Dear colleagues,

I hope you have had a great weekend - just two weeks to go until we secure a well deserved holiday.  We are nearly there!

There is so much to recognise and celebrate from last week.  I hope that you are as proud as I am of the wide range of opportunities for young people that we collectively provide. Well done to Ben, Jasmin, Amelia and Summer who presented their film at the SEET Scotland Awards and won the prestigious award for use of language in their film. Thanks to Marie-Claire who encouraged and supported them in the making and delivery of the film based on the Sustainable Development Goal, No Poverty.  The group made use of English, Spanish, French and Urdu to tell their story.  

Massive thanks to Claire for her work in coordinating a highly successful three day P7 Transition.  A very keen and excited cohort enjoyed a day on timetable, the Sports festival and for the first time, our excellent STEM festival.  It was particularly positive to see our S6s provide support and and encouragement at the Sports festival and our very impressive S2 Young STEM leaders enjoyed having an input at the STEM festival.

An extensive amount of thought and work went into making all aspects of the transition high quality and fun - huge thanks to you all for that.  

I don't think we could have wished for a better Sports Day - planning delivery, participation and weather were all fantastic. I would like to echo Neil's thanks to everyone.  Such a successful day requires everyone to pull together, so a huge thank you all.  A particular thanks to Neil and the team who have been building up to the finals day for some time.  The quality of performances was superb with many new school records made.  The ethos of participation and encouragement was also fantastic.  A special well done to Scott who led, organised and encouraged young people in the events, from the microphone all afternoon. He was like a professional Sports Commentator - watch out Andrew Cotter!  

The feedback regarding Jack, Fa and Noah's perfomance presenting at the national YPI event in Perth has been incredible.  If you get a chance, to congratulate them, please do.  

Our new S6 are proving to be an impressive cohort. Thanks for showing the videos made by the 15 Head Prefect candidates during Form time last week.  From the voting data, ten pupils will go forward to interview on Monday.  Wishing good luck to (in no particular order) Skye, Murrin, Amelie, Jasper, Harry,  Euan, Zara, Isla, Jack and Logan. We are going to appoint six - one to link with each year group.  I plan to share the outcome at the close of school on Monday. House Captain interviews will take place on 21st and 22nd June.  Applicants can be found here. Thanks for your patience with the inevitable disruption needed to support the interviews.

Thanks to Neil Macquarrie for pulling together the suggested themes document for Form Class time.  If you lead on an area that benefits from a whole school input, please input your theme on the document - Form Class themes.  This will help us to avoid overload while not missing important themes.

It is our turn to host a VSE (Validated Self Evaluation) in September '23. This involves HTs from Dunblane and McLaren along with staff from their schools spending  two days with us observing lessons, leading focus groups and reviewing our evidence.  The focus will be QI 2.3 (learning, teaching & assessment) and one other, still to be identified. I will update you as soon as I can.  An additional meeting has been added to the collegiate calendar 23-24 to take account of time needed for a briefing nearer the time. The calendar is just about ready for sign-off.  Thanks for feeding your views into that.

Have a great week.

Elaine