August 2022

HEAD TEACHER'S UPDATE 26 AUGUST 2022
Published: 26 August 2022

It has been great to welcome all pupils back this week with a series of assemblies. In these assemblies we spoke about our school value of ambition, as well as covering aspects of positive relationships, expectations in relation to attendance and punctuality and also health and safety – fire arrangements. We are hopeful this will be a very settled year for all of our young people and we will do our best to work with you and them to help them achieve their potential.

Pupils’ News

Knox Sport

We are looking forward to getting Knox Sport back up and running! Please click to see the sports on offer and to register. If anyone has any issues registering please contact Thomas Salkeld at tsalkeld@elcschool.org.uk. We would encourage all of our young people to get involved with one or more clubs at the school (there will be many more advertised beyond sport) to learn new skills, make new friends and add to our Knox Academy community. It allows pupils to work with other young people in different year groups too.

S2 - A Night Under the Stars

Mrs Reynolds is running an S2 overnight camping trip on Thursday 6th October. The trip will involve walking, cycling, teambuilding and storytelling. There is a cost of £12.50 for this trip. There is a limited number of spaces, therefore pupils who are interested should see Mrs Reynolds before Thursday 1st September.  This is a great opportunity to be involved in one of our first school trips of this session and to experience camping out!  If your young person would like to go, and you would need some financial assistance with this, please contact your young person’s Pupil Support Leader.

S3 - Duke of Edinburgh  Award Information Session

S3 pupils interested in finding out more about the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and how to apply for a place in the school extracurricular programme have been invited to come to an information session on Wednesday 31st August in Mr Boyle's room. Please can parents/carers support their young person to attend this meeting to hear about this award and to encourage them to sign up for it? Thank you.

 

Parents’/Carers’ Information

Supporting Literacy at Home – Parents/Carers session

Next week, our school cluster is working with Stephen Graham, a literacy specialist who is visiting the authority from Australia, to support the teaching of Literacy in schools.

As part of this work, there will be an online session hosted on Thursday 1 September 2022, from 6.30-8.00pm, via Google Meet. Here, Stephen will share his work with you and speak to you about supporting Literacy, including reading, at home. I attended his session on Monday 22 August and it was extremely useful so I would highly recommend parents/carers to attend.

For those who cannot make it, the session will be recorded and shared at a later date.

To join this online session on Thursday 1 September at 6.30pm please click on this link.

Personal Information

Please ensure that all your contact information is updated in the forms the school is sending home to all parents/carers. SMS and emails are the main two ways we will liaise with you and are used for alerting you to things such as school closures etc. If you do need to update your details at any time during the year this can be done either via the Parents Portal, or by sending an email to admin@knox.elcschool.org.uk. Thank you.

Nasal Flu Vaccinations

A short reminder that these will take place at the school, on 27 September, for all eligible young people. Letters have been issued and these should be returned to the office or Mrs Fraser (Welfare) by Friday 2 September at very latest.

Google Classroom: Guardian Summary

Knox Academy uses Google Classroom to support learning at home and as part of our digital strategy we have rolled out an additional feature of Google Classroom which is designed to help Parents/Carers gain an overview of the set tasks and assignments.

This feature is called Guardian Summaries and it enables Parents/Carers to receive e-mail updates about:

Missing work—Work not turned in when the summary was sent.

Upcoming work—Work that’s due today and tomorrow (for daily emails) or that’s due in the upcoming week (for weekly emails).

Class activities—Announcements, assignments, and questions recently posted by teachers.

As a parent/carer you will be able to control the frequency of these updates or decide to opt-out of receiving them at a later date.   

Please can parents/carers also remind their young person that all Google Meets must be accessed via their EduBuzz accounts or access will be denied. This is for data protection reasons.

Setting up Guardian Summaries 

To setup Guardian Summaries use the link: knox.is/guardiansummary which requires your child to log in via Edubuzz. This must be done by each child in your household for whom you wish to receive e-mail updates. 

We will use the main contact email we have on record but there will be an option in the form to add a second email address. It is therefore essential that the pupil record is accurate so please contact us or use the Parents Portal if you wish to make any changes to your stored information.  

Please also note that, due to GDPR regulations, your young person may choose to opt out of sharing information with you and if they decline permission we will not be able to set up the summaries for you. (By Calum Blair, CL Maths and Numeracy)

Devolved School Management (DSM)

The revised DSM guidelines were presented to the Education Committee at its meeting on 21 June 2022. These can now be viewed here.

Lost Property

Each term a large number of pupil items are left unclaimed.  In order to minimise this, can parents/carers please ensure that items such as clothing and pencils cases are clearly marked with your young person’s name.

 

Pupils’ Achievements

Golf

Murray Bowsher (S4) will be taking part in the Stephen Gallacher Foundation Golf event at the Fairmont in St Andrews, Fife at the end of September. This will provide him with a great opportunity to play against other talented golfers and hone his own golf skills. We wish him all these best for his performance. 

Triathlon

Morven Kenny (new S1) competed in the Regional Championships (British age group championships) last weekend down in Sunderland. After racing in heats, she qualified for the main ‘A’ final race (top 25 in UK) along with a few other Scottish Girls in her age group. Although there were no individual medals by them, the Scottish IRC team finished 4th overall. A great achievement!

 

Dates for your diary:

Tuesday 6 September - Parent Council – School Library – 6.30-8pm – all parents welcome to attend

Friday 16 – Monday 19 September - Holiday (staff and pupils)

Tuesday 20 September - S2 Parents’ Evening – 4.30-6.30pm – in school

Our school calendar is updated regularly and should be used to access all information throughout the year and allows you to plan ahead too.

The Haddington Farmers Market is on this weekend from 9-1pm so if you can support our local businesses please do. Have a lovely weekend.

Sue Cook

Parent Council

The Parent Council has requested a footer on my HT’s update that remains there year round and which offers quick links to remote learning resources, course choices, supported study and careers news. Clicking on these headings takes you straight to these pages.

HEAD TEACHER'S UPDATE 19 AUGUST 2022
Published: 19 August 2022

Welcome back to Session 2022-23. It has been great to have all of our new S1 pupils join us and to welcome back our S2-S6 pupils. We have high hopes that this will be a much more settled year and more of a return to normal school activities, and hopefully some more trips/excursions too!

Staffing

On Monday we welcomed a number of staff:

Jamie Balfour – Computing

Sophie Shorthouse – Support for Learning

NQTs: Ashleigh Breslin– English

Michael Lynch – Maths

Rebecca Halliwell – Modern Studies

Harry Esson – PE

Staff appointed last session – Adam Welsh (English) and Lucy Fletcher (Languages)

Fiona Chandran, David Adamson and Mhairi Chalmers – all join the Meadowpark teaching team.

It was very sad news, at the end of term, to hear of the passing on of one of our former members of staff, Martin Duddin, DHT and Geography teacher, who taught at Knox Academy for 32 years.

 

Pupils’ News

Knox Sport

We are looking forward to getting Knox Sport back up and running! Please click to see the sports on offer and to register. If anyone has any issues registering please contact Thomas Salkeld at tsalkeld@elcschool.org.uk. We would encourage all of our young people to get involved with one or more clubs at the school (there will be many more advertised beyond sport) to learn new skills, make new friends and add to our Knox Academy community. It allows pupils to work with other young people in different year groups too.

 

Parents’/Carers’ Information

SQA Results (overview)

The pupils performed really well in the SQA exams in April/May 2022.   Our results were as follows:

Our attainment at A-C for National 5 was 82.4%. This was above the National results of 80.8% and the East Lothian figure of 81%. We had 19 pupils who achieved 7 National 5 passes, all at Band A, and a further 10 pupils who attained 6As and a B or C.

At Higher level, our A-C attainment was 81.8%. This was above the National results of 78.9% and the East Lothian figure of 81%. 15 pupils attained 5A passes and a further 8 attained 4As. A number of our pupils also attained very strong results in a combination of National 5s and Higher subjects.

At Advanced Higher, our A-C attainment was 76.5%. This was below the National results of 81.3% and East Lothian figure of 80%. One pupil attained 3As in their Advanced Highers. 2 others attained 2 Advanced Highers at A passes and 7 other pupils attained 3 Advanced Higher Passes.

Within National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher, many young people showed great progress to achieve the grades they did – whether these were As, Bs or Cs.

The above statistics are pre-appeal. Our focus this year is on teaching for excellence, which will include assessment, to continue to improve our attainment statistics at all levels. We are also encouraging our S6 to take as many subjects as they can to achieve the best they can at the point of exit in S6. The phrase, ‘The more you do, the better you do’ seems to be reflected in our S6 attainment at a pupil level and we need to work together to ensure that, in particular, our S6 cohort see all courses through from inception to completion to guarantee them the best results and reaching their potential.

Assemblies

Next week we will be leading assemblies for all year groups on our school values and vision. To ensure all our young people achieve their potential we have high expectations at the school in regard to effort and behaviour/relationships so we create the best learning environment for our young people. These assemblies will also give information around health and safety (e.g. fire evacuation procedures) and remind pupils that cigarettes and vapes should not be brought on to, or used, on school premises.

Throughout the year we will cover many themes at our assemblies such as online safety, mental health and wellbeing, and diversity and inclusion.

Careers Guidance

Chris Trotter, our Careers Adviser, is available Monday to Thursday in the school library. Over the next few months he will be focusing on one to one appointments with senior phase students who we have identified as possibly needing some extra careers guidance. However, he is also available for any student, in any year, who would like to see him. All they have to do is drop in to the library, speak to their guidance teacher, or email.  Before the October break he will be going in to every 1st year PSE class to introduce himself and encourage students to start thinking about their future careers. If you would like to speak to Chris directly just get in touch. For more information you can visit My World of Work  or contact Chris.trotter@sds.co.uk directly.

Cost of Living Crisis

Please follow this link for some helpful advice/information and support from ELC in regard to this.

Covid update

For the time being we will continue to keep some measures in place to ensure minimum transfer of Covid at school. Hand sanitiser, cleaning products and spare face-coverings will be available in all classrooms and pupils will be encouraged to use the hand sanitiser on arrival and departure from rooms and to clean their work stations still. Any pupils wishing to wear a face covering will be supported to do so. We are also retaining our one way system permanently as this flow round the school has improved with corridors being less congested as pupils and staff move in one direction and not against the flow.

Staff will continue to keep classrooms well ventilated and use their CO2 monitor to guide them in keeping levels minimal and classrooms also as warm and safe as possible as we head in to autumn and winter.

Nasal Flu Vaccinations

These will take place at the school, on 27 September, for all eligible young people. Letters are being issued over the next few days and these should be returned to the office or Mrs Fraser (Welfare) by Friday 2 September at very latest.

Pupils’ Achievements

Wakeboarding

Orla Winn, new S5, won the U’18s Junior Women’s WWA World Championships down in London making her the World Champion for her age group!  We are in awe of her achievements and her ability.

Dates for your diary:

Tuesday 6 September                                   Parent Council – School Library – 6.30-8pm – all parents welcome to attend

Friday 16 – Monday 19 September           Holiday (staff and pupils)

Tuesday 20 September                                 S2 Parents’ Evening – 4.30-6.30pm – in school

Our school calendar is updated regularly and should be used to access all information throughout the year and allows you to plan ahead too.

 

Sue Cook

Parent Council

The Parent Council has requested a footer on my HT’s update that remains there year round and which offers quick links to remote learning resources, course choices, supported study and careers news. Clicking on these headings takes you straight to these pages.

Please also look at our website for lots of other information. Please also follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news on a day to day basis.

Please also remember to follow us at: www.ka-net.org.uk 96D4F7EE for the latest information and updates