Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

What a brilliant turn out for our Family Mass on Sunday. I was especially proud of the way that the younger pupils spoke out with such confidence when they presented their prayers.

As you would expect one of the area prospective parents tend to have a number of questions about when I first meet them is about the special character of our school.

The questions mostly are not about the religious education programme, but they usually focus on what makes our school different from a state school.

In my roll I visit a number of schools for a range of reasons. One major difference with our school and large state schools is the close tie up between the school and the families and the parish.

After the Mass on Sunday a number of parishioners stopped me to tell me of how much they enjoyed the schools input at the Mass and how great it was to see all of those young ones there.

There is a saying that "it takes a village to raise a child".

Sadly a change that I have noticed over a number of years in our society is that families are becoming more isolated. People don’t belong to the range of clubs that they once did. So young people and indeed their families aren’t always exposed to those supportive social situations. As a consequence the school and parish become more important as support offering institutions.

So as a school we remain strongly supportive of enriching and developing further those ties between school and Parish as fundamentally our school exists because of ou