June 18
Dear Parent/Carer
As we approach the end of term, I wanted to take
this opportunity to thank you for your support through this session and update
you on key developments related to the school.
Before I do so, I also want to extend my very best
wishes to all our school leavers. It
has been a privilege to get to know them and see them develop into young adults
. Our ambition as a school is to prepare our young people as best we can so
they can have the confidence, resilience and skills to embrace the
opportunities and challenges of life and experience success. This is fundamental to our school vision and
is something we work towards every day.
iPad Announcement
For a number of years Gracemount High School has
provided 1:1 devices (iPads) to S3-6 pupils. This initiative has been very well
supported by the school, however, there is a significant expense associated with
this continued initiative.
This session there was a small but significant drop
in our school roll which impacted on our school budget. As a result we are
unable to provide our new S3 year group with iPads. At this stage it remains
our intention to provide devices when they move into S4. We will continue to
invest in our teachers’ development of the use of digital technology to support
our approaches to learning and teaching.
I realise a number of our young people will be
disappointed and I understand if there are concerns about how this may affect
learning and teaching. I would encourage you, if affected, to contact me at the
school to discuss this further if you wish to do so.
Improvement
Planning
We are currently working on our improvement
planning for next session and both our school improvement plan and standards
and quality report will be published on the school website early next session. I
have provided details of key areas that we will be looking at next session.
The headings used in this blog represent the five
key school improvement priorities. These link into the four National
Improvement Framework priorities as set of by the Scottish Government, as
follows:-
1.
Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy
2.
Closing the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged
children and young people
3.
Improvement in children and young people’s health and wellbeing
4.
Improvement in employability skills and sustained positive school leaver
destinations for all young people
Learning
and Teaching
As we progress into next session we will continue to focus on developing
the skills of our teaching staff so we can deliver the very best quality
learning and teaching in and beyond our classrooms. As mentioned in my last
blog, there has been a clear focus over the last two years on developing
co-operative learning within the school. Co-operative learning is where
students work together in small groups and all pupils are assigned a task where
they are expected to contribute towards achieving a common goal. There is clear
international evidence that co-operative learning can have a big impact on
positive outcomes for pupils when it is done well.
Further to this, we aim to look at the following aspects of learning and
teaching next session:-
· Highly
effective differentiation – ensuring learning and teaching is
adapted to meet the needs of individual pupils.
· The
social environment of our classroom – with a focus on
attitudes/support/relationships/information and empowerment.
·
We will continue to enhance the skills of our teachers in using digital technologies.
·
Ensuring we make the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy explicit across the school in year groups
1-3.
By January 2019 we will have re-established our Teaching and Learning
policy and shared this with you.
Ethos
Our school ethos continues to be a strength and our work in ensuring pupils
feel safe, secure and happy in school will always be a priority. Our work on
becoming the first Local Authority school in the City of Edinburgh to achieve
the Gold Rights Respecting School Award has supported us in ensuring we create
the best ethos we can in our school community.
In order to build on this we aim to do the following next session:-
1. Refocus
our efforts on celebrating success
in and out of school and introduce our Ambition pledge awards for S1 pupils.
2. Introduce
awards for behaviour, effort and attendance
based on information from tracking reports for all pupils.
3. Introduce
profiling for pupils in S1-3.
4. Continue
to celebrate success in the classroom with our values postcards.
5. Further
enhance pupil confidence and pride in school by creating our Pupil Leadership Team structure.
Our focus on Dress Code continues and
we feel strongly that this supports a very positive ethos within the school. However,
we will review our approach to our dress code next session as this is something
our pupil cohort have asked for. We will not
be moving away from a dress code but certain elements may change but only after
consultation with pupils and parents.
During this month we will be appointing
our prefect team including our Head Boy and Head Girl. This is always a very
exciting time in the school year and I am sure this will be a very competitive
process for those involved.
Pupil
Support
We pride ourselves in this school on our inclusive approach. Our work on
supporting our pupils will continue to be a key focus as the school moves
forward. Our Relationships for Learning (Behaviour) policy is now well
established and recent focus groups with pupils have suggested that our young
people feel this is working very well to support all pupils.
Protecting the learning in the classroom (a phrase all our teachers use
with pupils) will remain a priority so learning and teaching can flourish in
our school.
This session we have worked extremely hard on ensuring our information
on Additional Support Needs is up to date and that systems are in place to
identify and support all young people who require any additional support. We
will continue this work, however, we will refocus on the role of Support for Learning
across the school. As a result we have
invested in staffing to support this area.
We are also introducing a new structure for our Depute Head Teachers who
will assume the responsibility for a Year Group for the whole time they are at
school. This means that a young person’s Year Head and Guidance Teacher will
not change throughout the time they are in school. This will facilitate a new
and much more focused approach to house team meetings to ensure that supports
are well established for all our young people.
Support for pupils in their learning should also be developed at home.
We recognise this and will continue to put family learning at the heart of our
school improvement planning. Mrs Julie
Wilson (PE and Dance teacher) is our family learning engagement officer and
will be in touch throughout next session to support and advise families on how
they can support learning at home and get access to the information they need.
As mentioned last time, the Pupil Equity Funding
is additional funding from the Scottish Government’s £750 million Attainment
Scotland Fund, allocated directly to schools and targeted at closing the
poverty related attainment gap. This funding is to be spent at the discretion
of Head Teachers working in partnership with each other and their Local Authority.
At Gracemount we have focused on developing the
following:-
1.
Literacy and Assistive Technology – Mrs Angela
Verity was appointed to support the development of literacy and has been working with several
pupils in S3 and S4 to help them improve their literacy standards.
2.
Numeracy Development – we are developing a
numeracy strategy together with Gracemount Primary and engaging parents in
supporting their children to develop numeracy skills.
3.
STEM (Science Technology and Engineering) – Mr
Rory Wallis has been appointed as our STEM Development Officer and will lead
the schools approach in developing opportunities and skills related to these
subject areas. Our strategy is to ensure that all pupils receive a high quality
STEM experience during their time at Gracemount High School and that they
develop the STEM skills required to gain employment or move into further
education.
4.
Learning to Learn Mentors – we have 10 staff who
are mentoring five S4 pupils each. This has been ongoing since the start of the
session and we will evaluate the impact of this approach at the end of this
session to determine if we continue with our approach into next session.
5.
Wider Achievement – Ms Joanna Greig is working
on developing wider achievement opportunities across the school and our
planning is well underway for next session. This includes the introduction of
the Youth Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) into S5 PSE next session.
At the time of writing,
I am finalising plans for next session, however, I can so far confirm the
following:-
1.
Our Numeracy Development Officer is appointed
and will start in August. Mr Koturbasz, already a Maths teacher in Gracemount
High School, will take up this role.
2.
Our STEM strategy is being developed by Mr
Wallis.
3.
Learning to learn mentors are likely to continue
but on a slightly smaller scale for next session.
4.
Our wider achievement approach is well underway
and the Youth Philanthropy Initiative will be delivered in S5 PSE next session
as well as a wellbeing award in S5/6 PE.
5.
Our City and Guilds course in Bike Maintenance for
S4 pupils will continue to run next session.
6.
We are in the process of appointing a Senior
Development Officer who will join the schools Senior Leadership Team. Their
focus will be on developing partnerships and supporting our most at
risk/disadvantaged young people.
7.
Mrs Hurd will further develop her role as Pupil
Support Officer across the school.
Curriculum
Our new timetable has begun and almost all our young people are coursed
into their classes. This may change particularly because of SQA results for
pupils in S5/6. Dates for when pupils can be recoursed are below.
As per advice from the last blog, please see below:-
Progression to the next level is a very important step to get right as
this avoids young people dropping out or being withdrawn from subjects later in
the year. As the national qualifications embed, we are seeing more and more
evidence of the demands in progressing from National 5 to Higher. We are very
clear that pupils who achieve a National 5 A-B grade should progress to Higher.
Pupils who achieve a National 5 C grade can progress but with the understanding
that a lot of hard work will be required to close the knowledge gap that is
required for success at Higher. Attendance at our GASS sessions would be highly
recommended.
Where a pupil achieves a National 5 D award we will be suggesting that
they do not progress to Higher. They may sit Higher units in isolation with a
view to completing the Higher over two years.
All these matters will be discussed with the young people and parents at
the time.
Please refer to the school website for details on SQA post results
service and key dates. http://www.gracemounthighschool.co.uk/SQA_Update/index.html
Our “schools of programme” in S1 is ready to launch for August and we
are particularly excited about this initiative, which is aimed at developing
skills and knowledge in the S1 curriculum.
Self-Evaluation
We believe that no matter
how good we are, we can always improve and to help us do this we regularly take
part in self-evaluation activities.
As I previously mentioned we
have completed a full self-evaluation of our teaching and learning this
session. Every faculty and every teacher has been observed teaching over the
course of the last year and all faculties have been given feedback on areas of
strength and development. This approach will take up towards launching our new
Teaching and Learning policy next session.
A key part of
self-evaluation is also to ask pupils what they think. I do this through my Daily Dozen approach and
details of this can be found on the front page of the school website. You will
see from the pupil responses the areas of strengths of the school and the areas
they feel we can improve. Overall, I am very pleased with the responses and the
progress the school has made.
I am currently involved in visiting S1 and S2 PSE classes to look at “New
Horizons” – what they want the school to be like in 4 years’ time. This has
been a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I am learning a lot about what the
pupils want and think. Once I have completed the exercise more details will
follow.
We have recently discussed our New Horizons with all our staff to help
shape our improvement priorities for next session and have asked parents who
attended the Parent Council meeting on 4 June to complete a form. Should you also
wish to do so, please do get in touch with me.
Other Information:-
Measles
– there are reports of significant outbreaks across Europe and schools
have been contacted. Consequently, NHS Lothian will be writing to all parents
who have not had their children immunised.
Staffing
This time of year often sees significant changes in staffing. The
following staff will be leaving us at the end of this term or before:-
1. Mr
Hutchison, DHT has been successfully appointed as DHT at Royal High School and
will take up post after the summer break.
2. Ms Kilkiewicz
has been successfully appointed as teacher of Maths at Larbert High School and
left us on 3 June.
3. Mrs
Hannah McIntyre, School Office has taken up a promoted post in another Local Authority
and has left us on 3 June.
4. Mr
Graeme Franz, temporary teacher of History will be leaving us at the end of
term.
5. Mrs
Morag Sim (Administration Officer) is retiring at the summer break.
6. Ms
Angela Verity, Pupil Equity in Literacy, will be leaving at the end of term to
take up a career out of teaching.
All staff leave with our very best wishes and our sincere gratitude for
the work they have done in the school.
Please see key updates below regarding appointments:-
1. Mr
Yusaf, our current probationer in Maths, has been successful in gaining a full-time
permanent position in our Maths faculty.
2. Mrs
Ustun, who was previously with us in Maths and left to go on maternity leave,
was successfully appointed as a Maths Teacher on a full-time permanent basis. Mrs
Ustun will take up her post in August.
3. We
have two probationer teachers joining us next session in the following subject
areas:-
a. History
– Ms Catriona Murray
b. Home
Economics – to be confirmed
4. Ms
Vidotto has been appointed in a 1-year temporary position in our Support for
Learning Department and will take up her post in August.
5. Mrs
Laura Goodall took up post as Admin Officer on 11 June.
6. We are
currently recruiting for the following areas:-
a. Clerical
vacancy in the School Office
b. Temporary
teacher of CDT
c. Support
for Learning and Spanish
d. Depute
Head Teacher
Important
Dates
·
4 June – new timetable started
·
8 June – Senior Prom
·
19 – 21 June – Primary 7 transition visit
·
28 June – School Awards Ceremony – (evening)
·
29 June – end of term
·
7 August – SQA results day (good luck to all our candidates)
·
8 August – recoursing day (appointment only) – please contact the School
Office
·
15 August – start of new term.
·
28 September – Gracemount High School and Gracemount Primary School fund
raising event. Evening event at Gilmerton Miners Club. Please save the date if
you can.
If I do not see you before the end of the school
term, I wish you all a very enjoyable and safe summer break.
Kind
Regards
Ross Hunter
Head Teacher
