Thank you to those of you who were able to join us last night for our Study Skills session. As promised, last night’s presentation is available for you here. We have also collated some other materials you my find helpful in response to some of the questions you asked.
Please remember that students can still sign up for Study skills workshops through the year group Google Classrooms
We would also be grateful if you could complete a short evaluation – your feedback helps us to improve our work and provide more of the support you feel is required.
Thank you.
Effective Revision- Parent Session (1).
Study Skills Parent Session – Q & A
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Thank you to all parents/carers who booked and attended virtual appointments for our S4 Parents’ Evening (Wednesday 15th November). We hope you all had a very positive experience and look forward to communicating with you again in the near future:
We value parent/carer feedback and use it to evaluate our service and implement change. We would appreciate it if you could complete this short Google Form to share your experience of our S4 parents’ night.
On Tuesday 21 November between 5pm and 7pm the online S5/6 Parents’ Evening will be taking place. The system that we use for S1-S6 Parents’ Evenings is called ‘ParentBooking.com’ (see website https://www.parents-booking.co.uk/lasswade).
The booking system opens at 7pm on Sunday 12 November and will close at 10am on Friday 17 November.
Please note that this is the first time we have opened the booking system in the evening for these 2 year groups, S5 and S6. We are continuing to trial this approach to improve our service for parents/carers who have found accessing the booking system during normal working hours challenging. As a result, please be aware that our admin staff will not be able to respond to any issues, or respond to any communications until Monday morning.
All of our Parents’ Evenings are now fully online (video call), so if you have not taken part in an online Parents’ Evening at Lasswade HS before, please read the Parent/Carer User Guide ahead of the evening or watch this useful video: Video Meetings Demo, with Troubleshooting.
Each appointment on the evening lasts for 4 minutes (on screen timer) with a minute in between consecutive appointments.
If more than one parent/carer wishes to join the video call, the identified ‘main carer’ (person who makes the appointments) must be the person to share the joining details with the other parent/carer.
SDS Careers Advisers are available for telephone appointments to discuss any career related queries.
Results Day – Tuesday 8th August
This year all students will receive their SQA results on Tuesday 8th August. Certificates will arrive in the post and, if your child has signed up for MySQA, they will also receive a text message or email to inform them of their results too.
We know that our students have worked incredibly hard this year – but this will nevertheless be an anxious time. Whilst we hope that they receive the results they are expecting, it is important to know the process for Appeals, should one be required.
Appeals Process 2023
The Appeals 2023 service will be different to the service used last year and will be more like the service used before the pandemic. ‘Alternative assessment evidence’, like prelims, will not be required for this service. Instead, students can request a review of their ‘SQA-marked assessment components’ (i.e. exam papers and assignments). The service will be free and available to all students. Students will be able to appeal directly to SQA, or via school.
Appeals 2023 will include a priority service for students with conditional offers for further education, training or employment. To use this service you must have an existing offer (e.g. via UCAS) that you can share with SQA.
Should I appeal?
If you are considering an appeal for one of your grades, then you are advised to discuss it with your teacher. Whilst you can appeal directly, and no ‘evidence’ is sent by the school, you might want to know more about your ‘breakdown’ (marks) in the exam, and you might want to consider your performance over the last year before you make a decision.
You must also be aware that proceeding with an appeal can result in your grade going up, staying the same or – in a minority of cases – going down.
Dates for Appeals
Priority Appeals – to be submitted to SQA by 21st August (via school)
All other appeals – 29th August (via school)
Please be aware if you register for an appeal yourself there are earlier deadlines – these are available via the SQA website.
If you would like to discuss your results, or the appeals process, the SQA email inbox will be open on 8th August to respond to questions. lasswadehs-sqa@midlothian.education
If, following your results, you need to reconsider your course choice for this year there will be a short window of opportunity to do so. Please remember, coursing changes will only be considered in exceptional circumstances and where a student requires a particular course/grade for specific reasons (eg. entry to further/higher education, training etc) and not because they have changed their mind from the original course choices allocated. A Google Form will be made available prior to the return to school in August, via Google Classrooms, and students should complete this as soon as they become aware that any change of course is required.
S4-6 students who are leaving this summer should return their Chromebooks, as soon as they complete their final exam. You will find a guide to returning Chromebooks attached.
Chromebooks should be taken to Student Support, where they can be logged as retuned. It is important that students ensure that they send themselves any files they wish to retain and that they return chargers and cases.
School Leaver Device Return Guidance 2023
Thank you to all parents/carers who booked and attended virtual appointments for our S4 Parents’ Evening (Wednesday 16th November). We would like to invite you to complete a short evaluation to share our experience of this event, to inform our planning for next session. This evaluation will close on Friday 2nd December.
Your next Parents reports will be as follows:
There is lots of great work going on around Celebrating Wider Achievement at Lasswade High School. Please check out our first Wider Achievement newsletter below:
Just under 90 parent/carers were able to join senior school staff on Monday at our extraordinary Parent Forum Meeting. The focus of the meeting was on the impact of the Midlothian Council budget, set on 12/02/19, on the school. Thanks to all who were able to attend.
Lindsey McGregor, Parent Council Co-Chair, welcomed the parents/carers. Thereafter Mr Hornell outlined how the school is allocated teaching staff, the saving required for next session as well as the rationale and nine recommendations to achieve our expected savings. In total the number of full time equivalent (fte) teachers the school has been allocated is reduced by almost 4 with an overall expected allocation of just under 108 fte teachers. Mr Hornell outlined 9 recommendations to achieve this saving.
General questions for clarification were followed by parents/carers working in groups to give written feedback on the recommendations. Senior staff were available for further explanation and clarification as required. One group commented, ‘Thank you for being so transparent with regards implications of budget cuts. And thank you for asking our opinions.’
Initial analysis of the feedback gathered shows clear trends emerging from the parent/carer group; they are as follows
These emerging themes will be considered along with staff and student feedback by our senior staff week beginning 04/03/19. Our intention is to update parents week beginning 11/03/18 with detail on how our ‘listening’ phase as affected our plans to move forward as a school.