel 4 Fun, Active Tameside and school staff these will be run on a regular basis during school holidays.”