HT Weekly Update: Week-ending Friday 8th September 2023

Friday 8th 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:  A reminder that our ‘Whole School – Lasswade High School’ calendar is now visible on the school website.   Click here to view it.  Next week:  on Monday our S4/5 London Trip departs with a Thursday return; on Monday and Tuesday we’ll hold House Assemblies;  on Wednesday it’s our Senior Phase Award Ceremony;  on Thursday we’ll conduct our annual school travel ‘Hands Up Survey’ with students;  next weekend is the September Weekend, this means school is closed for students on Friday 15th and Monday 18th September.  

Staffing: On Monday we welcomed Callum Boyd, Teacher of History, to our school.   We offer our congratulations to Matthew Kennedy (Mathematics) and his wife who welcomed a baby boy earlier this week. We would like to wish Ian Keith (Creative Design) all the best as he moves onto his new post in East Lothian.  Ian finished today and has been a valuable part of our team making a big impact in his 5+ years with us.  Thank you Ian.

SQA Appeals: The results from priority appeals were released this week – we submitted 6 ‘priority’ appeals.  These are generally for last years ‘leavers’ who have appealed with college/university offers in mind.  The school will contact these former students. All other appeals have now been submitted to the SQA for consideration. In total we have submitted 154 appeals. We should know the outcome of these appeals in October – no date has, as yet, been provided by the SQA.  I’ll keep you up to date on this.  

SQA 2024:  Last week I advised parents/carers on the dates of exams then live on the SQA website.  This week all schools been informed by SQA that the 2024 exam timetable has been taken off the website while they make some updates.  Amongst other actions SQA are reviewing exam dates towards the end of the timetable.  They apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused.  SQA expect to publish the updated version of the timetable by next Friday, 15 September.   A reminder that much nearer the time students will be issued with their individual timetable.  

Free School Meals:  Midlothian Council have asked us to direct parents/carers whose children are in receipt of free school meals to their website.  The post gives details on the payment schedule around the September Weekend, click here for details

Parent Council:  A huge thank you to those parents able to attend our first Parent Council meeting of the session on Tuesday of this week.  We have two requests for parents/carers from the meeting

• If there are items you’d like Parent Council to discuss this session, please feedback through the Google Form ‘Feedback here’ link at the bottom of this post
• Please use the same link if you’d be interested in fulfilling the ‘Secretary/Clerk to the Parent Council’ role.  This is an administrative post with a small associated payment.  The 2 main roles are to take minutes at our meetings (6 per year) and support Parent Council communication.  Submit your details, via the link, and I’ll put you in touch with Sara Adam, our Parent Council Chair  

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

Feedback here

Take Care

Campbell Hornell and Ali Mitchell,  Head Teachers

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