St Francis of Assisi Catholic Primary School

Our Catholic Primary school is for the age range 4 - 11 and is part of the full Catholic provision under the foundation of the diocese, for the parishes of Clevedon and Nailsea. Our parther schools in this scheme are St Bede's RC School (11 - 16) and St Brendan's RC Sixth Form College (16-19). These are both in Bristol and we have convenient transport to both these schools.

St Francis' School takes in pupils in the September before they are five. They have a full seven years in the school and leave at age 11. There is thus a full three year provision for all infants at the school.

We are here to provide a quality primary education enhanced by the Catholic atmosphere of love and care of each other and helping children to relate to God in their lives, lived to the values of the Gospel. Anyone who visits the school is struck by the warm friendly atmosphere here, and the way that the children can speak freely, expressing themselves and their ideas in a polite manner.

We opened in 1979, followed by an official opening of the whole building in 1980, on St Francis' Day. John Albion, now retired, had been headteacher since those times when we had just 48 pupils on roll, to the present where we have grown to a roll of 213 pupils. During those years we have seen our mother parish of Clevedon grow to form the two parishes of Clevedon and Nailsea. Nailsea parish built its church in 1985 after six years of Sunday Mass in our school hall. We are now lucky to have school Mass weekly, said alternately by Fr Michael and one of the Friars. Children from all areas of our catchment can thus meet their priest in their school day as well as at church.

St Francis' School PTA is very active and raises about £4000 in a year. The Association has tremendous spirit and mutual support between parents and school, something we value most highly. The Parish and the PTA occasionally have joint events, so bringing together the Parish and the school in a special way, co-operating as parents and parishioners. Hopefully we shall have some more of these in the future.

With the recent educational reforms the school has now been given control of its own finances since 1990. This enables us to be more flexible in our spending, We have already managed to keep our class sizes a little smaller than before and we aim to carry on doing so. We have also recently succeeded in joint efforts, with the school and the governors, to upgrade the school grounds. We can also make savings across our many spending areas and divert these to the children and their needs, so achieving even higher standards.

Both parishes are represented on the Governing Body and a number of School Governors live in Nailsea parish.

Our school has a number of facilities that the parishes and their organisations can use, either free or at very low rates, because the parishes are the foundation of the school and paid their original contribution to the building as a Voluntary Aided arrangement.

If prospective parents or parishioners wish to make contact with the school for admission of their children (or to use facilities) they will be most welcome. Please call (01275) 855373 and we will do what we can to help. A fully detailed prospectus may also be obtained.