Welcome to St Mark’s Primary School!
Our school Vision, Values and Aims, were created through consultation with our whole school community and they are at the heart of what we do. Our school vision is that “St Mark’s is a place of faith and learning: where we love and care for each other, work hard and always try our best, following the example of Jesus our teacher.” As a Catholic school our ethos reflects Gospel values and as such we recognise the importance of inclusion, nurture, and the spiritual development of our young people. Our school values are Respectful, Hardworking, Kind, Caring and Honest, and Resilient and we have created our school aims to reflect these.
Within St Mark’s we recognise that literacy and numeracy skills are essential platforms to future learning. All staff work hard to provide excellent learning and teaching, and to ensure that all pupils make strong progress at each stage of learning. We have a relentless focus on raising attainment, developing knowledge, understanding and skills, and increasing the ambition, aspiration and expectations of our children. We want our children to have a ‘growth mindset’, meaning that they feel confident to try, to learn from mistakes, and not to give up.
We have a very strong focus on health and wellbeing across the school, striving to support all pupil needs whatever those might be. We actively promote healthy eating and exercise, and are proud to be holders of the Sportscotland Gold School Sport Award for the second consecutive time. We have high expectations of behaviour and attitude, and encourage our children to demonstrate effort, respect, tolerance, kindness and forgiveness.
I feel very privileged to be the Head Teacher of St Mark’s Primary and I very much look forward to working with everyone within our school community as we continue to implement improvement and change to make our school the very best it can be. I encourage you to engage as much as possible in the life of the school as so much can be achieved when we all work together in partnership! As Pope Francis says, “You will build the future, with your hands, with your love, with your passions, with your dreams. Together with others.”
Elaine O’Donnell
Head Teacher
