The Red Balloon Pre-School Group opened its doors in January 1994, occupying a classroom within Tweedmouth West First School with eight children and two staff members.

In September 1998 the group moved into Tweedmouth Church Hall due to the popularity of the school and the need of our classroom. While in the Church Hall, Staff and Committee embarked on a mammoth fundraising campaign to purchase a mobile classroom to situate in the school playground. Thanks to fundraising events, donations from local businesses and a lottery grant we moved into our brand new classroom in November 1999, where we are today.

The Red Balloon has been lucky over the years to have a dedicated committee of parents who alongside staff work together to ensure the Pre-School continues to grow and move forward.

We work hard to create an exciting stimulating environment for the children to learn and develop following the Reviewed (September 2021) Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).

Our setting aims to:

• Provide high quality care and education for the children up to school age

• Work in partnership with parents and other settings to help children learn and develop and add to the life and well being of the community

• Offer children and their parents a service that promotes equality and value diversity

Parents are regarded as members of our setting who have full participatory rights. These include a right to be:

• Valued and Respected

• Kept Informed

• Consulted

• Involved

• Included at all levels

We aim to ensure that each child:

• Is in a safe and stimulating environment

• Is given generous care and attention, because of our ratio’s of qualified staff to children

• Has the chance to join with other children and adults to play, work and learn together

• Is helped to take forward his/her learning and development by being helped to build on what she/he already knows and can do

• Has a personal Key Worker who makes sure each child makes good progress

• Is in a setting that sees parents as partners in helping each child to learn and develop

• Is in a setting which parents help shape the service it offers

The Red Balloon Pre-School Group is run by a Parent Committee whose members are made up of parents of children past and present who attend the setting.

The Committee is responsible for:

• Managing the settings finances

• Employing and managing the staff

• Making sure that the setting has, and works to, policies that help to provide a high quality service

• Making sure that the setting works in partnership with the children’s parents.

Our current committee members are:

• Danielle Robertson (Chair)

• Sharon Virtue (Treasurer)

• Kathryn Elkin (Secretary)

The Pre-School is a committee lead Pre-School and as children move onto school and members are lost it is very important we recruit new members. If you would be interested in joining the committee please speak to your child’s key worker who would be happy to give you information on the date and time of the next meeting.

We also hold an Annual General Meeting in November and this is open to the parents and carer of all the children who attend the setting. It is our shared forum for looking back over the previous year’s activities and shaping the coming year’s plan.