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HEAD TEACHER'S NEWSLETTER
Well, the end of term is here along with a bumper edition of the final newsletter of the year. We celebrated the end of this school year with House assemblies this week with lots of positives, and also with staff on Tuesday, saying farewell to a number of colleagues.
Thank you to Mr Chan, Maths; Ms Trestrail, CDT; Mrs Gill, RME; Mrs Coyle, English & Drama; Mrs Malone, Business Education; Ms Peacock, Modern Languages; Ms McDonald, Geography; Ms Ritchie, Business Education; Ms Hinselwood, PE; Ms Sweetnam, English; Mrs Sutherand, SfL; Mrs Lawrence, Art and Mrs Ormerod, DHT, who leave us today.
Congratulations to Ms Chisholm who takes up the part time acting DHT post to share with Mrs Watson from August, and to Ms McCrorie who takes up acting part time PT History and Geography from August.
We have a number of new teachers joining us in August and I will introduce them then.
Thank you to Burgh staff for inviting me to your P7 Leavers’ assembly- it was a lovely and emotional celebration, and I hope that the Burgh pupils will have as many fond memories of their time at the Grammar as they clearly have from primary school.
Thanks also to East Lothian Bouncy Castles who provided us with Giant Jenga, Connect four, snakes & ladders, dominoes and spacehoppers/ sacks for our Sports’ Day last Friday, as well as Simpsons Ice Cream Tranent, and Pinkie St Peters PS for the stage and tables.
It is the end of my first year as Headteacher of the Grammar, and it has been a privilege, honour and pleasure to work with our amazing staff team and equally amazing young people. There is no job I would rather do, and no school I would rather be in.
Wishing you all the happiest of summer holidays.
Jodie Hannan
School Policies
Our school policies on uniform, lateness and the use of devices can be viewed by clicking on the button below, or via the school website.
Head Pupil Team 2022-23
After a competitive interview process and an extremely high calibre of applicants I am delighted to announce the Head Pupil Team for 2022-23.
Rory Steedman and Kayla McKinnie are joint Head Pupils, and Jamie Fleming and Orla Thomson Deputes.
Rory Steedman
I am joint Head Pupil with Kayla for 2022/23. A few things about me is that I am an active person who loves to play hockey and rugby. I also like to go out with my friends to play football and play my PS4 when the weather is not so nice. I play hockey for Inverleith hockey club whilst also playing for Scotland U18s as well as also playing rugby for Preston Lodge rugby club. I am looking forward to being a part of the Head Team and I will do my best to support all students in the coming year.
Kayla McKinnie
Hi! If you've not met me before my name is Kayla, and I'm very excited to be one of the Head Pupils with Rory this year. It's not been easy for the school the past few years with Covid-19, and I know particularly hard on certain pupils. I want to try and put that behind us this year, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure everyone has a great year. Outside of school, I work as a lifeguard, I spend time coaching swimming as well as swimming myself, and I love watching films.
Orla Thomson
Hello, my name is Orla and I will be one of your joint Depute Head pupils with Jamie for the next year. I’m excited to work alongside the head pupils, the staff and of course the pupils of our school to make MGS a more inclusive and welcoming place. I hope to make sure every single pupil is heard and understood in our school community :)
Jamie Fleming
Hi everyone, I’m Jamie. Thank you all for this opportunity, I’m excited to get to work on lot’s of fun new projects after the summer. I hope everyone has a great holiday and if you see me working feel free to say hi!
Thank you to staff for giving me this position! I’m really buzzing about it, we’ve got a great team!
House Champions Day
After 6 months of great engagement, participation and behaviour… it was time to crown the 2022 House Champion.
*drumroll please* WELL DONE CAIRD HOUSE!
Caird House won this year’s house championship, finishing on a point total of 3236 points. What an impressive final total, congratulations and well done to all pupils in Caird!
To celebrate, Caird pupils got a period of fun and games on the back green of the school to reward pupils for their hard work. There were many activities including a Bouncy Castle, Sumo Suits, Sack Race, Space Hoppers and many more activities. Caird were brilliant yesterday afternoon and seemed to enjoy the day, showing excellent behaviour throughout and real high spirits. We hope this helps push all pupils next year to gain as many house points as possible to get their own day of fun in June 2023.
Mrs McElhaney and Miss Holmes were incredibly impressed by all pupils' hard work across the school this session to gain as many house points as possible for their participation and determination, this year. We cannot wait for the year ahead as we create even more house events and opportunities to keep building House Spirit at MGS.
Curriculum Development
This year we have embarked upon some exciting curriculum developments. By combining S4, S5 and S6 pupils in some subject areas we have been able to create an opportunity for pupils to embark on Wider Achievement courses. Some pupils have had an opportunity to select these courses and other will be able to do so in August. The courses are designed to allow pupils to develop employability skills, build confidence and interact with others. The courses developed include; Advanced Higher Buddies, Paired Reading, Number Friend, Dynamic Youth Awards, Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award, Gardening, Italian, Languages Leadership Award, HWB Leadership Award and SQA Barista course.
On Wednesday morning, MGS staff embarked upon their Barista Skills training and are very much looking forward to delivering the SQA Barista Skills award at the start of the new term in August. Thank you very much to Machina Coffee Roasters for leading the training and for being so supportive regarding the delivery of this award here at MGS. We are all very excited for our young people to begin this new and exciting journey. We are going to have a latte fun along the way! ☕
On Sunday 3rd July Dr Brown, Mrs Dias, Miss Rankin, Miss Scott and Mrs Watson become ‘newbee’ beekeepers as they begin the Scottish Association of Beekeeping Course at Newbattle Abbey College. As beginner beekeepers they will train for one year to be able to deliver the SQA Beekeeping course as part of our Wider Achievement courses in August 2023. We hope that pupils will get a buzz out of this new curriculum offering! Look out for our enterprise group selling MGS honey in years to come.
We would like to give a huge vote of thanks to the Musselburgh Area Partnership who allocated us funding to explore the Barista and Beekeeping courses, without this support and encouragement these opportunities would not have been possible.
Parent Council
Well – we made it through another school year! Enjoy the summer break and please join us at meetings from August onwards. We’ve lots we want to do to help support our young people, the staff and the school so that every pupil achieves want they want to achieve. We need you to make this happen. Parent or carer involvement in education ensures that children do the very best they can and you can be part of that too.
We have a top tips thread about uniform on our Facebook page and someone has shared that the next 20% off school uniform event at M&S in on Tuesday 5th July – so if you shop there and need new uniform take a note of that day!
For now though, take a deep breath and enjoy not chasing pupils out the door to be in registration by 08:30! We’ll see you again in August
Shona and Andrew Co-Chairs MGS PC
Summer Picnic Concert
After two and a half years of no live music, the MGS music team were finally able to put on an in-person concert! Last Thursday evening, the Junior Choir, Senior Choir, String Group, Wind Band (including special guests from Stoneyhill and Campie Primary), Junior Rock Band, Senior Rock Band and Pipers performed an outdoor concert to proud parents, carers, family and friends. For many of our young people, this was their first chance to perform live and they were fantastic! It’s great to be back performing, we are all so proud of the MGS musicians. Here’s to many more performances in the near future.
Pupil Voice
Refurbishment Artwork Competition
The Pupil Voice Team would like to say a big thank you to everyone who submitted an entry into the Refurbishment Artwork Competition.
Many congratulations to Emma Hamilton in S5 whose winning photograph will be printed out on a large scale and displayed in our newly refurbished social space.
Well done Emma!
Focus Group Outcomes
We’d like to thank all the pupils who participated in Focus Groups/consultation surveys this session, conducting themselves in a very mature manner to offer thoughts and opinions on a number of topics. Pupil Voice really does matter and has helped make change within our school this year. Below are the outcomes for the S6 Study Periods/Prelim Examination consultations:
S2 and S3 Modern Studies 'Send my Friend'
S2 and S3 Modern Studies pupils have been learning about how unequally a child’s right to education is met across the world.
S2 pupils have studied the barriers to education from disability to toilet facilities and a lack of qualified teachers. S3 have carried out in depth research into a country of their choice with high numbers of children not in education, they have looked at Liberia, Jamaica, Haiti and Syria amongst others.
Today in school our local MP Kenny MacAskill came to visit to collect campaign materials for the Send my Friend to school campaign. These are to remind him of the UK Government’s promise “Education for all”. The international community has committed to ensuring inclusive and quality education for all by 2030. However, 262 million children are currently out of school, and for those that are in school many are not actually learning. https://sendmyfriend.org/
Royal Highland Show 23rd June
The Royal Highland Show was back this year and being a traditional favourite across a number of departments at MGS, we were very excited to take 126 pupils along to the event.
We explored all that the Show had to offer including sampling (lots of!) Scottish foods, viewing prize winning animals and learning all about Scottish companies and rural life. Miss Holmes challenged pupils to a ‘RHS Selfie Bingo’ which included taking photos with a John Deer tractor and ‘Something you can wear on your head’ (hence the Cowboy hats!).
A super day out was had by all and our pupils made us very proud with their participation, respect and enthusiasm. We can’t wait to go back again next year!
Free to Good Home Stall
This week saw our final Free to Good Home stall of the year. Mrs Howie and Mrs Beveridge began this initiative a few years ago when there was only one small table in the dining hall at break and lunch time. With hard work and dedication to such a wonderful cause their stall has grown incredibly well over the last 12months, taking over half of our large assembly hall. This month we received our largest donation to date with so many new clothes, accessories, toiletries and stationary to give away. On behalf of the Support Faculty we would like to thank everyone involved in helping make this event such a massive success. Here are some quotes from pupils on the day:
“I can’t believe everything is free, I got so many presents for my family”
“I loved helping out, can we do this every week?”
Army Cadet Course
We are always seeking opportunities for our pupils outside the classroom to support their attitude towards school, and Lucy Meldrum recently spent time at Army Cadets.
Lucy was easily distracted in school in S1 and 2 and mixing with others who were encouraging her behaviour. Peers knew how to wind Lucy up and she would react to them, resulting in having to manage the consequences of sanctions due to the severity of her behaviour. Lucy’s behaviour and attitude were spiralling downwards and so she was referred to our Employability & Partnership Officer, Ms Hoffman, who worked closely with Lucy on a 1:1 basis.
Ms Hoffman offered Lucy a place on the Bridges Centre Motorbike Project(BCMP) and this was a challenge for Lucy as it was so far out of her comfort zone. But she gave it her best shot! The BCMP uses off road training , motorcycles and team activities as a means to engage young people: all programmes are ultimately aimed at promoting inclusion and social welfare. Lucy now volunteers at BCMP every weekend: they speak very highly of her and she is a fantastic role model to young people. Lucy strongly believes that this was a major turning point in her life as she realised she was on her last warning and needed to turn her life around. Following on from BCMP, Lucy no longer needed a daily monitor target card in school and her behaviour and attitude towards school changed drastically for the better.
Lucy is now in S5 and recently applied to become a prefect. She is currently studying Higher English, PE and Media and Drama. Lucy;s ideal career path is to become a PE teacher or join the Police or Army, jobs she would never have considered in the past.
Lucy’s Army Cadets experience
I really enjoyed my time at the army cadet course. Being the only female from Musselburgh Grammar I was a bit hesitant but was glad to see there was other girls there when I arrived . This course was an amazing opportunity to experience a brief short insight into army life and one of my favourite activities was Patrolling.
This is where we went out as a group and were put into different formations such as arrow head , stagger file , single file and many more. Another thing I really enjoyed was ‘capture and evade’ this was when we went out into the forest and had to be as camouflaged as possible putting camo paint on our face and had to get to the red line without been seen.
One other thing I really enjoyed was tasting rations, this is when we got to cook army food and taste it which was fun !. Overall I would recommend this experience to anyone. I spent 4 days at this course from Tuesday to Friday when going to the camp I didn’t really know anything about the army and the jobs etc and didn’t even want to go into the army but a few days being in army life I definitely changed my mind ! I’m now thinking about a career in the army.
Lucy Meldrum
Ocean Youth Trust Scotland – Foxlake team building session
A group of 10 pupils will be going on the Ocean Youth Trust Scotland (OYTS) yacht for a one week working residential in August and a follow up sailing in October. Each of these voyages will provide a uniquely powerful and extremely effective environment for the personal and social development of the selected pupils. The demanding work and often unpredictable nature of sail training requires participants to confront many challenges, both physical and emotional.
Firstly, as part of our teambuilding, getting to know one another and bonding prior to the sailings we went to Foxlake on Thursday 30 June. When we arrived we participated with FoxFall, a unique low ropes course challenge over water, it is the ultimate test of skill, balance and finishing the course without falling in is not an easy task.
We were then lucky enough to take part in the Ringo rides, this was super fun (Mr Ferrie seemed to enjoy this more than the pupils) and the pupils were able to take turns in tearing up and down the lake on a big inflatable donut.
The pupils and staff thoroughly enjoyed the day out and are very much looking forward to the adventure in the new term.
Careers Advice
A message from your school careers advisers Carla and Karolina: we would like to invite those senior students considering their options, including moving on from school, for one-to-one careers appointments. The new academic session has just started, and you have had an opportunity to experience your new timetable and learn about the school expectations for this year. If you'd like to review your career plans and ideas, if you decide to move on from school and would like to speak to a careers adviser, please contact us. During the summer break Karolina Green will be based at the Musselburgh careers centre : Station Road, EH21 7PQ, and will be available to support you with your plans. The SDS careers centre phone line is 01316653120.
Karolina Green, School Careers Adviser
Riverside Medical Practice
I am aware of a review on Riverside Medical Practice to which families may want to contribute and that it is a important matter for families living in the Musselburgh area so consultation details are below. This is an invitation to focus groups for parents, staff, and young people who are patients/have experience of Riverside Medical Practice.
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My name is Gina Alexander. I am working with the independent external team reviewing access to healthcare at Riverside Medical Practice outlined in this piece in the East Lothian Courier.
Riverside Medical Practice outlined in this piece in the East Lothian Courier.
The review team are keen to hear from a cross section of the community and particularly those who are less well heard. I would be grateful for your help in inviting people you work with to take part. We will be running 3 or 4 focus groups: 2 on 19 July, 2 on 21 July. Ideally these will be face to face and take place one of the following venues which I am sure you will know:-
Esk Rooms 1 & 2, Brunton Hall, Ladywell Way, Musselburgh EH21 6AA – on 19 July 2022 from 10am to 12.30pm or 2pm to 4.30pm
Meeting Room, George Johnston Centre, 35 Winton Place, Tranent EH33 1AE – on 21 July 2022 from 10am to 1pm
Saltire Room 1, John Muir House, Brewery Park, Haddington EH41 3HA – on 21 July 2022 from 2pm to 4.30pm
The focus groups will be small (no more than 12 people) and last a maximum of 2 hours. If people would like to contribute but don’t want to participate in a focus group there is an online form which can be completed. I appreciate that some people may need a bit of support in doing so and would appreciate your help in providing that if possible.
I will be able to provide more information if you think you have people who may be willing to get involved. You can contact me at rmpinfo@daprofessional.net.
Thank you for your consideration and look forward to hearing from you.
Newsletter Archive
There's an archive section on the newsletter site with all of the previous newsletters organised by date. It can be viewed by clicking on 'Archive' in the menu or using this link: https://bit.ly/ht-newsletter-archive.
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