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We would like to highlight the following improvements/achievements:
St Monica’s (Milton) Primary School is a strong faith community and as such our Catholic values permeate our vision, values and aims. This is evident in our curriculum and in the daily practice of all staff. This results in very positive relationships across the school based on our Catholic social teaching. Almost all children continue to be engaged, motivated and interact well during learning experiences almost all of the time.
This year has been a lot more settled and back to how it was like pre-COVID. We still continue to have a highly committed and motivated staff who engage well with our children and families in order to ensure they have relevant and meaning learning experiences. Our two Well-being Bases in the school have been utilised further allowing some children to work in smaller groups, develop team work skills or to aid their emotional health and well-being. We have ensured a consistent approach to this by continuing to have the same teachers working in these which helps the children. Some children from our Upper Wellbeing Base have been undertaking the ‘John Muir Award’ along with the teacher where they learned more about nature, landscape, and the natural environment. Our Place2Be service that we have within the school continues to thrive with many children self-referring themselves to talk to our Place2Be School Project Manager. We also have many identified children working one on one with one of our Counsellors following discussion with parents and carers. A few teachers have undertaken the Place2Be Mental Health Champions course which further supports our children and ensures that, as a school, we are doing all we can to ensure that children’s well-being and mental health are being addressed.
We continue to focus on improving literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing. Our aim is to help raise children’s attainment and the majority of children are making progress in literacy and the majority of children are making progress in numeracy. This is supported with the help of our teachers, Support for Learning Workers (SfLWs), Challenge Leaders of Learning (CLOLs) and Digital Leaders of earning (DLOLs). Because of this support, the majority of
children have attained the appropriate levels in literacy and numeracy. We have also been fortunate to have an English as an Additional Language (EAL) teacher again this year to help support our increasing number of EAL children. This has been extremely worthwhile and due to restrictions being lifted this year following COVID, it had meant that more children could benefit from the EAL Teacher’s support.
This year our P5 and P6 received their own iPads along with P7. This has been a wonderful aid to the children’s learning and allowed them opportunities to learn in different ways. Having iPads at these stages ensures that children are able to undertake Home Learning. As a school, we continue to use Seesaw for our Home Learning and children in P1-P4 also have access to iPads throughout the day to enhance the learning taking place. These iPads are shared.
The majority of P3s, P4s and P7s celebrate and make the Sacraments of the Eucharist, Reconciliation and Confirmation and are supported effectively by the teachers. This is further aided by St Augustine’s Parish Catechists and Father Paul McAlinden. Our P7s received the Sacrament of Confirmation this year by the newly appointed Archbishop William Nolan. This took place in March 2023.
We continue to receive Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) from the Scottish Government in order to raise attainment and give our children new learning experience. This year we partnered once again with the charity, PEEK. They worked with all classes within the school to support the work we were doing on children’s rights especially as this has now become enshrined in Scottish Law. This work culminated with a wonderful fun day in June where 300 of our children explored the right to play. It was even better as the sun was shining!
As a school, we continue to work alongside our partners:
- Caledonian Club
- Sir Thomas Lipton Foundation – Buoyed Up Programme
- Place2Be
- PEEK
- Active School’s Co-ordinator
- Primary Swimming Programme
We also had many other visitors into the school to work alongside teachers and staff to create meaningful learning experiences for our children. These included:
- SSPCA
- Road Safety Officer
- Various Coaches
- Money Advice Scotland
- SmartSTEMs
- Generation Science
- Create Youth Music Initiative (YMI) Tutor
As things have returned to normal we had a lot more whole school events which included:
- Returning to in person assemblies and hymn practices
- Return to Class Assemblies
- First Friday Masses in St Augustine’s
- P1-P3 Nativity
- Christmas Fayre
- Pantomine
- House Treats – Pantomine, Bowling, Elf-in-grove
- P7 Leavers’ Show – ‘What a Knight!’
- Fun Days
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This also meant that after school clubs were able to return with many coaches being able to be arranged to take clubs as well as teachers holding various clubs. Family Learning sessions were also arranged with one f the Principal Teachers, our Depute Head Teacher and our Challenge Leader of Learning (CLOL).
School Awards:
- Rights Respecting Schools Award - Silver: Rights Aware – May 2023
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