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19th June 2001 |
Success leads to growth at St.Mary's
St.Mary's Episcopal Primary School in Dunblane, Scotland's only self-governing school in the state sector has announced that it is to expand. The popular small school, which has achieved remarkable academic success, has recently appointed new staff to allow the Primary 1 class to be taught separately from August 2001. Currently, St.Mary's has 3 composite classes catering for Primaries 1-7. Speaking about the recent development, Headteacher Mrs Cath Prescott said, "Enabling our children to begin their formal primary school education with their own teacher in a relatively small class will bring very significant long-term educational benefits. Although the new Primary 1 class will be restricted to no more than 13 pupils, the addition of this new class will release places further up the school, especially Primaries 5-7, where the maximum class size is 25." The Primary 2-7 classes will be composite with class teachers as
follows: Chairman of the Board of Management, Alastair McCulloch said, "We were delighted with the very high quality response we received to national advertising and look forward to welcoming some excellent new staff to St.Mary's. St.Mary's prides itself in providing the very best education possible within our resources and adding a dedicated Primary 1 teacher to our staff has realised a long-term ambition." Pupils at St.Mary's also receive specialist instruction in computing and in music and the formal teaching of French will now be extended to include Primary 4/5 as well as Primary 5/6. With a range of extra-curricular activities including recorder, drama, debating, football and chess the children at St.Mary's are never bored! In response to a request from Stirling Council, the Board of Management were pleased to agree to expand the nursery provision at St.Mary's by opening in the afternoon as well as the morning, increasing the number of places from 20 to a maximum of 40 across the two sessions from August 2001. |