St Mary’s Parent Council Meeting Minutes
Wednesday 12 October 2016
Present:
Angela Aird
Eleanor Bradburn
Margaret Brownell
Elaine Connell
Clare Daly
Justine Docherty (Chair)
John Donnelly
Elaine Fitzpatrick (Head Teacher)
Emma Gaffney
Mark Henderson
Rona Honnet
Patricia Ireland
Aileen Lavery
Angela McPartland
Mhairi McQuillan
Maria O’Neill (Depute Head Teacher)
Jacqueline Traynor (Secretary)
Apologies:
Michelle Harvey
Kathleen Lees
Eileen Livingston
Fiona Wedlock
1.
Minutes of Previous Meeting:
The AGM minutes were approved.
2.
Correspondence
Action
1. Email received from South Lanarkshire – Engine Idling
(copy to be attached to minute). Officers have already been
out to the school and found 11 cars not idling and 2 idling.
2. Email received from South Lanarkshire – Parents as
Partners Conference Thurs 17 Nov banqueting hall at All
Council HQ (action – let Justine know if you are interested)
3. Email received from South Lanarkshire – request for Action
update of contact details for parent council chairs.
Justine
4. Email received from South Lanarkshire - National
Improvement Framework – Workshop Thurs 6 October –
Jacqueline
received too late to circulate however Justine was able to
attend (action agenda next meeting).
Justine has
recommended that this be repeated for the wider parent
forum
5. Email from Scottish Catholic
Consultation (see agenda item)
3.
Education Service
–
School Buses
Angela McPartland attended to give an overview of recent
problems with the school buses.
Problems with the school bus being late were discussed Woodfoot Road / Wellhall Road route (large bus). A request has
been made for the school to log the time that the bus gets to school.
Whitelaws buses have tracked the bus and have not recorded it as
late. The children also do not ever have their seatbelts on. The
children have also been seen walking up the aisle as the bus starts
to move off. The children are all buddied up so that younger
children have help with seatbelts. The Silvertonhill / Ferniegair
bus (small bus), has also been running late, and many of the
seatbelts also do not work; Mrs O’Neill puts seatbelts on the
children before leaving the school in the afternoon and has found
many belts that are non functioning. South Lanarkshire Council
has a contract with SPT who subcontract out to other bus
companies. After previous representation from the Parent Council,
improvements were made. School completes a complaint via email
each time the bus is late and this is happening. Justine will write to
the council to highlight the difficulties. If there is no improvement
this will be escalated. Action all – inform Justine of any other
issues meantime.
4
Head Teacher’s Report – Mrs Fitzpatrick
School roll and class configuration
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13 classes – 369 pupils
48 new Primary 1’s, 11 new pupils throughout the school
Staffing – Mrs O’Neill DHT. Mrs Cotter on Mat leave, Mr
Russell covering. 28 pupils in P5/6 therefore 2 teacher
class, Miss McPherson second class teacher. NQT in Rm 4,
Miss Whelan
3 area cover teachers – Mr Russell, Miss McPherson and
All
Mrs Cameron
Action
Learning activities
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Classes update their learning on school website class pages
Primary 7 currently on residential at Lockerbie Manor with
Mrs Cluckie, Mr Rimmer, Miss Graham and Miss Tierney.
Updates on Twitter – 154 followers
Each class will present an assembly to other pupils
focusing on an aspect of This Is Our Faith – eg. Rm 3 have
already presented Our Lady’s Birthday and Rm 9a SVDP
Active Schools
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We applied for the Sport Scotland Gold Award in June.
Could choose to be awarded silver or appeal for Gold. We
are going to appeal
Active schools co-ordinator Laura Somerville would like to
come to our next meeting. We are very grateful for her
partnership and support. She has organised various
lunchtime clubs for Primary 5, Primary 2 and Primary 1.
She has trained Primary 7 pupils to be play leaders and
they have led the Primary 5 multi sports lunchtime club
Charity work
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The many charities we donated to in June through our
fantastic fund raising last session are visiting our school to
deliver assemblies to help the pupils understand their
work. Last week we had Glasgow Childrens’ Hospital and
this week it was St. Andrew’s Hospice.
We had amazing support for one of our chosen charities,
Mary’s Meals. Mrs McLeod organised the breakfast for
Mary’s Meals, raising a fabulous £900. Warburtons
donated the bread and pancakes, Robertsons dairy donated
the milk and Morrisons, Sainsburys and the Co-op donated
various spreads. Bread that was leftover was donated to
the blue triangle and milk was taken to the homeless
shelter in Hamilton. Helping people near and far. 279
Backpacks were donated along with clothes, shoes and
football strips for the Backpack appeal. The volunteers
informed us that each back is worth £14 in monetary terms
– along with the breakfast that means we raised an
amazing £4,806! We are extremely grateful to the support
we receive from our parents and families for all of the
fundraising we do
Looking Outwards
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As described at PC AGM our priorities this session are
numeracy and pupil voice, looking at involving pupils in
their learning.
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In Numeracy – Mr Rimmer organised numeracy guru
Lynda Keith to deliver inservice to our Learning
Community during a twilight session in September. The
main priority in the Holy Cross LC is numeracy – ensuring
that there is consistency in delivering numeracy lessons
and expectations of learning across all 11 schools so that
when our pupils move to Holy Cross they have all had the
same experiences. Lynda Keith advocated the practice of a
school in North Lanarkshire, therefore 4 members of staff –
Mrs O’Neil, Mrs Phillips, Mrs Smith and Mr Rimmer visited
Woodlands Primary School in Cumbernauld. They gained
some ideas but also were quite heartened by the activites
and learning they saw as they were not all dissimilar to
ours.
Along with 2 colleagues from other schools in the
authority, I visited St. Ninian’s Primary School, West
Lothian to look at something they call Visible Learning. It
is a way of planning that fully involves pupils. It was
extremely interesting and something that I am keen to
implement in a way that suits us
Although not on our improvement plan, 1+2 languages
programme is a Scottish Government initiative. Miss
Graham is our lead teacher for this. 3 of our teachers
applied for Erasmus funding to take part in an immersion
course in Malaga during the Summer holidays – Mrs
Feeney, Miss Tierney and Mr Russell. Mr Russell and Mrs
Feeney had been involved the year before. Mrs Seenan is
currently being trained in teaching Spanish, therefore the
majority of our teaching staff have all been trained in
teaching Spanish in the primary school.
Self Evaluation
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As part of our self evaluation we use COGS to gather pupil
opinion. Our first COGS meeting of the year took place on
Friday, 7th October where we discussed the topic of
Homework as part of reviewing our Homework policy.
Dates for your diary
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4th November – Reconciliation Retreat for Rm 6 R.E. class
9th November – PC Bingo
21st November – Inservice day
29th November – Sacrament meeting
2nd December – Christmas fayre
13th December – Nativity
14th December – Nativity
15th December – P.7 Christmas party
16th December – P5/6 Christmas party
19th December – Jazz Art panto
19th December – P3/4 Christmas party
20th December – P1/2 Christmas party
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21st December – Christmas mass
23rd December – close at 2.30pm
Action: Laura Somerville, Active Schools Co-ordinator, would like
to attend a future meeting to provide further information about
her role.
Justine for
date
See School Letter re dates for Sacraments.
School Pantomime – Jazz Art.
Pinocchio – the group agreed to fund this for all the children in the
school.
5
Treasurer’s Report
There has been nothing further to update since the AGM.
The current balance is £7,081.
6.
National Parent Forum – Call for Evidence
Survey – response needed.
Re: parental involvement in children’s education and for us in
particular in a Catholic Education.
(Action Justine – attachment with minutes)
Ideas: parent council pages on website / parent council newsletter
Date for submission is not clear at present.
Brief discussion for future consideration is the Scottish
Government plans to change the governance arrangements for
schools.
Mrs Fitzpatrick reported at the Catholic Head Teachers conference
that there is a shortage of Catholic teachers.
Action: send out reminders to the parent council.
Action: put survey on parent council page of website and link on
twitter, and then contact Justine for further information.
7.
Jacqueline
National Improvement Framework:
Action: attach to minutes. See Key Drivers of Improvement (4 Jacqueline
items) for summary.
Action: for agenda for the next meeting.
Jacqueline
Mrs Fitzpatrick suggested that she could bring the assessment Mrs
timetable that is already in place for the school for further Fitzpatrick
information (available for every stage).
8
50:50 Club:
Rona will give the school envelopes for a bag drop to encourage Rona
greater involvement. Currently 30 envelopes from the parents’
evening.
Discussion about setting up a Facebook page for the parent council.
If this was a closed group it would only be accessible to members
of the parent council.
There could be a set number of Justine
administrators. There is a messenger part of Facebook that does Mark
not require a page. Justine and Mark to take this forward to trial a
set up.
9
Bingo Night:
It was agreed that the Bingo night on 26 October has been
postponed. Agreed to move to Wednesday 9 November. Helpers
are needed to set up the Tombola over the afternoon, as well as
helpers for the evening from 6pm.
Hampers – Justine will put together two hampers.
Discussion to consider a Race Night – bring back to the agenda for
the new year – January / February.
10.
Date of next meeting
Wednesday 16 November at 7pm.