HT Update: Week-ending Friday 27th June 2025

Friday 27th June 2025

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.  As I’m still about, any feedback received will be responded to and published on Monday 30th June afternoon on the school website.  

Our next HT Update will be on Friday 15th August 2025

Feedback from last week’s HT Update: click here

Key messages from this week  

Calendar:  Significant events week beginning 11/08/25;  on Monday and Tuesday students should not attend.  These are Inset Days for staff only;  on Wednesday we’ll welcome all our students back and hold a series of Year Group Assemblies.   Parents/carers should continue to note that there is a ‘calendar under construction, almost all dates are draft’ message across our school calendar on this website.   The Inset Days and Holidays are accurate,  other items will be worked on over the summer and agreed on our Inset Days.  I expect that our update on 15/08/25 will highlight important calendar items.   

Staffing:  Yesterday was the last day for a number of colleagues who are moving on to pastures new.   We thank these colleagues for all their work with our students and their support for colleagues.  Best wishes to; Josh Cowan,  Claudia Mitchell, Nicole Newbiggin, Raakshaana Gnanamurali,  Cat Kroske, Dimitrios Dimatsas, Lucy Park, Morag Paton,  Stephen Turnbull and Victoria Hunter.  Sarah McKay,  has been granted a two-year career break and is off on a ‘walkabout’ to Australia.  

Recent departures in June that I have failed to update you on are Charlene Milligan and Jenny Paterson.  These colleagues were an important part of our Student Support, Creative Learning and Pod Teams.  

This week we filled the Teacher of Home Economics and Teacher of Biology posts.  We have no posts currently live on myjobscotland.  

Wider Achievement News:   We’ve posted the Summer Wider Achievement News on the website, click here. A great addition to your holiday reading. On the page you’ll also be able to access previous editions.    My thanks to Kathryn Park, PE, who has been leading on this work in recent sessions.  I’m sure you’ll agree she’s done a fantastic job.  She’s now passed the wider achievement baton to Rebecca Hardie, Art & Design, who’ll lead on this from August.  

BGE Awards Ceremonies 2025:  This week, we celebrated 505 student award winners from our 4 school Houses. The ceremonies were absolutely fantastic, with a musical performance, a quiz, the Masked Singer and a grand finale of ‘The Candy Man’ from our school show.  I trust that parents/carers have increased the ‘pocket-money’ of the 505 recipients.   We had 750 guests at the ceremonies as well as the entire House Teams. What a wonderful way to end the year! A huge thank you to the House Teams, Music and Drama staff, Angela Bowman, the School and House Captains and student helpers.  In addition, particular thanks to Mrs Brown for her leadership on this work. 

Dress Code:  Following parental feedback via an earlier update, we have worked with our uniform supplier.  This will add a sweatshirt option to our LHS range.  This is a cheaper option than the quarter zip. It may not yet be ‘live’ on the BE website but look out for it over the next couple of weeks.  

Feedback here

Take Care and have a wonderful summer,  I’m off to the golf course whenever possible. 

Campbell Hornell,  Head Teacher

Share on Facebook