Littlemill school a big winner in voucher appeal

Jun 19 2009 by Stuart Wilson

Littlemill Primary

LITTLE by name, but no longer by nature.

Their entire school roll is smaller than one regular class size – but Littlemill Primary can now compete with the heavyweights.

Earlier this year, the David of East Ayrshire education called in some help for their fight against Goliath.

Littlemill wanted the famous Tesco vouchers for schools to help them buy a stack of new equipment.

So they launched an appeal in the Ayrshire Post letters page, hoping kind-hearted readers would help them out.

And the response was incredible.

The tiny school now sits buried under 25,034 paper vouchers – with a hefty cash bounty waiting to be splashed.

Head teacher Kath Crombie can barely believe her luck.

“We were hoping for 500 vouchers,” she confessed, “so to get more than 25,000 is way beyond our wildest dreams.

“They’ve been coming in from as far afield as Essex and Devonshire – it’s been absolutely amazing.

“The postman has been arriving every morning with bundle after bundle, so we’ve had plenty of counting to do.

“It’s just brilliant that so many people responded to our appeal in the Post and they’ve no idea how much this will help.”

Littlemill will now spend their vouchers, which equate to a cash sum, by choosing items from a special catalogue.

Everything from outdoor learning facilities to coloured pencils is on the shopping list, after pupils had their say in what the school should buy.

And Kath added: “We normally have a minimal budget so we feel so lucky to be in this position now.

“Our aim is to develop activity based learning within the school and this will allow us to do that.”