Gylemuir Primary School

Gylemuir Primary School opened in 1968 and has excellent accommodation and facilities, including a Food Lab, Dance & Drama Base and School Library. The Gylemuir Early Years Hub is also housed in the school building. The school is set amidst attractive grounds which the children are encouraged to use to extend their learning outdoors.

During the school session, we offer a range of clubs and activities for the children to take part in. These are always very popular with our children.

The school constantly strives to ensure all children are able to develop in line with the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence. Through their learning and wider achievements we provide opportunities for our children to become Successful Learners, Confident Individuals, Responsible Citizens and Effective Contributors.

The school is supported by the Parent Council and PTA and we are always looking at ways of developing our partnership with parents and ensuring that Gylemuir Primary School lies at the heart of the local community.

The school has a positive and inclusive ethos. There is an expectation that staff and pupils will work together to create a climate of mutual respect and co-operation which allows effective learning and teaching to take place in a positive and rewarding environment.

Our positive school ethos ensures that each child can feel safe, nurtured, valued and supported as soon as they enter Gylemuir and throughout their learning experience with us. In conjunction with our ‘Positive Behaviour’ and ‘Fairness and Equality’ Policies which are followed by all staff, we aim to promote self-discipline, social inclusion, high self-esteem and respect for others.

We wish to encourage a partnership with you to ensure the best possible standards of pupil behaviour. We aim to work closely with parents to ensure that a positive climate for learning is created within the school and all children feel safe and secure in school.

Learning and teaching in Gylemuir Primary is based on a range of strategies, including investigation, problem solving and discussion, direct teaching, co-operative and activity based learning methods. Children are given opportunities to take part in outdoor learning both within the school grounds and the local area. Exciting learning opportunities are available through the provision of specialist groups which extend children’s learning within the school and educational excursions for all classes which build on and complement work covered within class.

At Gylemuir Primary every child has ownership of their own Learning Journey. The Learning Journey is started in nursery and continues with the child throughout their time at school. Children, teachers and parents work in partnership to set educational and personal targets for the child, which are reviewed regularly throughout the school year. This ensures that children continue to work at a pace they can cope with and with challenge they can thrive on. The Learning Journey documents each child’s progression through the curriculum from the Early Level through to the First and Second Levels.

Our aim at Gylemuir is to ensure that all pupils receive the highest quality of learning and teaching experiences which enable our young people to become successful learners, confident learners, responsible citizens and effective contributors. We want pupils to experience excellence and success through a variety of experiences and in an environment which promotes responsibility for life-long learning. Recent research and the new guidance on a Curriculum for Excellence have helped inform our approaches to learning and teaching.

At Gylemuir we are committed to staying abreast of current educational thinking to ensure our children are constantly offered the highest quality of education. We acknowledge the considerable growth in recent years of research in the area of the learning process and consider this invaluable in our role as educators. Different ways of thinking and therefore learning, associated with differences in the ways in which the brain functions have important implications for both the learner and the teacher and we aim to take account of these in planning, delivery and evaluation of the curriculum.

Teachers aim to ensure that pupils are made aware of their preferred learning style and that they adopt a variety of input in the curriculum to take account of how pupils prefer to receive information e.g. visual, auditory and kinaesthetic inputs.

We offer as wide a range of sporting and cultural activities as possible. There are a range of extra curricular activities available for pupils during lunchtime and after school. Clubs that have run successfully include rugby, ball skills, yoga and dance. Parents will be informed about the availability of clubs by the school. In addition to inschool activities, classes also make regular educational visits and field studies. These visits are linked to pupils’ class work.