Pupil Voice Updates 25-26

Quadrant 2 (October-December)

School Review

Our young people were fully involved in the school review that took place at the end of October. The survey that all young people were asked to complete helped to inform the review team of how young people feel about their school, and to decide what topics they wanted to explore further. Over 50 young people were given the opportunity to take part in focus groups exploring the curriculum, learning and teaching, wellbeing, and the culture and ethos of the school. We were very proud of the positive feedback received on their contributions. Other pupils were involved as guides for our guests, and through discussions during lesson observations. 

Pupil Leadership Team

Our PLT continues to work hard to support the school and to represent pupil views. They have decided that they would like to do more to raise the profile of the multiple co-curricular offer across the school, and are looking to make more use of our tannoy system as young people come into school. They are also beginning to plan for their proposed Cultural Day in February. 

The PLT Coordinators worked with the Headteacher to offer feedback to East Lothian Council around their ongoing budget discussions. This exercise helped them to see how challenging it is when every aspect of the work of an organisation feels and is important. They decided that their top priorities were education, children services, and adult social care, and provided the reasons behind their thinking. 

Our next step is to explore some participatory budgeting, with particular reference to our Pupil Equity Fund. 

5 A Day

Our first series of our 5 a day activities was based on celebrating achievement. Young people were able to share their success both in and beyond school, as well as being asked about how we can better recognise the range of achievements we have. This will be a particular focus of the Pupil Support Team over the next few months, with the launch of pupil profiling and a dedicated achievement email address for families to share information directly to be introduced in the new year.

We also explored the universal supports offered in our classrooms, holding discussions with young people who have an identified Additional Support Need but who attend all mainstream classes. The strongest message in this discussion was the level of support offered by our class teachers, though there were some uncertainties about how much feedback was received. This information has helped us to decide on a focus for our next rounds of Learning Observations.

LGBT Charter

Our Rights Respecting Schools Group has set themselves a new challenge, and we will be committing to the LGBT Youth Charter, a process which takes 12-18 months. The young people are keen to take this next step in visibly supporting the right of all young people to feel welcome and included in their education. You can find our more about the Charter here: LGBT Charter 

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 of 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.