Our first Smart School Council theme of the session is Our Learning & Teaching and, at their Smart School Council class meetings on Monday 26th August, pupils across the school were asked ‘What are the top five things which make your learning enjoyable and challenging?’.
House Captains met on Wednesday 28th August to discuss the results and update our Action Board which helps Cathedral continually drive forward change and improvement for all of our learners. Based on the feedback from our twenty class meetings, House Captains agreed on three mini projects:
- Cathedral’s learners’ various ‘top fives’ will be collated onto a poster by our Communications Team to share results with teachers and provide a visual for pupils in learning spaces;
- From Monday 2nd September, pupils will take responsibility for weekly stock-checks of resources in learning spaces;
- House Captains, along with Mr Young and Mrs Duffy, will carry out a learning walk of all four learning streets to identify further improvements which could me made
Pupil Equity Funding
Mrs Duffy conducted interviews with our twelve House Captains on Tuesday 27th August in order to allocate their different Smart School Council Communication Team roles:
Smart School Council gives every Cathedral pupil a voice and is key to driving forward change and
improvement across our school community. The first class meetings of the year took place on Monday 26th August and Cathedral learners were asked a question linked to Priority 1 of our 2024/25 School Improvement Plan:
Campus Council gathered for their opening meeting of the year on Monday 26th August. The children from the three schools took some time to get to know one another before discussing and planning our first 2024/25 Campus Connections learning activity: a joint Cathedral – Firpark – Clydeview art project! School tours have also been arranged for any new pupils across the three schools.
Every change and improvement we make in Cathedral is ultimately about improving outcomes for pupils, so it’s vital our young learners are directly involved in the school’s ongoing improvement process. Pupils had the opportunity to explore Cathedral’s 2024/25 improvement priorities at our whole-school assembly on Monday 26th August and then began to take them forward immediately afterwards during our first Smart School Council class meetings of the year.
Priority 2 in this year’s Annual Improvement Plan is: ‘Improve the quality and increase the impact of Religious Education RC across all stages through a systematic and active review of the ten characteristics in the Charter for Catholic Schools in Scotland.’
promoting and leading the Catholic dimension of our school which, as outlined in Cathedral’s mission statement, places Christ and Our Lady at the centre.
The National Schools Singing Programme, funded by Motherwell Diocese, got back up and running on Thursday 22nd August. 
Mr James Greechan, NSSP Choral Director, met our new Primary 4 pupils for the first time and the boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed the various songs and interactive music activities. Mr Greechan also began auditions for the choir. Given we have 89 Primary 5 pupils this year, competition for a place in Cathedral’s distinguished choir is going to be very tough indeed!
Our first Family Learning workshop of the year, for parents and carers of our new Primary 1 pupils, took place on Thursday 22nd August . The workshop focused on Primary 1 literacy, particularly Cathedral’s approach to teaching phonics.
As you will have read in a newsfeed item posted earlier this week, Provost Duffy paid a visit to Cathedral Primary on Tuesday 19th August ahead of the Papal Nuncio’s visit to Motherwell next week. The Provost’s visit to Cathedral has been shared on North Lanarkshire social media, including the council’s website: