I hope you all had a lovely summer holiday. It was great to have our new S1 pupils join us last week and also welcome back our S2-S6 pupils to Session 2026-27. We are all very excited to see what this year brings and to work together with you to be ambitious for all of our learners. At the start of the year please can I highlight the need for exemplary attendance as this links directly with attainment and achievement. It would be great to have all pupils attend every day – that’s our aim – so they can achieve their potential. It was brilliant to see so many of our pupils embracing our new approach to uniform – many still adopting the more traditional uniform and lots also wearing our new zipped tops/sweatshirts with our school logo.

Our School Improvement Plan for this session, and Standards and Quality Report reflecting on last session, can be found here.

There is a lot of information in this update being the first one of the term so please do read through it all. Thanks.

Staffing

This session we have welcomed Ben Maxwell (Pupil Support Leader for S1); Laura Waters (Support for Learning Teacher); Bobby Douglas (Modern Studies and Social Subjects); Marianna Cruz (Chemistry and Science- 2 days a week) and Sandy Munroe (Music teacher – Fridays); Paul Gleeson (PE covering Lana Borwick); Scott Thomson (ASN assistant).  Our pre-registered teachers joining us this year are: Susan Andrews (Chemistry and Science); Stephen Hogg (Physics and Science); Hugo Pengelley (History and Social Subjects); Yvonne Huddart (Maths).  Our PT Equity is Laura Bates.

Assemblies

This week’s assemblies have been on our school values (ambition, respect and community) and have also covered fire evacuation, lockdown and non-fire evacuation procedures so all staff and pupils are fully aware of these.

SQA Results

As a school team we would like to praise our senior pupils for their performance in the recent Qualifications Scotland exam diet and a huge thanks to staff and parents/carers for their support and encouragement of our young people throughout the year that supported their attainment. 

An overview of our results:

Our attainment at A-C for National 5 was 83% (this was 83% last session). This was also 3.8% above the National results of 79.2%...