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 'phone.
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As the last day of term is upon us, and the Year 6 Leavers Assembly has finally finished, all that is left to say is, thank you for your continued help and support throughout the past academic year and we hope that you all have a relaxing and peaceful summer holiday
A uniform change:
The Governors of St. Mary's decided at their June meeting, that part of the school uniform should change. As from the start of the Autumn Term 2010, children would be encouraged to wear a GOLD coloured polo shirt instead of the current white. The white will still be acceptable for the rest of the school year (until July 2011), but we would ask that when you buy new polo shirts, that they should be in the new GOLD colour. There will be an example on display in Reception and a picture on the school website. The colour should be readily available from your usual shop. For the future, we are looking at the possibility of keeping a stock in school, and if this happens, we will let you know. If you know of any parents whose children will be joining us in September, please let them know about the change.
Having GOLD polo shirts will mean that PE kit become readily identifiable. It will stay as a white polo shirt, shorts and suitable footware (please note that children ususally have bare feet for indoor PE). In the winter, for outdoor activities, track suit bottoms are quite acceptable. There will be an expectation from September, that children will always change for PE and games.
And finally, with regard to uniform, the Governors have decided that the 'hoodies' which children in the sports teams have been able to buy, should only be worn for sporting activities and that they should not become part of the normal school uniform.
Summer Fayre.
This year our Summer Fayre was held on Saturday 26th June from 11.00am until 3.00pm. We would like to thank everyone who helped with this event.It was as always a huge success and raised £1728.84.
India Project.
We are currently trying to improve our international links by partnering with a school in Delhi, India. The Good Samaritan School is a group of charity run schools across New Delhi that seek to serve underprivileged children who mainly live in slums. Have a look in Puffins’ pages to find out what they have been doing to learn more about India.
Summer Term.
Welcome back to the Summer Term at St. Mary’s - the term when there is a lot happening!
Towards the end of term parents will receive their child’s annual report along with the latest assessment information. Year 6 and Year 2 children will complete the annual SATs in May and June, and we hope that the KS2 results will be published in time for everyone to be told by the time the holiday starts!
There will be a lot of sporting activities, culminating in Sports Days for KS1 and KS2 (dates yet to be decided).
There will be the two annual residential visits. Year 4 will visit Paignton Zoo for three days (two nights) from 5th to 7th May, where they will learn a lot about the animals, visit ‘Living Coasts ‘ in Torquay and go on a wildlife spotting boat trip around Torbay.
Year 6 will be visiting St. Braivels in the Forest of Dean for 5 nights. While they are they will have the experience of besieging a castle with siege engines, learning archery and having a mediaeval banquet. They will visit Clearwell Caves, the SS Great Britain and @Bristol science exhibition, and have a multi-activity day on the River Wye.
Another ‘Sparkle Day’ is planned for July, there will be a Comenius Celebration, a German Day, Summer Concert, Summer Fair, Quiz Night and end of term disco.
All these dates are added to the calendar as soon as they are finalised.
Snowy Weather
The first week of this Spring Term 2010 has been marked by some of the coldest and snowiest winters in recent memory. Throughout the last week we have stayed open where almost every other school has closed for some time. The 150 children who came to school when the snow was fresh had a wonderful time playing in the snow with their friends. We managed to stay open because the site is fairly safe and enough staff were able to get to work to teach the children. The staff at St. Mary’s have consistently shown a willingness to get in to work from wherever they live, throughout the bad weather, (as they did last year), and without them we could not have managed it!
New Roof
We are delighted to have the new roof on the school finished (almost!). There are just a few minor details to complete, but at last we are dry and the main school building has been given an excellent face lift. The builders have worked throughout the Autumn Term in atrocious conditions, but have managed to deliver the project on time. The next stage of development for the buildings is for the Governors to explore the possibility of building in some renewable energy sources. Watch this space!
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.