Thanks to the whole Burleigh School community for supporting FABS in having a wonderful Summer Fete earlier this July. From the enthusiasm of the volunteers to the support from the staff and the smiles of all of our attendees and families – we are grateful for all that you have done to make a fun Summer Fete for everyone.
Here’s a review of both our quantitative results and qualitative feedback we’ve received about the event.
Volunteer Support & Feedback
Prior to this year, the Summer Fete was held on a Saturday in July of 2023 running from 12 noon until 3pm and was staffed by 20 parent volunteers. In 2024, the Summer Fete was cancelled because a lack of volunteers. In 2025 we began asking for volunteers in January at our Annual General Meeting where attendees had first choice of the shifts they wanted. We also took the decision to hold the event on a Friday after school for convenience for all. We had 28 families volunteer and were so pleased to be able to go ahead with the Summer Fete this year. Thanks to all of our volunteers again for their time and energy in making the event safe for all.
The volume of volunteers we have will always be a significant rate limiting factor to how many games, services and products we can offer. Volunteers gave us feedback this year that they would have appreciated additional hands and support in more volunteers, but that they were grateful that they didn’t have to pay for wristbands for themselves or a child that was attending – this was a clear benefit to them. Many expressed that the “general atmosphere was very positive and great to see everyone working together to do something great for the kids”. Here’s a reminder of other reasons why parents (who also work full time with kids) choose to volunteer.
Attendance figures
We were thrilled that our Friday Summer Fete attracted 115% more visitors than in 2023 – based on these figures we will aim to continue to keep the Fete on a Friday.
Pre-sales wristbands vs. on the door sales and pricing
We were so grateful for the volume of pre-sales wristbands that were purchased via the Student Gateway in June. The vast majority of families purchased their wristbands in advance having received multiple emails from the school, messages via the Student Gateway, messages via your Class Representatives in your year WhatsApp groups and the printed signs and banners that were up throughout the school property and Cheshunt area. We deliberately had wristband pricing that incentivized buying early to save money because the earlier we know the volume of attendees, the earlier we can also save money by purchasing materials in bulk to a reasonable scale. As you can imagine, it’s tough to estimate how many folks will show up on the day! While we appreciate the volume of families that paid at the door on the day, it is better for all parties involved if you purchase your wristbands in advance.
Wristbands for children to attend the fete this year were priced at £8 in advance and £10 on the door and included entrance, access to the three inflatables, and ability to play FABS games which included the distribution of prizes. Adults were priced at £2 in advance and £4 on the door and included entrance and access to the FABS games.
In 2023, wristbands for children were priced at £6 in advance and £8 on the door and included inflatables only. A £2 donation was requested for adults. All of the FABS games individually required payments ranging from 0.50p to £2 to participate, which meant that volunteers had to juggle taking payments during the games which limits how many can participate. On average in 2023, attendees spent an additional £8 on games and food and beverages from FABS on top of the wristband price. When we compare this to 2025, attendees spent on average an additional £2 on food and beverages from FABS. While it seems that wristband prices alone have gone up, we’ve actually made the fete experience far more affordable per person attending as the average amount of money spent per person is 50% lower than when the games were individually priced in 2023. Please note that this does not include your own discretionary spending at any of the professional services or external stallholders that attended.
We took the decision to make the wristbands inclusive of games to improve the volunteer and visitor experience and overall we think it worked out well given the resources we had.
We did receive some feedback from two people that specifically it felt like £10 was too much to pay on the door for a child to attend the fete and that they don’t read emails that the school sends them. We also received an equal amount of feedback from people that they would be willing to pay an even higher wristband price to support having more games and experiences at the event. Given the overall feedback levels and our quantitative results as well as a review of the pricing of similar experiences in the Cheshunt community we as a FABS committee feel as though we got the pricing largely correct and intend to have a similar pricing policy for next year. We’d like to reiterate again that we encourage 1. families to volunteer for which you get the benefit of complimentary wristbands in giving your time and 2. purchase wristbands in advance in our pre-sales efforts and save money on the door – it makes it easier and more economical for all involved if we have our event resources in place earlier.
Cash vs. contactless payments
We introduced contactless payments for the first time this year – in 2023 the event was cash only. The addition of card payments was helpful and convenient for both attendees and volunteers.
What the children had to say
100% of respondents stated that their children had fun at the Summer Fete and the evidence of all of the smiling faces on the day was proof to us all. This is what this event and FABS is about at it’s core – we are creating wonderful experiences for our Burleigh school children through events and fundraising.
What parents/ visitors had to say
Thank you to those who took the time to relay feedback directly to committee members and via our survey form.
Here’s what you had to say about what worked for you:
“Thing I loved most was the feeling of our school community being together, and the fact that the older children could have some autonomy roaming about with their friends, in a safe, familiar, gated environment with lots of people they knew. Village vibes!!”
“We enjoyed the inflatables, face painting, glitter tattoos and candy floss stall. Good variety of drinks. My little girl loved dancing to Taylor Swift.”
“Really grateful for this event going ahead. And I think it’s right that parents have taken more of a role in it happening. More volunteers would mean shorter ‘shifts’, which would help us enjoy a little time with our own children.”
Here’s some noted areas for improvement that we are addressing for next year:
- inflatables were busy and could have used more volunteers to help assist the area or perhaps we need more inflatables in general
- the sunny weather meant that there was queuing in some places that would have been better shaded; it also meant that it was tougher to buy ice to chill drinks on the day for the volume of beverages we had; we ran out of water bottles to buy in the last 15 minutes of the event because we sold out our stock of 120 – we were glad it didn’t rain though!
- signage for face-painting and first aid could be have clearer
- more stalls and games and prizes – our coconut shy was such it hit we gave away all the coconuts by the end!
- better communication about which areas were able to take card or contactless payments – admittedly we ran out of small change towards the very end of the fete
If you have any further suggestions or would like to get your name down early to volunteer next year please contact us and join here.
What the third party stallholders had to say
The stallholders and professional services we had at the event are all keen to return to Burleigh in the future. We were particularly touched by this lovely message –
“The children and parents are a credit to your school. The manners every child showed while speaking to us and the confidence they had to talk was outstanding. As mentioned we just wanted to say thank you for a brilliant summer fayre and we hope to be involved with your next one.”
What the school had to say
We feel so incredibly lucky to have such a wonderfully supportive and enthusiastic leadership, teaching and support staff at Burleigh Primary School. Special thanks go out to the Mr. Norman, Ms. Maxwell, Ms. Mansi, Ms. DiZenzo, Mrs. McGuire, Mrs. Hare, Mrs. Cotter, Mrs. Kitchener and Billy DiZenzo for all their support in the organization of the event. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Burleigh team members who took sponges to their own faces thrown by your children and those who used sponges to apply face painting and glitter tattoos to the children’s faces. Our Soak the Teacher activity raised more than double than the previous years and was a consistent source of laughs. Our face painting activity was far more effective at fundraising compared to years past as well. We were so pleased that so many teachers brought their own families to enjoy a Friday night with the Cheshunt community.
Here’s some feedback shared to us:
“Absolute resounding success”
“Well done, too, for wildly exceeding your expected target total.”
“What a great day – I don’t think it could have gone much better.”
Fundraising results
We are so pleased to have raised £3,194 in funds from the Summer Fete specifically to support the children of Burleigh School as part of our £10k fundraising initiative. This greatly improves upon the £1,911 raised in 2023 by 67% year on year, which is largely driven by the volumes of attendees and improvements in cost management for the food, beverages and services we offered. With this effort, we have now achieved our £10k fundraising goal for 2025. Thank you for all your support!
See you back in September
Thanks again for all of your support for the Summer Fete. Stay tuned for our calendar of 2025/2026 events!
The FABS Committee is next meeting in person again on Tuesday September 16th at 9am at Simmons Bakery in Cheshunt and then also at 8:30pm that evening via Google Meet. All are welcomed to join. If you would like to connect with the committee or ask any questions, please feel free to contact us via our website form or WhatsApp group. We hope you all have a safe and fun summer and we look forward to seeing you back at school in September!
FABS - Friendly Association of Burleigh School 