Willow Tree School in Harrogate have formally opened their pool after an incredible fundraising effort.
On Friday, 25 May 2018, parents and supporters were invited to the school to see the recently refurbished pool.
Willow Tree is lucky to have their own pool. It was installed in 1967 and around 2-years ago it was forced to close as it needed significant sums spending on the pool itself and a new boiler.
Jane Beasley has been the Chair of Governors at the School for 8-years.
Jane Beasley said:
At the time we identified that we needed to raise £73K and that’s a significant sum of money.
We were in two-minds if to refurbish the pool, but the children came to us and told us they wanted it.
The PTA then came along and were simply amazing, they took ownership of the fundraising, set goals and hit each goal along the way.
The money was raised from fundraising events and donations from individuals and businesses – we can’t thank everyone enough for all the support and donations.
The pool allows the school to offer a fully inclusive PE programme.
Jane Beasley said:
The pool is shallow and safe for complete non-swimmers.
It also allows us to offer swimming for children with special education needs as the noise in most swimming pools can make that difficult.
Swimming is a great activity for children of all fitness levels and can be non-competitive or they can compete if they wish to.
For many, swimming at school is the only opportunity they have to swim and it provides a great outlet as stress-relief.
Ryan is 9-years-old and Ewan 11-years-old, both students at the school.
Ewan said:
The floor of the pool had got a really mucky and was not nice and then the boiler stopped working.
But it is really nice now and there are mosaics on the wall that we have all designed.
Ryan said:
It’s nice to see people in wheelchairs being able to use the pool.
We can now use the pool and we help each other during the lessons as some are not very confident.
Ewan added:
We did lots of different activities to help raise money, things like making and selling things. The sponsored swim raised the most money though.
