HT Weekly Update: Week-ending Friday 1st December 2023

Friday 1st December 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:  Next week sees a series of events across the school;   on Tuesday we are holding a day focussed on learning with a series of Learning Walks by staff,  this helps us gather information on how well our students are engaging with their learning;  on Wednesday our Advanced Higher Modern Studies students are attending a conference in Edinburgh;  on Thursday we’ll issue our S1 Alert Report via email,  we’re holding our ‘catch-up’ P7 Open Afternoon, see below,  and from 6.00pm on Thursday we are holding our Christmas Fair; on Friday it’s our Christmas Jumper Day with all students and staff encouraged to participate and support our Mission Christmas work, see below

Staffing: Quiet week regarding recruitment, new arrivals etc.  Happy Significant Birthday to Miss Atkinson tomorrow!

Christmas Concert:  This excellent evening of entertainment is being held in the school on Wednesday 13th December.  Click here for details.

P7 Open Afternoon:  This is the catch up event for parents/carers of current P7s who were not able to attend our P7 Open Evening on Tuesday 24th October. Our shortened version of that evening is on Thursday 7th December,  click here.  

National Reform: The next phase of consultation on National Education Reform focuses primarily on school inspections and a new qualifications body. In particular, what existing bodies should evolve into. I’m aware of consultation fatigue on the national agenda as it can feel somewhat distant from our day jobs in schools or ‘inaccessible’ for parents/carers. Nevertheless, it remains important that we engage and our school will respond before the opportunity for responses close on 18th December. To access the paper and consultation please click here.   Any comments you have would be welcomed through the feedback option at the bottom of this post.  We’ll then feed them into our school response.

Mission Christmas & Hamper Appeal: Our S6 Charities Committee continues to work well on Mission Christmas and our Christmas Hamper Appeal, for local families. If you are able to contribute items for our hamper appeal we’ll be happy to receive.  Donations are welcome at our School Office at anytime during the school week.    

Visible Consistencies and Core Expectations: We regularly share with students and staff what we expect as behaviours.  Next week Miss Struthers and I will aim to sense check where we are with this across our schools. This will involve some interruptions to lessons as we visit classes. We’ll do this sensitively. For ease our Visible Consistencies & Core Expectations are here for you to see.

S2 into S3 Course Choice: Following our course choice event on Monday we have added all of the resources from the evening to our school website. Click here to access these resources and provide feedback on the event. 

Parent Council: A gentle reminder that our Parent Council are keen to gather feedback on our website and on our communication practices.  Please have a look across our website, click here, and consider what’s positive/effective and what would help improve our website.  In addition,  we have a short paper on communication with students and with parents/carers, click here.  Please have a look at this short paper and consider what’s positive/effective and what would help improve our communication. Thereafter, we’d welcome feedback via this Google Form

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

 

Feedback here

Take Care

Campbell Hornell,  Head Teacher

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