HT Update Week Ending 12th May

Friday 12th May 2023

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.  Feedback received, where appropriate, will be responded to and published by Monday afternoon on the school website link. 

Key messages from this week

Calendar: Key events in school next week: on Monday our History Team lead on our S1 Bannockburn Trip;  on Tuesday we’ll hold our second P7 Transition session via Zoom,  it is our S3 DofE Bronze Extra-Curricular Qualifier on Wednesday and Thursday; on Thursday students will attend a Edinburgh College Drama performance, on Thursday and Friday our Art & Design staff are leading on our S2 Jupiter Artland Trip

Staffing Update: Recruitment continues for next session with notification on the Newly Qualified Teachers we’ve been allocated for next session.  This process has been slightly disappointing with under 50% of those we requested not coming through.  This is a higher proportion than usual but now allows us to explore alternatives through offering temporary contracts to existing staff who may not have been retained and advertising through the MyJobScotland portal.  

Change of Timetable: Our current S1/S2/S3 students will change their timetable and move to S2/S3/S4 on Monday 29th May. We plan to issue new timetables to these students on Thursday 25th May during their Maths lessons to minimise disruption. Our new Senior Phase students, those currently in S4 and S5, will collect their timetables when they return from Study Leave the morning of Tuesday 30th May.  We’ll set aside a section in the Atrium to facilitate that.

Free School Meals/Public Holidays: In case you missed it we posted a short website post on this topic last week. Click here  to access the information.

Associated Schools Group:  This week we formally began the process of planning for work we’ll do next session with our seven associated primary schools.  Central to our plan is gaining a shared understanding of what we all believe constitutes excellent learning, teaching and assessment practices.  This process will involve an increase in opportunities to share good practice and learning from each other.  Our collective aim is to raise the quality of our work in all our schools and through our work develop an greater consistency in our approaches across all our schools.  LHS will benefit from increased visits by our staff to our associated schools allowing staff to develop further their approaches to working with students.  In September all our plans will be shared in full on the website.  

August 2023 Dress Code Expectations:  This week a significant number of our S1/S2/S3 students have had the chance to comment on our dress code proposals.  The process will now close on Monday.  It’s your final opportunity to comment over the weekend,  click here.  You’ll see from the website post the dates around the consultation are now inaccurate as we’ve extended the opportunity on this significant issue.  It does mean we will now share final dress code expectations for August with you on Friday 19th May.

Rosewell Bus Service – Lothian Buses have made us aware that there are service changes that will affect our students who travel from Rosewell that will be in place from 28th May 2023. One of the changes is the rerouting of the Service 49 which will now no longer operate between the Royal Infirmary and Rosewell. Pupils and staff who currently use this to get to school will now be covered by the new Service 46, which will run every 30 minutes throughout the day. Please see the timetable for the new Service 46

Due to the work of our Student Voice team campaigning for a better service for the routes to school, an additional double deck school journey will run between Rosewell and Bonnyrigg departing at 07:57 in the morning Monday-Friday. Another additional double deck journey from Bonnyrigg to Rosewell will depart at 15:31 in the afternoon Monday-Thursday.

Attached is the new route map that relates to Lasswade High School.

If you have any feedback/questions relating to this weeks update please submit them via the link below

Feedback here

Take Care

Campbell Hornell and Ali Mitchell,  Head Teachers