This concise weekly HT Update is generally published every Friday afternoon. It’s a simple opportunity for you to also feedback/ask questions via the link at the bottom of each Update. Any feedback received will be responded to and published on Monday afternoon on the school website.
No feedback received from last HT Update.
Key messages from this week
Calendar: Significant events week beginning 01/09/25; on Monday we’ll hold our S1 and S2 Student Voice meetings; on Wednesday thorough Friday we’ll have staff and students involved in our Silver Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Expedition; on Thursday we hold our Modern Languages Business Breakfast and a Road Safety Assembly for our S6 students
Staffing: Sheena Young, Teacher of Business, has her last day with us on Tuesday of next week. She has given many years worth of service to the school and in the most recent sessions on a part-time basis. Sheena has supported a countless number of students in our school who, like us, will think fondly of her. She has worked with a quiet determination, dignity and commitment to her students and subject. Thank you Sheena for your service to our school and enjoy your well deserved retirement.
Community Work: As part of their S6 Experience we ask our S6 to ‘give back’ and volunteer in ways that help the community. When I speak with members of the public at the front of the school often they share concerts about levels of litter in and around the school. Earlier this week 4 of our S6 went out to help. Click here to see their work.
Reporting: As you are aware, this session, we’re pleased to announce that all student reports, written by teachers, will be issued exclusively online through parentsportal. We do not plan to print out reports and send them home with your child. Parentsportal is a brand-new application for Midlothian, and we’re delighted that over 70% of our families have already signed up and are using it daily for attendance reporting – thank you for embracing this change! A particular well done to those parents/carers of S2. Very impressive work.
If you haven’t registered yet, you’ll find the link here with information on how to register and what else is available through the application. Our school office team will be happy to help with any questions or technical issues, so please do not hesitate to get in touch.
The percentage, per year group, of parents/carers not yet linked with paentsportal and the date the first report of the session is shown below. Hopefully this will continue to encourage sign-up!
Lasswade Star Search: Several of our senior Performing Arts students, a.k.a. The Performing Arts Committee, are working to put together an evening of entertainment for your enjoyment. The evening will showcase some of the most talented folk we have in our community. Wednesday 17th September is when it all happens. It’s sure to be a great night. Click here for more details.
S4 Work Experience 3rd-7th November: This week we posted details in the S4 Year Group Google Classroom regarding Work Experience. Students have been asked to complete a form that is ‘attached’ to the post. If students have questions they are asked to speak with their Student Support teacher or Mrs Sharp in 110 for more information. Please note that paper copies of the form are available for students in room 110.
New Service for Parents: ‘Into Work’ has launched a new in-work support service to support neurodivergent and autistic parents in Midlothian to sustain employment. Click here for more information.
Midlothian Council School Travel Plan Survey 2025: Every two years we work with Midlothian Council to update our “School Travel Plan”. This process allows parents/carers to highlight any road safety issues and also notify the council of young peoples’ travel habits. To have your say Midlothian have asked us to share an easy to complete online survey. The survey can be accessed by the following link – click here
Please be vigilant to the section regarding School Crossing Guides. This is extremely important as the current locations of guides are being reviewed. We will be using the data we receive back to identify if crossing guides are being under utilised or could benefit from being put at another location.
All data received will be used to update School Travel Plans. A completion date of Friday 26th September 2025 has been set for those to submit their responses. If a child is travelling from multiple residencies throughout the school week, please submit multiple forms.
Take Care
Campbell Hornell, Head Teacher
No feedback received via the HT Update posted on 22/08/25.
FRIDAY 29TH AUGUST – DRESS DOWN DAY!
This concise weekly HT Update is generally published every Friday afternoon. It’s a simple opportunity for you to also feedback/ask questions via the link at the bottom of each Update. Any feedback received will be responded to and published on Monday afternoon on the school website.
Feedback received from last HT Update: Click here.
Key messages from this week
Calendar: Significant events week beginning 25/08/25; on Monday and Tuesday next week the school photographer is in school, see below, on Monday we’ll also hold our S4 Student Voice meeting; on Tuesday we’ll hold our S6 Student Voice meeting; on Wednesday and Thursday we have Senior Phase Awards Ceremony rehearsals; on Thursday our Lab Skills class visit Seafield, our Silver DofE Award group undertake canoe training and we’ll hold S3 and S5 Student Voice meetings; Friday is our August Dress Down Day
Staffing: Congratulations to Stella Fotheringham, who in line with our established practice, will step up to ‘act’ as PT Creative Design for Amanda Montague when she begins her maternity.
Senior Phase Awards Ceremony 2025: Our seniors’ achievements will now be celebrated on Wednesday 10th September. This week I was pleased to meet with the following principal prize winners to break the news and offer my congratulations,
Reporting: As highlighted in last week’s HT Update I’ve tried to summarise our approach to reporting for this session. Click here, to read more.
Whole School Photographs: Our school photographers Coldwells will be in on Monday and Tuesday next week to take individual photographs for all students as well as the S6 Year Group photograph. Please see our webpost for more details including the planned schedule and how to book sibling and fun sessions.
NHS Flu Vaccination – Whole School: Students will receive their Flu Vaccination Consent forms over the next week. Consent forms should be completed and returned to Student Reception by Friday 29th August. Our Flu Vaccinations are scheduled to take place on 26th & 27th November, however the nursing team requires the forms in advance to allow them to triage these. Thank you in advance for this quick turnaround.
Parentsportal: (Reminder) Thank you to the many of you who have already signed up for Parentsportal. This application is now available to our new S1 parents and carers. If you have not yet done so please see the link for more information. This session Parentsportal will be the platform through which you will access all future Student Reports, as well as a number of other functions designed to support communication and engagement including reporting student absences and the ability to view student timetables. It is therefore important that you sign-up. If you have any questions or problems please get in touch with the school office lasswadehsoffice@midlothian.education
Performing Arts: We are delighted to announce that this year’s Junior Panto, held on 17th and 18th December, will be ‘Peter Pan’. If you’ve a child in S1/2/3 please let them know that auditions are open to anyone from S1 – S3 and will be taking place on Monday 1st September and Wednesday 3rd September from 3:30pm – 5pm in the Assembly Hall. To apply all students need to do is fill out the google form attached to a recent post in their Year Group Google Classroom. This must be completed by Thursday 28th August. If students have any questions, they should pop in and speak to Mrs McKenzie (Rm 007) or Miss Brown (Rm 006) in the Drama Team.
‘Family Friendly’ Midlothian Council Service Improvement Plan: We’ve been asked to share this with you. It gives an overview of the improvement that Midlothian as a local authority is aiming to secure through all schools and helps inform our own school plan. Family Friendly Service Improvement Plan.
Advice for Families re Online Safety: As the new school year begins, Midlothian Council are asking us to remind all families that you can find webinars and website links on the digital safety page of the Equipped for Learning website to help with keeping children safe online. You may be aware that internetmatters.org is a particularly helpful site that has downloadable parent guides for commonly used apps and platforms, including this one for WhatsApp. If you are worried about online communication involving your child, please visit the CEOP site for advice and reporting.
Take Care
Campbell Hornell, Head Teacher
Response to feedback submitted from HT Update week ending 15/08/25.
Apologies for the late post. No excuses, first full week back and it completely fell off my radar!
| My Question | Comment | Suggestion related to the school this week is: | HT’s Response |
| I used the new parent portal this week to notify the school of a medical appointment. Very quick and easy to do and was great to get an acknowledgment alert via the app from the school too. | Thank you for the feedback. Hopefully it’s helpful for other parents/carers and encourage those who haven’t yet to sign up. We think parentsportal is a service with real potential to help. |
| Hello, a friendly piece of feedback, I get a lot of ‘your child is absent’ ‘ your child is late’ messages from the school and occasionally they are valid. But most of the time it is because my child is involved in some school extra curricular activity or trip. At one point last term I was getting them daily, sometimes telling me they had not turned up to school at all when in fact he was on a school trip, doing some school sanctioned activity or been asked to do something by another teacher. This dulls down the credibility of the messages as I now just assume them to be inaccurate. I know it’s tricky doing admin for such a large school but I know these texts were introduced for a reason so this is just some feedback about the effectiveness of them. | Thank you for this feedback. I’d agree, inaccurate messages are not helpful and erode confidence in subsequent messages.
Your feedback allows us to think about our systems and we will use this as a case study to establish learning for us and in time a better service for parents/carers. |
Our school photographers Coldwells will be in on Monday and Tuesday next week to take individual photographs for all students as well as the S6 Year Group photograph.
The planned schedule is attached, this is subject to change.
Additional information on sibling or fun group photos is also attached and should be booked in advance directly with Coldwells.
This also includes information on how to set up a Coldwells account to view and purchase your young persons photographs.
This concise weekly HT Update is generally published every Friday afternoon. It’s a simple opportunity for you to also feedback/ask questions via the link at the bottom of each Update. Any feedback received will be responded to and published on Monday afternoon on the school website.
No feedback received from last HT Update
Key messages from this week
Calendar: Significant events week beginning 18/08/25; by Friday we will have completed all Senior Phase Re-coursing. Parents/carers should continue to note that the Whole School calendar is live on the website, click here. See the item below re Key Dates Calendar.
Staffing: On Monday we welcomed some new staff to our school. Kelly Smith, Teacher of Business; Natalie Stevenson, Teacher of Computing; Luke Peggie and Emily Jack both Teachers of Biology; Ellie Wood, Teacher of PE; Mark Millar, Teacher of Home Economics and Patricia Currie as Teacher of Additional Support Needs in The Pod. David Kelly has also joined as a Learning Assistant. We also have three Newly Qualified Teachers as part of the national induction programme; Laura Day in English, Gareth Fleming in Creative Design and Mia Tracey in PE. We welcome all these new members of staff to our school. Some of you may recognise the name Mia Tracey who has joined our PE Team. Mia is a former student and School Captain, returning now to work in the school. I am now officially old. No need to provide me feedback on that!
Key Dates Calendar: As indicated above the Calendar element of our website highlights important dates for parents/carers. You’ll see three calendars that I ask you keep an eye on. However, to give you a two-sided summary of Key Dates click on the link, Key Calendar Parents 25_26. This will give you Inset days and Holidays, the dates that Reports are issued via Parentsportal, the dates of our Student Progress Consultation Evenings (SPCE), Course Choice windows and Parent Council Meetings. Next week I’ll do an update on the rationale behind our Reporting and SPCE pattern. Submit any questions via the feedback option and I’ll build that into next week’s Update.
Parentsportal: Thank you to the many of you who have already signed up for Parentsportal. This application is now available to our new S1 parents and carers. If you have not yet done so please access this link for more information. This session Parentsportal will be the platform through which you will access all student Reports, as well as a number of other functions designed to support communication and engagement including reporting student absences and the ability to view student timetables. It is therefore important that you sign-up. If you have any questions or problems please get in touch with the school office lasswadehsoffice@midlothian.education
Student Voice: Student Voice is our democratic system of communication with our students. We look for year representative for all stages of the school. Year Councils meet regularly through-out the session so that our student’s ‘voice’ can be heard. Representatives form Year Councils also attend the regular Parliaments where all year groups meet with myself. This system allows student concerns and suggestions to be heard and responded to through our actions. This week Mrs Atkinson posted sign-up messages in Year Group Classrooms. Please encourage your child to consider signing up. If they have any questions they should see Mrs Atkinson in 114 or Mr Bain in 115.
Take Care
Campbell Hornell, Head Teacher
We hope that you are having an enjoyable summer and you are looking forward to returning to school this week. We would like to share details with you regarding the first week back (Wednesday 13th – Friday 15th August).
All students return to school on Wednesday 13th August at 8.40am.
ALL Students
All S1-S6 students should arrive at school for no later than 8.35am and make their way to their ‘house room’ for 8.40am. For 20 minutes, ‘house teachers’ will re-issue students with their timetables and share important messages. At 9am, all students will then attend their period 1 classes.
Students should check their year group Google Classroom to find out who their house teacher is and which classroom to report to. There will also be posters at the main entrance and playground doors with this information.
Please remember to wear school uniform, bring your charged Chromebook and other necessary materials such a refillable water bottle.
S1 Students
S1 students should meet their S6 Buddies in the playground from 8.30am each morning (just like the June transition days). Please remember to bring along your S1 information card, just in case you forget your school house or registration class.
For the first week (Wednesday 13th, Thursday 14th and Friday 15th August), all S1 students will have an extended break and lunch time to enable them to familiarise themselves with the dining hall and playground. S1 break time will be 10.10am – 10.35am and S1 lunch time will be 12.05pm – 12.55pm (first week only).
As you are aware, all S1 students must remain on campus during break and lunch times. With this in mind, all S1 students should bring a snack for break time and students will be entitled to a free school lunch on Wednesday 13th August (S1 only). S1 students are also welcome to bring a packed lunch.
As S1 students will be receiving their ParentPay information and PIN code on Wednesday, they should bring a packed lunch and/or top up ParentPay accounts ahead of Thursday.
All S1 POD students, should report to the Cabin directly at 8.45am.
S6 Buddies
We are very fortunate to have 90 fully trained and dedicated S6 Buddies, who will continue to assist our new S1 students during the first week of school in August (Wednesday 13th to Tuesday 19th August).
S6 Buddies should ensure that they report to Mrs Brown, Mrs Main and Mrs Ramsay in the Atrium at 8.30am to collect their signs. S6 Buddies will then meet their classes in the playground and escort them to their house room/house teacher for 8.40am. At this point, S6 Buddies should then report to their own house room/house teacher before collecting their S1 classes again at 9am.
S6 Buddies will support their allocated S1 classes around the school and between classes for 5 school days. S6 Buddies will then also conduct a class visit in late August/early September to touch base with their S1 students.
Head Teacher’s Update
At the end of each week, our Head Teacher (Campbell Hornell), will share plans/updates for the week ahead.