Balfron Matters

22 November 2021

Weekly communication for staff

Dear colleagues,

We are now into the second half of the term - that can be a joyous and scary thought all in one. It has been said that this is the most difficult term on secondary schools. With that in mind, thank you for working so hard for our young people.

I can confirm that we will not be running Christmas Dances or teaching social dance this year due to COVID mitigations. I know that our young people and their parents will be disappointed, however with safety a priority for all, face to face contact and mass gatherings would not be sensible at this time.

On a positive note, it was great to see Jasper Burnside and Katie McDonald progressing to the next round of the Law Society's Donald Dewar debating competition. They spoke brilliantly in an engaging debate about arming the Police.

Phil, Neil and I attended an attainment review with the local authority last week. It is with pleasure that can I pass on thanks to you all from our local authority colleagues (Ally MacLeod & Tracey Henderson) who recognise the massive investment of time and professionalism that went into making the ACM work and supporting our young people through that challenging time.

As highlighted earlier in the year, our results were concordant with previous SQA exam years. However, it would be fair to say that an increase in pupils withdrawing from courses affected S4 attainment (girls in particular) and S6 annual (but less so cumulative) attainment. I have shared a link to the discussion points from the meeting on the right for those of you interested. It highlights once again, the need for us to consider carefully how we can offer a planned, meaningful and appropriate curriculum for our learners who struggle to access an academic offer. Claire has raised the issue of an increase in pupils in S1, and coming into next year's S1, with lower than usual literacy and numeracy ability - a challenge that we need to come together to address.

Many thanks to Karen McColl has been distributing mini-whiteboards to those who put in a request. Many of you took up the offer and so we have ordered more. These should be with us soon.

Thanks for your input to the S1 online parents' meeting. It seemed to run very smoothly. Amanda will be reviewing the parents' meetings shortly.

Some of our senior pupils delivered a cheque to Refuweegee. Well done again to all the pupils and staff who supported the non-uniform day last month. We were able to donate £754.20 to the charity.

Thanks again for your input. Have a great week.

Elaine

This week at Balfron High School:

Team Meetings
Wellbeing Wednesday nominations
S5 Consent Workshops, Wednesday, P2-4
S2/3 Tracking

Insight 2021

Temp Leadership Opportunities - PT PS (0.4) and Equity Lead (4 periods). Next steps...

This week sees the start of a new round of interviews beginning with the 0.4 PT PS (Lomond House ) post on Tuesday. It has been fabulous to have such a lot of interest in these posts and a reminder that we have many great and able people in our teams. I wish there were more positions available to formally recognise this. Good luck to everyone involved.

Project Lead Update

Clair, David and Heather have been working hard making plans to support our senior phase pupils and their parents through this recovery phase. I am delighted to share that we have secured Live-N-Learn for an input with every S4 and S5 pupil. The Significant 6 workshops will cover the following:

Taking Control: Chaos isn’t productive!
Motivation v’s Discipline: What is a winning attitude?
Studying Effectively: Developing good study behaviours
Incremental Improvements: ‘Forget about perfection, focus on progression’
Responding to Feedback: Austin’s Butterfly Theory
The Bigger Picture: Creating a resilience plan

Heather will be in touch to share the dates and times for our pupils. One session for all S4 and S5 will take place before Christmas with a follow-up after prelim time. Parents will be invited to an online session.

In the mean time, to help target pupils, please let the Project leads know of pupils who are failing or close to failing.

National Qualification pupils who are performing below expected. For example, at a C, but you think are capable of an A.

Some PTs are sending Clair this as one collated sheets- that's fine. If not, please use the form below.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4mH5xEgzIza4AIarwJA0nuEDE5FCQ96r11HuSGdd7XOnduw/viewform

S5 Consent Workshops

Please note that PC McNulty will be running Consent Workshops for S5 pupils on Wednesday 24 November. They will come to the Strathendrick by House over three periods as follows:

Period 2 - Campsie

Period 3 - Endrick

Period 4 - Lomond

Respect Focus Groups and Working Group - Staff

Thank you FCLs, for showing the follow-up Respect assembly last week. The next stage is perhaps the most important - listening, discussing and making plans to address and improve things.

I would like to invite you to be part of the main working group, a specific focus group, or just give some feedback or suggestions. You can do this through this Staff Respect Follow-Up Link

We have only 15 pupils who would like to take part in a focus group so far. Please encourage those who feel there is an issue to sign up for a focus group. It you have not yet had a chance to show the assembly, please do so as soon as you have a chance. The link is on the right.

Interestingly, we have had a spike in the number of issues reported. I am pleased with that, as a willingness to report shows a change towards speaking up and having the confidence in us to deal with things.

Respect Follow-Up Assembly.mp4

Library Update

Thank you to Sheena, the team and other volunteers who are volunteering in the library throughout the week.

Alistair Blair and I met with former pupil, Colin Paton (left in 2013), on Friday. Colin is now a masters graduate in library and communication skills and willing to volunteer in our library. He has his PVG for our school and will be with us weekly on a Monday. I am working with the Parent Council to get some additional volunteers into the library regularly at other times of the week.

Some of our S6 are keen to use the library in study periods for work and revision. with the addition supervision, this will be possible again.

Balfron High Wellbeing Newsletter

Here is a link to the November wellbeing Newsletter. Many thanks to Marie-Claire and Jen for putting it together. It was also great to read a perspective and see some artwork from our pupils.

November-Wellbeing Newsletter FINAL AND CHECKED..pdf

Senior Phase Courses - Please ckeep encouraging pupils to stay in courses

I appreciate that you are working hard to keep young people in courses. More than ever, we are receiving requests to have pupils with draw from courses.

There is much at stake for young people, and it is important that we do all be can to support them through before we agree to them waithdrawing. Where possible the focus should be on building resilience. SLT will:

discuss with PT to review progress
discuss with parent
consider of needs beyond school
decision
Info to Phil to update SQA data.

Please note that pupils should remain in the class, working on their other revision and subject tasks.

CLPL Corner - Building Safe Classroom Environments

At a time where we are all very aware of the increasing number of young people who are struggling to reconnect positively with school and many more whose disregulated behaviour makes learning difficult, this is a useful podcast.

It lasts just 15 minutes and gives some pragmatic suggestions.