St Catherine's RC Primary School

St. Catherine’s is a denominational primary school built in 1966 which serves the South East of Edinburgh. The school catchment area comprises the areas of Gracemount and Burdiehouse.

The current school roll is approximately 206. There are seven classes in the school, P1 – P7. The current nursery roll is approximately 40. There are two classes in the nursery (Morning and Afternoon).

We are committed to helping all our students reach their full potential by fostering a common vision which embraces faith formation, teaching and learning, personal and social development and partnership between the school and the wider community.

Place2Be is charity that works in schools to improve the confidence and wellbeing of children to support their learning. We work together with parents, teachers and the children to help this happen.

At St.Catherines’s there is a Place2Be room where children can go to express and think about their worries, through talking, painting, drawing and play. At Place2Be children are helped to find new ways of coping with difficulties they may have so that those difficulties don’t get in the way of their friendships or learning.

There can be times when children can feel particularly sad, confused, fearful or angry for a range of reasons and it is at these times that Place2Be at St.Catherine’s can be really helpful.

At St.Catherine’s Place2Be works with children on anongoing one-to-one basis offering regular time-tabled support. All pupils can also find help with friendship issues and other worries by choosing to visit Place2Talk which offers short lunchtime sessions open to individual pupils or groups.

At St.Catherine’s we can meet with Sand Box with Toysyou to discuss any worries you may have about your child or children and the things that you feel may be getting in the way of their learning. At St.Catherine’s we also have A Place for Parents which can offer you support with any issue you may have and would like to discuss.

Place2Be at St.Catherine’s also offers support to teachers and all school staff members via a Place2Think. This offers them the space to discuss any worries or concerns that they may have.

In supporting children to feel better about themselves, we can help reduce the things that get in the way of them feeling good. In doing this we reduce the barriers to their learning so that they are able to learn more easily, as they become less pre-occupied with what is worrying them. This supports St.Catherine’s educational goals for their pupils.

This was a great achievement for our eco committee and for everyone throughout the school. We have been working hard to ensure that our school is helping to look after the environment.

The Eco committee includes pupils from Primary 3 through to Primary 7 and each member has a specific responsibility in the committee. These responsibilities range from chairperson to communicators.Over the last few years the Eco Committee has made a lot of decisions to help the school become more environmentally friendly.We recycle our milk cartons and paper throughout the school and now recycle our fruit waste into our compost bin in the playground.

Every year we have an Eco Week where we take part in lots of different eco activities. In the past we have joined in the Keep Scotland Beautiful campaign and we’ve taken part in litter-picking in our local area and school grounds. We’ve constructed bird feeders to hang in the playground using recycled milk cartons. We’ve planted vegetables in our vegetable patch and we’ve also changed the look of our playground by painting a mural for our climbing wall.