St Bartholomews

Please remember that John Wilson photographers will be in St Bartholomew’s tomorrow to take individual and family photographs.

The School Improvement Report for the 2014/15 session, along with this year’s School Improvement Plan, are now available on our new website. Both documents can be found in the ‘Information’ section. You may be interested to know that the school lunch menu is also available in the Information section by scrolling down to ‘Catering’. This will help you and your child plan their meals for each week in advance.

Class pages are in a different location on our new website. These pages will begin to appear over the next few days and can be accessed on the sidebar on the right of the homepage, immediately next to the Head Teacher’s blog. Please also remember that you can leave comments/messages on both the Head Teacher’s blog and individual class pages. It’s always good to hear from parents, carers and friends!

Welcome to our new-look website which went live yesterday! As you can see, it takes you straight to the Head Teacher’s blog as soon as you log-on. The new system features drop-down menus and also includes a mobile-friendly version when you access the website on your phone. Many thanks to Mrs McIntyre for all her hard work behind the scenes.

I’m not sure where the days are disappearing to this term… we’re into week 4 already! This means that our annual sponsored walk, scheduled for Thursday 17th September, is fast-approaching! Sponsor forms will go out either today or tomorrow. Every little helps, so even collecting 50p or £1 will help towards boosting our school funds and ensuring we can continue to bring the absolute best of resources and learning experiences to the pupils of St Bartholomew’s. Many thanks in advance for your support.

Primary 5 have their weekly swimming lesson at the Time Capsule today. This is a great opportunity for the children to extend their learning beyond the classroom as well as develop their health and well-being.

Finally, please remember that the weekly prayer service takes place in the oratory at 8.50am this morning. It’s a great way to start the day, especially with it being the Feast of the Birthday of Our Lady.

Having been out of school for much of last week, it’s great to be back in St Bartholomew’s this morning. The theme of this year’s Catholic Head Teachers’ conference, which I attended on Thursday and Friday, was ‘Renewing your vocation’. It was good to be reminded that St Bartholomew’s Primary exists for the service of others: parents, the parish, our local community and – most important of all – the 275 children we are privileged to have in our care. I’m looking forward to catching up with the boys and girls today!

The Scottish Catholic Education Service is holding a special event for parents next month. Details are given below.

It’s the second day of the annual Catholic Head Teachers’ conference. Bishop Robson from Dunkeld Diocese opened the conference yesterday with a thought-provoking address on renewing our vocation. We then heard from Patricia Watson from Education Scotland about the new ‘How Good is Our School?’ self-evaluation document which will be released at the end of this month. Michael McGrath from the Scottish Catholic Education Service also focused on school self-evaluation after lunch, introducing a new resource called ‘Developing in Faith’ before the afternoon closed with Mass. The annual dinner took place in the evening and this was a great chance to catch up with Head Teachers from across Scotland. Of course, the blethering continued into the early hours and I’m a bit bleary-eyed as I write the blog this morning! We’ll be hearing from Professor Bart McGettrick and Sir John Jones this morning – both unfamiliar speakers to me, so I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the conference.

Although there will be no whole-school assembly back in St Bart’s this morning, there will still be Pupil of the Week certificates and the Cool Class Cup and house points will also be awarded. Make sure you check out the website later today.