Dear colleagues,

Thanks to Neil for organising the Freshers Fayre on Friday.  There was a fabulous buzz in the atrium throughout the morning. As always both Rock Bands added excitement! It is striking to see the extensive range of co-curricular opportunities and activities available to our young people - massive thanks to those of you who give your time to run and supervise them.  A key challenge for us is to identify those who do not participate, understand why and do our best to address that if there are barriers in the way of participation.

Equity Matters

Just a quick reminder that Andrew Burns has taken over from Fiona Fisher as Project Lead of Equity.  In your planning and support of our young people, please be aware of those who are in receipt of a free meal entitlement (FME) and where appropriate, liaise with Andrew.  

Professional Development Matters

It was positive to have time for team meetings last week.  At the Technologies meeting we had a great discussion about our approaches to assessment and the place of learner conversations in the BGE.  Motivated by this I have gone back to my HGIOS 4, Associate Assessor notes, some recent Inspection SIFs (Summary of Inspection Findings) and have put together some points for teams to consider and discuss below.

Thank you to Michelle and the Working Group Leads who met last week to plan Monday's Working Group. You will be considering your 'Plus One' at the session.  That is one aspect of pedagogy that you you will focus on as an area of research and improvement for the session. Ultimately we will share our findings at the Pedagogy Festival in May.  

These are the working groups.  If you have no strike through your name, can you add yourself (and then strike through). If you want to move your name to another group, go ahead and do that. All staff to meet in the business area at 3.45, bring laptops.  Links to resources to support learning & teaching are below. 

I am delivering a series of short session on understanding the core QIs.  The first, 1.3 (Leadership of Change) is on Thursday.  Although, targeted at the leadership team, anyone interested is welcome.  To help with my preparation, please sign up here.  During the session I will be sharing input and reflections from training and experience as an Associate Assessor with HMIe.  I hope this will be helpful.

Learner Voice Matters

The first Pupil Council meeting of the session was due to take place on Wednesday.  However, we noted that school photos are organised for S1,4 and 6  that day and decided to postpone Pupil Council until 2 September to avoid disruption.  The agenda will be taken from parts of theme 3 (Our School & Community) in HGIOURS, the pupil participation versions of HGIOS. The theme is about how pupils feel about our school as a place of learning, how easy it is to move around, whether learners have the facilities & resources to do well.  The Head prefects are also going to ask council reps about the pros and cons of banning mobile phones.  I suspect we know what they might say about that!

Increased influence of learner voice on improvement is an area on our improvement plan again this session. I have been supporting the Head Prefects of a range of leadership groups and committees that they are involved in and we plan to run our first Pupil Parliament of the year towards the end of September when groups have been established and settled. I will be in touch to ensure that we have a complete overview of all pupil led clubs, committees and leadership groups. Their plans for the session will be added to the SIP.

Rural School Matters

We depend on having access to a mini bus to support course work, trips, matches, events and matches. As you know, this access has become increasingly problematic and unreliable.  David Braid is going to bring the School Fund Committee together to look at options to buy our own bus.  Considerable, regular fundraising will be needed to maintain this, should we go ahead and as a school, we will all need to get behind plans.

Thank you for your hard work and professionalism.

Elaine