by Maya Williams

PUPILS from a primary school in Stroud celebrated the 50th anniversary since its relocation by writing their own song.

Rosary Catholic Primary School, founded in 1875, was relocated from Beeches Green to the top of Convent Lane in 1967.

Maeve Maxwell, a member of the school board of trustees, was one of the last pupils to attend the school before it was relocated.

“This is a really important anniversary for the school,” she said.

“We wanted the children to take ownership of the celebrations which would mark this special occasion.”

Representatives from the school council were tasked with gathering ideas from their classmates of how to celebrate the event.

Some suggested making a cake and some proposed planting trees, while others thought they should do some fundraising.

The idea to write a new school song was introduced by the Year 6 representatives.

All pupils were encouraged to suggest words or phrases that they thought best described the school and its strong Catholic ethos, and these were used to help create the lyrics.

The song was developed in the May half term when the children were invited to a Songwriting Workshop with Maeve Maxwell, Rosy Savory the head teacher and Ben O’Sullivan from The Songwriting Charity.

“We had a brilliant time,” said Maeve.

“By the end of the day the children had recorded their own words and melodies which formed the foundation of the song.”

It was sung for the first time on Thursday, July 13 at a special anniversary mass celebrated by Bishop Declan in the Immaculate Conception Church.

Maeve and the children are very proud of their success.

“The children are so excited by this song which they now know and love and it can be heard reverberating around the school,” said Maeve.

Another cause for celebration was the outcome of their most recent Ofsted inspection.

Staff at the school are delighted after being rated ‘good’, which they state is down to a lot of hard work.

The new school song will be sung again on Friday, July 21 at School Leavers’ Mass.

Maeve told the SNJ: “We hope that this song will continue to be sung by our Rosary School community for many generations to come.”