Pupil Voice Updates 25-26

Quadrant 1 (August-October)

We have looked at three specific topics during our 5 a day conversations, including:

·       S1 Transition

·       Higher Transition

·       Celebrating Achievement

The key messages for young people were as follows.

S1 Transition: Young people were able to identify some of the work we do with our primary schools to prepare them for the move, including in-person visits and working with school staff. Those who took part in bespoke transition saw this is helpful for making them feel more confident. All of the young people we spoke to felt that they new what to expect starting at Rosehill. Most cited the biggest changes as the number of teachers they have and the amount of moving around they do, but almost all saw these as positive changes. When asked about things that were challenging, almost all struggled to identify anything, but there were comments on the difficulty of being away from existing friends, and getting lost in the first couple of days.

Action Point: This information will feed into our overall Transition evaluation, which we have been undertaking with our associated primary schools.

Higher Transition: Overall, young people were proud of their S4 attainment, though a few did comment on wishing they had focused more on one or two of their subjects. Most noticed the increasing pace in learning but did not see this as unexpected, e.g. ‘Teachers explained how that would be and were supportive.’ There was a lot of good advice offered for young people starting in the senior phase for the first time, much of which was around restricting mobile phones/social media, making a study plan, and doing a bit of something every day. Only a few pupils were linking their Highers to specific career aspirations. More commonly, it was about enjoyment of the subject and a sense that they could achieve in it.

Action point: We will be sharing some of the study advice shared by our current S5 during our Family Learning Event on Senior Phase Success.

Achievement: We had the opportunity to learn about the many activities that young people do out outside of school. The extensive list included dance, karate, gold, football, Sea Cadets, rugby, badminton, table tennis,  and one young person even writing a novel! There were a lot of references to our Active Schools programme and enjoying participating in this. All young people were able to identify at least one way in which achievement is currently recognised in school, with positive comments from staff and recognition in Fantastic Friday being the most common examples. Perhaps the highlight of these discussions was the young people identifying something they have recently achieved; from Maths tests to swimming competitions to going a whole week without being late to anything, the young people were all able to identify something they felt pride in.

Action Point: We have recently set up and Achievement Inbox to allow parents and carers to share more information about achievements out of school, and will be launching this in the new year. Michelle Yeoman is also working on Pupil Profiling as her leadership project this year, so that we can capture young people's achievements over time.

In other activities, our Rights Respecting Schools Group has already hosted one whole school assembly, to raise awareness of the RRS programme. They are also preparing a homeroom assembly for later this month, on the subject of anti-bullying and respecting the rights of others. This will support our wider work around equality, diversity and inclusion.

Our Pupil Leadership Team is up and running, and has been an excellent support for our whole school events, and received a great deal of praise in the evaluations of both our first ever in-person Parent Consultation Evening, and our Welcome to Rosehill Family Learning Event. We value the diversity in our community and the young people are keen to celebrate this.  The PLT is currently working on their plans for a whole school Cultural Celebration Day, for early in 2026. With 23 different home languages spoken at Rosehill, there will be lots to share!

 All fo our young people have also had the opportunity to share their views in one of our regular surveys on feeling safe in school. The House Teams can now take this data and work directly with any young people who have shared concerns.