Acting Head Teacher: Mr Adrian Scarrett
Acting Deputy Head Teacher: Mrs Rachael O'Dell
Welcome
Welcome to St. Mary's C of E Primary School website. Please feel free to browse the pages you find here. If you have any suggestions for improving this site, or any other comments or queries, please contact us via e-mail or telephone.
Operation Christmas Child
The children, parents and staff of St Mary’s Primary School, Bideford, have, this year, packed a school record 214 shoeboxes for the organisation Operation Christmas Child. The box contents include toiletries, stationery, toys, hats, scarves, gloves and sweets. They will be sent, by the charity, to children all over the world who are victims of war, poverty and natural disasters. Children bought things using their own pocket money and sorted through their toy boxes for things to donate. Their contributions were added to by donations from local shops, companies and neighbours of the school. The boxes were then wrapped and labelled ready for distribution in time for Christmas.
OfSTED Inspection October 2009
On 15th and 16th October 2009 we were inspected by three inspectors from OfSTED. They look at all areas of school life, but particularly concentrated on:
The degree to which the school has improved in writing and mathematics,
Improvements in the Foundation Stage,
The effectiveness of the use of assessment to help pupils make improved progress
How well the After School Club is providing for children.
The results of the inspection were extremely positive. The judgment was that, "St. Mary's is a good school. It is improving well and has a number of notable features”. We were judged to be good in all areas (The exception was pupils' attendance, where the judgment was 'satisfactory', because the percentage was slightly below the national average.)
Therefore, this is a school with no areas of weakness, only strengths on which to build. There are two suggestions as to how to improve further: to be more consistent in the way children have opportunities for self evaluation, and to improve the opportunities for children to choose where to work and play, both indoors and outdoors, in Foundation Stage.
The whole report can be downloaded or read by clicking this link.
St. Mary's 2009 OfSTED report.
This is a link to Devon County Council for information.