Headteacher Key Information Update
Welcome back after the October break! It was great to see staff and students back to school this week and ready for the next term that will be busy for lots of reasons - see below! I got a couple of helpful comments regarding the school uniform half-zip tops after my last update - I've passed this on to the member of staff in school who links with our supplier to see if we can help with a wider range of sizes and the quality of the logo print. There was a suggestion to embroider the tops, which we've investigated, but we felt this meant the cost became too high and might prevent all families being able to access this additional option. However, we'll take another look at this as it may be something to offer as an option alongside the printed version in the future.
Staffing Update
- Ms Cameron (Drama) has returned from her medical related absence since the start of term - welcome back, Ms Cameron!
- Ros Scott (Admin Coordinator) will be retiring (very early I might add...!) at Christmas. We're currently in the process of recruiting to her post.
- Ms Thomson (Design & Tech) will commence her maternity leave at around Christmas. We'll do our best to recruit to this position, however with a national shortage of specialist teachers in this subject area, we anticipate we'll need to adapt our Creative Industries curriculum in the short term, prioritising senior classes with specialist staff.
- Mr Barr (ML, PE) will be absent from the end of October for a medical procedure. We hope he will return after the Christmas break, if not before.
- Mr Linton (PE) will be acting as Middle Leader in Mr Barr's absence (on top of having a brand new baby at home too! Congratulations, Mr Linton!)
- Miss Greig (English) will be starting with us on a full time, permanent basis on Monday 4th November.
Health & Safety - Fire Alarms
You may recall I wrote to you previously regarding the unfortunate spate of Fire Alarm evacuations we have experienced recently in our main school. It is disappointing that any young person would feel it is appropriate to maliciously activate the alarm system, resulting in the whole school having to be evacuated each time. It is unacceptable, dangerous and extremely disruptive to learning and teaching, not to mention upsetting for many of our learners who have additional support needs and find this extremely distressing. In almost all cases, we are quickly able to identify the person/people responsible and the strongest sanction will be applied to recognise the seriousness of this behaviour. Having met with Police Scotland this week, they have confirmed that, when a perpetrator of a malicious alarm is identified, they may take the decision to press charges against that young person due to the seriousness of the incident and subsequent distress and possible danger to life that can result.
Please share this message with your child(ren) at home and reiterate the seriousness of these consequences. We will be holding year group assemblies, with Police Scotland present to directly deliver their key messages, over the next few weeks.
Again, I fully acknowledge that the vast majority of our young people do not make these poor choices and fully uphold our school values and your expectations of how they should behave in our community. I'm grateful for their ongoing maturity and positive choices, and for your support.
Supporting Positive Relationships
Mrs MacLaren (S1 DHT) has shared with you (attached to this email) our 'Staged Interventions' approaches that will be in place from this term. We have developed these during last session based on feedback from staff and learners, and on our experience of the most appropriate and impactful ways to support young people to make positive choices and relationships across our community. We've created a 'parent/carer' version and a similar version for learners will be shared in upcoming assemblies to ensure clarity and understanding of how we'll use these approaches to support our ethos across the school. Please take time to read this and share information with your child(ren) at home.
Self-Evaluation - Extended Learning Partnership Visit
We're delighted to be welcoming 14 colleagues from across Fife Council and beyond to carry out an Extended Learning Partnership visit from 4th - 6th November. During this visit, colleagues will carry out 80 classroom observations, lead several focus groups (staff, learners and parents/carers) and look at our progress around wellbeing, curriculum, learning & teaching and other key areas of our work. This will provide us with really useful feedback on how we're doing and what our next steps are and will provide opportunities to share good practice. During next week, DHTs will be asking a number of learners if they'd like to participate in a focus group during the visit. DHTs will help young people prepare for this by sharing the types of questions that might be asked and the likely main themes of these discussions. Thanks in advance to all our young people and parents/carers who have/do agree to participate. We'll share the feedback later in the year.
Celebrating Success
As promised in my previous HT update, please find a link to the latest Pupil Led Venture where our young people are leading the celebration of successes and communications with families! Any feedback welcome!
Previous meeting minutes are available to read here.
The Balwearie Lottery & Fundraising to Support Teacher Bids
Currently the Balwearie Lottery is a monthly prize draw that all parents and carers can sign up to for as little as £2 per month. Each month 50% goes to the school and 50% of the prize fund goes to the lucky lottery winners. All school funds raised go to support the teacher bids.
Teacher bids are the requests teachers make for additional equipment and subsidies for trips and learning. This is outwith Fife Council statutory funding for the school but any funding the PCV can raise for the school massively helps the teachers and pupil provision.
If you would like to support and sign up for the lottery - click here
If you would like to find out more about the Parent & Carer Voice - click here
Dress Down Day Fundraising - 27.9.24
I'm very proud to say we raised over £900 for the Team Jak Foundation recently. Thank you so much to all who contributed.
Building Works and Refurbishment News
We now have a new car park! We also had new secure doors fitted to many of the external entrances during the October break. The outdoor learning space has been transformed and our polytunnel is taking pride of place in our new space.
The foundations are now being prepared at pace for the new modular accommodation that we hope to take delivery of at the end of this year. In order to facilitate these works, you may have noticed there have been temporary changes to the bottom gate area (Balwearie Crescent) to allow vehicles to access safely and minimise disruption to the route into school for young people. Access times are restricted and do not clash with the arrival/departure or social times of our learners to prioritise Health & Safety.
Our Photography Suite has now had been painted and is awaiting the carpet before we hand it over to the Creative Industries and Media teams. We've also had a lick of paint in our stairwell to freshen and brighten this internal space up.
Plans are being created for a small number of 'open plan' toilets in J Block (similar to the style in the main crush hall). Again, this should reduce the time that learners are out of classes if they need to use the facilities during class time.
What will the modular accommodation be used for?
Following a period of consultation with Middle Leaders and Staff and gathering pupil views from a cross section of learners, we're currently refining our planning and I'll share our intended use with parents/carers in due course once we have more detail.
There will also be additional toilet facilities in the new spaces for learners working in this area to access.
Upcoming career insight events
We are having two careers evenings this year, one on the 6th November with a focus on STEM based industries and the second is on the 20th November with a focus on Creative, Expressive and Social based industries. There will be representatives from various universities and colleges with a valuable insight into the application process and skills that they value. Please consider coming along to get some more information on further education. Both events will run from 7pm-9pm.
If your business would like to get involved in any of our DYW events at Balwearie then please email bal-dywschoolcoordinator@fife.gov.uk with what you would be able to offer.
And finally....FOLA!
Some beautiful photos of our S4 Forest and Outdoor Learning Award student work, fulfilling the brief of creating woodland based land art. And, yes....our kids still climb trees - awesome!
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