School Fete

Our Lady Of The Rosary School will be holding their Summer Fete on Saturday 19 June from 1pm to 5pm. This year, the fete will have a World Cup theme. It is always a great afternoon for all the family and raises valuable funds for the school. I encourage parishioners to support the fete.

St Catherine's - excellent religious inspection

Following on the good news of their excellent OFSTED Inspection, St Catherine's School has passed on the news of another great Inspection Report.

The "Section 48" inspection looks at the Catholic life of the school, including the provision or Religious Eduction. The Inspectors reported the following:

• St Catherine's School, as a Catholic learning community, is outstanding
  
• It provides excellent care for its pupils within a safe environment where they feel valued
  
• It is led by an outstanding Head Teacher and is well supported by Governors, Staff and Parents
  
• The school is outstanding at promoting community cohesion
  
• Standards in RE are outstanding
  
• The quality of collective worship is outstanding with excellent provision for Masses and assemblies
  

Congratulations to Mrs Sloncki and to all the staff, governors and students.

Here is a link to the School Prospectus

Parish Woods - vote won!

In January, I asked you to Vote to improve Parish Wood Park - and our School environment

I have just heard that the results are now in from the recent competition and that the Parish Wood Park project won. The project will now receive a grant of £400,000 from Boris Johnson for improvements to the park.

As I mentioned, the school environment will also benefit significantly from this project.

Many thanks to all of you who voted.

Year 6 Mass, Wednesday

This Wednesday, 11 March, Year 6 from our Lady of the Rosary School will be coming to Church for the 10am Mass. Parents and Grandparents are warmly invited to join us.

(For those unfamiliar with modern school year numbering, the children in Year 6 are aged 10-11 and will be starting in secondary school in September.)

St Catherine's School "Exceptional"

Congratulations to Mrs Slonecki (left), the staff, governors and students of St Catherine's School for girls on their recent OFSTED Inspection.

The overall judgement of the inspectors was that the school is "exceptional"; the inspectors noted that the GCSE examination results have been exceptionally high for the past three years. they also singled out for special mention the outstanding care, guidance and support provided by the school for the girls.

The Inspectors also commented that the

"Media Arts specialism serves the students very well and also promotes good links with other local schools and neighbourhood groups."

The lead inspector wrote to the students after the inspection and told them "We found your behaviour to be outstanding." He noted that students felt valued and safe, and that they displayed high levels of aspiration and motivation.

The school is justly proud of its track record of improving rates of success. St Catherine's was judged to be outstanding for the standards reached by learners, and outstanding for how well those with learning difficulties make progress. The Headteacher, Patricia Slonecki, said:

"These outcomes were very gratifying and demonstrate how successfully the teaching and support staff work collaboratively with the girls and their parents to support the achievement of every student."

Here is a link to the OFSTED Inspection Report
Here is a link to the school prospectus.

Vote to improve Parish Wood Park - and our School environment

Work is being undertaken at Our Lady of the Rosary School in connection with the development of a pathway through the Nursery and the development of Parish Woods in which the school will be given an area of woodland in exchange for the area of school grounds being taken for the pathway. Part of this project is developing the Parish woodland area which will include the wider development of the site, such as improving the wetland area and the River Shuttle improvements.

This project has just been short listed by the Mayor of London to win a grant of £400,000 for major improvements works. Whether Bexley gets this vote or not will be based on the number of votes cast by local people. You can vote either online, by phone to request a postal vote or by text.

And here is your direct link to vote for Parish Wood Park. Please do this now - it only takes a moment and the children at Our Lady of the Rosary School will benefit from this work.

To find out more, here is a link to general information about Help a London Park and here is a link to information about Parish Wood Park.

Voting closes on Friday 30th January 2009.

School Bazaar

Our Lady of the Rosary School is having a Christmas Bazaar on Saturday 29 November from 1-5pm. Please come along and support the school.

School Summer Fete

Our Lady of the Rosary School will be holding its annual summer fete on Saturday 14 June. The fete opens at 1pm. There are plenty of fun stalls for all the family.

Crowning of the statue of Our Blessed Lady

May is the month of Mary and today at Our Lady of the Rosary School, the children took part in a devotional service in honour of Our Blessed Mother. First, you can see some of the children laying flowers symbolically at the feet of the patroness of the school and the parish:


The statue is crowned with a garland of flowers to show the love and veneration that we offer to the Mother of God:

And here is a picture of the statue crowned and adorned with flowers:


Children of all ages had prepared work for this devotional service. From the Reception Class (age 4-5) to Year 6 (age 10-11) there were various prayers, thoughtful poems and compositions, and dramatic presentations based on the texts of Holy Scripture to remind us of the place of Our Blessed Lady in God's plan of salvation.

OLR School: praise from Bexley Council

The following is from a letter received by Our Lady of the Rosary School from Bexley Councillors following their recent Ofsted report:

“We have read the very good inspection report for the school published on the Ofsted website and wanted to express both our appreciation and congratulations to you and your staff for achieving such a positive accolade of your work. The opening quote of “The school is committed to the welfare, happiness and education of the children” by parents and pupils of the school represents a succinct statement that validates the high level of esteem with which the school is held. That pupils were found to be confident, were very well behaved and eager to learn, work hard and make good progress are all attributes of a highly successful school and characteristics of which you should be very proud.”

Congratulations to the Headteacher, Mr Murphy, to all the staff, pupils and parents of the school.

Our school's outstanding care for pupils

I was delighted to read today the report from the recent OFSTED Inspection of Our Lady or the Rosary School. I have written to the Head teacher to offer my congratulations to him, and to all the staff and governors on such an excellent report.

OFSTED inspectors don't easily give judgements of “outstanding” and so it is especially creditable to see in the “personal development and well-being section” that the school obtained this judgement overall and that not a single section was graded less than “good”.

I know that parishioners at Our Lady of the Rosary will be delighted to hear this good news about our school. Many thanks to Mr Murphy and the whole team at the school for all their hard work for the children and for the competence and professionalism that has enabled the school to be so highly commended by the inspector.

The report is not yet on the OFSTED website but should be published there soon.

School Christmas Bazaar

Last Saturday, Our Lady of the Rosary School held its Christmas Bazaar. When Mac McLernon put some photos on her blog Mulier Fortis. An American reader commented

"If that's what british Moms look like, why did we have a revolution?"

Here are some of the photos. (I have enhanced some of them a little with Paint Shop Pro and given the cake a new background.)

OLR School Football Team

Mr Murphy, Headteacher of Our Lady of the Rosary School sends this great news:

Just before the Easter holidays the football team at Our Lady of the Rosary school were joint winners [one-all after extra time] of the "Kevin McCarthy" Cup which is the main cup competition for Bexley Schools.

Earlier in the season the team had won a competition organised by Charlton Athletic Football Club for Bexley and Greenwich primary schools. As winners of this competition we represented Charlton in the London finals, competing against teams representing the other Premiership Clubs.

Our Lady of the Rosary came second in this phase of the competition and will be now representing London in the National Finals to be played at Old Trafford on Friday 25th May. Charlton are arranging and paying for the transport to Manchester and an overnight stay in a hotel.

Congratulations to our young footballers!

Inspiration from Year 6

Prayers and best wishes for all the children in Year 6 of Our Lady of the Rosary School who are leaving the school today.

Leavers' Mass this Thursday

This Thursday, our morning Mass will be at 10.30am. The children from Our Lady of the Rosary School will be attending this Mass and we will be praying especially for those in Year 6 who are leaving this summer.

St Catherine's Open Morning

St Catherine's school for girls in Bexleyheath have their open morning this Saturday 8 July from 9am to 1pm. Miss Susan Powell, the Headteacher, will speak at 9am, 10am and 11am. Parents of girls in Year 4 or Year 5 are warmly invited to visit the school. St Catherine's recently received an excellent OFSTED Report.