From 9 December 2019 all pupils were being taught in 9 classroom settings in Peebles and Galashiels.   This resulted in teachers finding themselves without their normal teaching resources. We requested from the community, donations of materials urgently required by teachers in this emergency phase. Many of these items were rapidly purchased and donated by parents’ employees as physical donations. In parallel, we launched a Crowdfunding site to raise funds to purchase items as requests were coming through that we could not fulfil.

Luckily, we had also received at that time, a number of direct donations to us from local companies and individuals.  We gave the school a £5k ‘Fire fund’ to facilitate the purchasing of these items requested by teachers whilst the authority were dealing with other urgent needs.  Since that emergency phase, Scottish Borders Council have now confirmed that they are responsible for replacement of all items lost in the fire and costs incurred in the provision of learning whilst away from the school. Hence our Crowdfunder-generated funds can be used for ‘extras’ and to run for example trips for S1, S2 & S3 in relevant subject areas in the period 20 Jan – 31 Jan prior to moving back to the school site.