HT Weekly Update: Week-ending Friday 29th September 2023

Friday 29th September 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:  October next week, how did that happen?:  on Monday and Tuesday we enable the NHS flu vaccination process; on Tuesday we’ll run our Senior Maths Challenge;  Wednesday sees our DYW Roadshow Trip for Senior Phase students to Edinburgh;  on Thursday we’ll email S3 Alert Reports to parents/carers.

Staffing: Congratulations to Emma Whittingham who was successful at the 0.5fte DHT interview last week. Emma will join our Senior Team on a temporary basis after the October break through to the end of the session.  We would like to say thank you and good luck to Ian Carpenter who leaves LHS today to start his new post at St Georges. Congratulations also to Angela Bowman who will assume an Administrative Support role working across SLT and Student Support after the October break.   

Midlothian Council Quality Assurance Visit: This week we had a highly successful ‘virtual visit’ with a focus on our work to ensure we continue to improve our practices in relation to learning, teaching and assessment approaches, wider achievements and moderation.  This ‘visit’ supports and challenges the work we do across our teams.

Digital Safeguarding: We have asked all our staff to be vigilant when students are using their Chromebooks in class. There are increasing concerns that some students are setting up proxies to seek access to sites which would otherwise be blocked by our filtering/security software. This contravenes our responsible use policies and places young people at risk.  The parents/carers of students identified are/will be informed with resulting disciplinary action.

Senior Phase Awards Ceremony – Catch Up: For students who couldn’t attend the ceremony on 13th September, we will be holding a shorter ceremony on Thursday 5th October.  Mrs Brown is coordinating this work. 

Students Out of Class: Our systems are telling us that there are an unusually high number of students continuing to be out of class throughout the day during class time, sometimes in a coordinated manner. Student Support are picking these students up and involving parents/carers where needed. We’ve asked our teachers not to release  students out of class to get water. Water bottles should be filled at break and lunch times only. 

School Photographs:  Coldwells have asked us to inform parents/carers that if they have not received a proof by now they can go online login and request their child’s unique ID.  This allows them to see all relevant photographs.  We have agreed with Coldwells that any issues/questions/concerns that parents or carers have should be directed to them and not the school.  There are two pieces of relevant information, click here and here. 

S2 Parents Evening Thursday 10th October – By Video Call:  Thank you to the families who have already booked their video call appointments for the upcoming Parents Evening.  Please note that the booking system closes on Monday 2nd October at 3.30pm.  Parents’ Evening – Parent Details Login (parents-booking.co.uk) If anyone is having any issues logging in please contact lasswadehsoffice@midlothian.education

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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