News and Events

Freemantles School has recently taken delivery of the latest addition to its fleet of minibuses. This vehicle replaces the one which was stolen and burnt out over the Christmas break (as reported by the Woking News & Mail front page story in January). 

The school appealed for financial help because there was a huge gap between the money recovered from insurance and the cost of a replacement minibus. With school funds very limited, the Friends of Freemantles launched a Go Fund Me campaign. Woking District Rotary then stepped up and pledged to fill the gap between what was needed to pay for the bus and what the Friends’ campaign would eventually raise. At the end of the campaign the remaining gap was £4,717, and the Rotary club handed its money over quickly to enable the bus to be brought into service as early as possible.

The school caters for around 280 pupils, aged between 4 and 19 years, with complex social communication needs, and minibuses are an essential enabler for community learning, where pupils spend time out in the community on trips ranging from things as mundane as a visit to a shop at one extreme, to a placement at a mainstream college for a number of weeks at the other. These trips are seen as important to help bring what is taught in the school into real life.

Club President Gill Colbeck said: “As Rotarians we always want to support our local community, and Freemantles School is at the heart of that, so we are delighted to have been able to plug the financial gap to enable the excellent work of the school to continue. Some of the proceeds from last year’s Fireworks Extravaganza have been used to do this. We are looking forward to this year’s Fireworks Extravaganza on 8th November to enable us to continue this good work”.