St Margaret Mary Catholic Primary School

Year 3 had a lovely morning at Susan's Farm Wetlands.
We learned about pollinators and pollination and identified lots of plants and seeds. 🌺
We also got to go pond dipping and found all sorts or creatures including nymphs, leeches, tadpoles and teeny tiny froglets! Susan's Farm CIO 🐸

Come along for a cuppa and a chat 🥰

Happy Holy Communion Day to our Year 3 superstars 🤍

Wishing our lovely little ones lots of love as they make their First Holy Communion today-a very special day indeed 🥰

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The children in Year 5 have had a visit from Green Watch from Carlisle East Fire Station today.

They spoke to the children about the role of Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service, the importance of fire safety at home and that it is vital to be safe around water. The children learned some key messages around the dangers of smoke, what to do when near or in a fire, and how to keep safe around and in water using the float to live technique.

For more information about fire safety at home please visit https://www.cumbriafire.gov.uk/safety-home

Carlisle East Fire Station

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❤️❤️ Let’s build belonging together, again ❤️❤️

Schools are being asked to pick up the pieces of a fragmented society… while simultaneously being told they are often failing it.

Read that again.

In the last 10 years schools have quietly become:
• social workers
• mental health hubs
• food banks
• safeguarding centres
• family intervention teams
• behaviour specialists
• attendance officers
• SEND coordinators for a collapsing wider system

And yet somehow the public narrative still too often asks:

“Why aren’t schools doing more?”

The truth is this:

There are school leaders across this country holding communities together through sheer determination, humanity and moral purpose.

Staff are exhausted.
Budgets are stretched.
Need has exploded.
Complexity has intensified.

But every single morning, millions of children are still welcomed through school gates by adults who refuse to give up on them.

That matters.

Because behind every attendance statistic is a child. Behind every persistent absence figure is often a story of anxiety, poverty, trauma, unmet need, family crisis or disconnection.

Attendance is not solved through slogans.
Belonging is not created through policy papers. And inclusion cannot be delivered on goodwill alone.

We need a national conversation that is more honest. Schools cannot endlessly absorb societal failure without proper investment, trust and long-term thinking.

The best schools I see are not simply “driving standards”. They are rebuilding belonging.

And perhaps that is now the defining challenge of modern education.

Not just:
“How do we raise outcomes?”

But:
“How do we create a society where children feel they belong again?”

That is the debate we should really be having.

Year 6 chippy and Fusion treat ❤️ and our amazing superstars this week-well done everyone and happy half term!