St Marys RC Primary School

Welcome to St Mary’s RC Primary School’s website and the life of our school. We are very proud of our school and its community. It is a welcoming and loving community where children and adults feel happy, safe and respected. Our success starts with the children and families we serve, and our committed staff and governors.

At St. Mary’s we firmly believe we are a team, a school family, and all pupils, parents, governors, the parish and the wider community are a very important part of that team.

We constantly strive to achieve the very best for you and your child. Our success starts with the children and families we serve and we believe that primary education is a partnership between home and school. We work hard with parents to strengthen the relationship between school and home so that all children are happy and well-motivated and so that they can develop fully.

Our Mission is, ‘Together we inspire, empower and achieve with Christ in our hearts’ and we seek to achieve this through placing Gospel values at the heart of the learning experience and by setting the highest expectations in all that we do. We want all children to be happy and well-motivated, with a passion for learning and a desire to achieve to their potential. We recognise parents as the first educators of their children and try to find ways to involve parents fully in all aspects of the life and work of the school. We work hard to strengthen the relationship between home, school and parish. We also welcome those families of other faiths who specifically want the education and values we offer at St Mary’s school.

The present building was opened in 1900 in response to the needs of the Catholic families of Newport and the surrounding areas. The main building houses the majority of the classrooms, the upper and lower halls and libraries over three floors.

There are a further three classrooms in an annexe building situated just behind the main building. The school also has use of an adjacent building which houses a kitchen and dining facilities. This building is also used for physical education and assemblies and concerts. The school is set in extensive grounds with two playgrounds, fields, an outdoor classroom, trim trail and play equipment and a Forest School area. All classrooms are equipped with interactive white boards and data projectors, or wide-screen TVs with Apple TV. Each class also has use of a number of iPads to support their learning.

Vision

At St. Mary’s we aspire to inspire and empower the whole school community to achieve their true potential so that God becomes a reality in all that we do.

Aims

In partnership with parents, governors and learners we aim to:

Inspire one another to:

Be loving, following the teaching and example of Jesus

Be ambitious, maintaining high expectations of ourselves in all areas of school and life

Be creative,  drawing from rich, authentic learning experiences which spark imagination and motivation

Make healthy choices, which support our physical, mental and emotional well-being

Love learning, developing the curiosity and independence to learn throughout our lives.

Grow in spirituality, both as an individual and as part of a community, to flourish as human beings living in the twenty-first century world

Empower one another to:

Have confidence, thriving as learners with a resilient mindset which is able to overcome challenge

Develop the skills and knowledge to be capable learners, able to adapt as effective learners in an ever changing world

Make ethically informed choices, supported by a nurturing Catholic environment and a strong sense of who we are

Be enterprising, taking action for the good of others and the enrichment of our own lives and recognising and developing our individual talents.

Achieve, both individually and as part of the school community by:

Successfully reaching our goals, dreams and ambitions

Having the knowledge, skills and mindset to learn throughout our lives

Living fulfilled lives, as valued members of society and as citizens of Wales and the world.

Developing intrinsic motivation for learning and a mindset for resilience in learning

There are three core principles which we believe in at St Mary’s which underpin our whole school ethos, drive our teaching and shape the learning for which we are responsible.

• Learners should be developing spiritually and emotionally within the Catholic ethos of our school.
• Learners should be literate, with confident skills in oracy, reading and writing across genres
• Learners should be numerate,  with the ability to reason, problem solve and apply their skills to a level of mastery appropriate for their age