St Mary’s R.C. Primary School Leith

St Mary’s R.C. Primary School (Leith) is a happy, fun, exciting and caring place where we can learn lots of new things for our future.

At St. Mary’s we acknowledge that parents play an important part in their children’s education. Children do better and achieve more when parents and school work closely together therefore St. Mary’s values ‘Parental Involvement’ as an effective way of enhancing school achievements and promoting better ethos and communication.

Our Vision is to allow all children to thrive in a safe environment which is conducive to creativity, individuality and the acquisition of skills for learning in the 21st century.

We wish to encourage a partnership with you to ensure the best possible standards of pupil behaviour. Working together we can support all our children to show care and respect to others in all areas of school life. This behaviour is central to the whole school ethos at St. Mary’s and all staff are committed to acting as role-models for the children and supporting them, along with their families, in any way we can.

Aims and Values:

• We care for one another in God’s name.
• We offer a great, fun, learning time for all.
• We are all confident leaders.
• We all have the opportunity to have the best learning possible in our classrooms and school.
• We celebrate and respect all people from our community.
• We support everyone whether they are happy or sad.
• We are a healthy, enterprising eco-school

The school undertakes to do its best for all children in the school and to communicate and work as closely as is possible with parents in order to provide the best education, appropriate to the children’s individual needs.

We offer opportunities for you to discuss your child's progress with teachers through arranged meetings. You will be advised when these meetings take place. Over and above these set meetings, parents are welcome to contact the school at any time to ask for information or for an interview. Please see section two of this handbook for more details on home / school partnership.

Bringing learning to life and life to learning.Curriculum for Excellence has now been introduced across Scotland for all 3-18 year olds – wherever they learn. It aims to raise standards, prepare our children for a future they do not yet know and equip them for jobs of tomorrow in a fast changing world.

Curriculum for Excellence emphasises the value of an active learning approach. In the early years, children will have a range of learning experiences that include planned and purposeful play and stimulating learning which engages and challenges children’s thinking using real life and imaginary situations. As children progress through school they continue to be involved in active learning experiences which are engaging and give them ownership of their own learning.

Co-operative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it.

As a Catholic Primary School, Christianity and its values are central to the Ethos of the school. We follow the diocesan Religious Education programme which includes the teaching of other World Religions. In Primary 3 parents are invited to ‘opt in’ to the preparation for the sacraments and these sessions will take place after school. We welcome the celebration and discussion of other faiths and emphasise the importance of celebrating together and learning from one another