North Berwick High School
Head Teacher’s Report on Session 2007-2008
Introduction
It gives me great pleasure to write this report on the work of our school in session 2007-2008. It was another year of abundant success in many fields: academic attainment; wider achievement; community involvement; the many activities such as sport, music, the arts; and charities.
The success of the school depends entirely on the hard work of the staff, the pupils and the parents: the three-legged stool of success which supports all the achievements of the school. As the following report shows, we have had another very active year, reflecting this hard work and commitment from the whole school community.
School Roll
The school roll in September 2008 is 942, down slightly on last year but an increase of over 200 since 1999. The roll is forecast to rise significantly over the next few years.
Staffing
Session 2007-2008 saw a number of changes in staffing. Mr Maxwell came to us as Principal Teacher of English, as did Mr Rutter in geography. Mrs Neri took over as Principal Teacher of Guidance for Glen House. Mr O’Donnell was appointed as Principal Teacher of Business Education in the spring. Mr Hewson joined the mathematics department during Mr Stebbing’s secondment to ELIS. Mrs Fletcher left the modern languages department during the year and Mrs Watt brought a highly-successful spell as Principal Teacher of Modern Languages to a close when she left at the end of the session.
As has been the custom for a number of years, we had newly qualified teachers joining us as probationers. Dr Mack in chemistry, Ms Sibbald in mathematics, Ms Brand and Mr Muir in English, Mr McIlwaine in geography, Ms Wood in PE and Ms Jegat and Ms Ritchie in modern languages made a large contribution to the work and life of the school and Dr Mack and Ms Ritchie were appointed to the permanent staff at the end of the session.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff for their unending drive to raise standards and develop our young people. I would like to pay thanks to the wonderful team of administration and auxiliary staff who support our pupils in so many ways and whose expertise is unrivalled.
Special mention must be made of Dr Thomson, who retired after twenty-seven years’ service as principal teacher of biology. Under Dr Thomson’s leadership, biology at NBHS enjoys a national reputation, and rightly so. Most of all, however, he is a fantastic teacher who has inspired generations of pupils throughout his time at the school. I hope that he has a happy and enjoyable retirement.
Learning and Teaching
As always, the curriculum, and the teaching and learning which arise from it, is the core of the work of the school.
In S5/6, the school continued to increase its provision of National Award courses, with Advanced Higher modern studies and business management and Higher psychology being offered for the first time.
The school has been continuing to review its teaching and learning strategies to try to ensure that all pupils are fully engaged in the work of the class – one way we have done this is by recognising that children learn in different ways and we should offer a variety of teaching and learning styles. We have also developed a wide range of self and peer assessment in the classroom and will be developing this further. We are steadily introducing more enterprising activities into the classroom. In addition, every year group has had at least one full day of enterprise activities.
We installed Promethean whiteboards in almost every classroom, which allows interactive teaching and learning to take place in highly innovative ways. We also developed our range of IT equipment with the purchase of extra activote systems and ‘classrooms in a box’.
We developed our school website over the course of the session and launched the revised site www.northberwickhigh.net at the end of term. We hope that it will become a vibrant and interactive site, with news, articles of interest and pupil work and homework.
We trialled some pioneering IT software – Eye Gaze, which enables a student to use their eyes to coordinate and manipulate the use of a computer screen. This has been very successful and has extended the curriculum on offer. Just after Christmas the modern languages blog was launched to add to the school’s range of self-study resources for pupils. The history department also moved into the modern age by introducing podcasts into the S1 and S4 courses, with groups interviewing each other and also devising revision materials.
The health promotion profile of the school continues to grow, with a number of initiatives undertaken during the session. In particular, we had a never-to-be-forgotten Slow Food Lunch in September, at which nearly 900 pupils and adults sat down to a superb three-course lunch over two sittings. Our Hospitality pupils assisted local professional chefs using local produce. This was a wonderful example of everyone working together to have a memorable lunch and, perhaps more importantly, a real sense of us all being very much together as a community.
A group of committed S6 students developed citizenship in the school by presenting assemblies on Peace One Day and Remembrance, together with moving artwork. They also ran a Current Affairs discussion group and participated in Holocaust Memorial Day, together with organising the S2 Mock Election. The group was awarded with the school’s first-ever Citizenship Badges.
We started an eco-school group during the session with the aim of developing the school as an eco-friendly establishment, including minimising waste and tackling litter. In association with this, Sam Cusworth and Stacy Sibley were interviewed by STV for a programme linked to the plastic-bag free project in North Berwick. We shall shortly be awarded Silver status and aim for our Green Flag by 2011 – a challenging target.
The school celebrated European Day of Languages in September by teaching a number of S2 and S3 pupils British Sign Language, ably led by Mick Burns, our Careers Advisor. We developed links with schools in France and Germany through email. We also held another International Week in May and a number of interesting events took place. Following a visit to a school in Malawi by Mrs Lowe, we developed links by arranging to send a scrapbook from the school. We hope to develop our international links further with the aim of gaining an International Award.
The school continued to develop its enterprise events, with a visit from a Human Resources Director, various yeargroup events and our Christmas Delights enterprise company which made attractive high-quality hampers. S6 participated in business experience and business dynamics events and also assisted at the North Berwick Nursery Sports Day and Aberlady School Sports Day.
A Primary Seven Enterprise Event took place in February. This was the first opportunity for all the primary sevens from our partner primaries to meet and was greatly enjoyed by all. A group of S3 were the facilitators for the day.
Supporting Pupils
As part of our drive constantly to improve our work with the pupils, we conducted a number of changes at the front of the school. We moved the staff bases and upgraded the support bases, together with two classrooms for PSE use. We also developed a new conference room on the ground floor, decorated beautifully by a group of pupils.
Pupils in the support base started and developed a project on Fair Trade, researching what it means, visiting shops and then setting up an ordering system so that staff could purchase products such as tea, coffee and Christmas gifts. The pupils also had a series of monthly themes, such as Robert Burns, Valentine’s Day, Marie Curie and Easter. A group also attended the SDS Cross Country Athletics at Peffermill.
The Houses continued to develop as focal points of the school. Away days were held for all S1 classes in their Houses. Our Houses also continued to ‘adopt’ children in other countries, raising funds through a variety of activities and making regular contributions to their education. A particular feature was the involvement and leadership of pupils of all ages in house assemblies.
Our House events continued to go from strength to strength. Fidra held an art exhibition, with paintings, drawings, craftwork and costume design. There were interactive events such as caricatures and face painting. Law House held a carnival, complete with Bouncy Castle and many other fun events such as coconut shy, treasure hunt and fortune telling. Law also put on a memorable Christmas pantomime – Jack and the Beanstalk. Craig House had ‘North Berwick’s Got Talent’, a variety show with singing, dancing, acting and other performances. Glen put on ‘Stars in their Eyes’, again being highly successful in filling the hall and raising lots of money for worthy causes.
The Houses were led by the House Captains and Vice Captains, who were:
Craig Kelsey Stewart, James Gbbons, Rose Campbell and Chris Lekkas
Fidra Josh Bain, Liz Warne, Callum Murdoch and Lucy Robertson
Glen Lynsey Walker, Sam Cusworth, Johanna Mercer and Ross Caithness
Law Graeme Fairgrieve, Rebecca Greig, Conor Gaffney and Stephanie Lawrence
The Head Boy and Head Girl and their deputes were able leaders of the school. The leadership team of Niall Grant, Jane MacCallum, Donald Waters and Rebecca Ross led the school in different activities and proved to be very good role models for our pupils. The latter three did exceptionally well given that Niall was so frequently out of school because of his work nationally and internationally with the Hunter Foundation.
We held two major prizegiving ceremonies. In June, we held special assemblies for S1, S2 and S3. Pupils were awarded certificates in specific subjects on the basis of academic success or of having made significant progress over the course of the year. These assemblies were attended by large numbers of parents, who were treated to stunning musical pieces and superb speeches from our Head Boy and Girl, whose remarks were inspirational, speaking of the need to aim high, to take advantage of the many opportunities available and to set goals for work and for life. The art department provided beautiful stage decorations for these events.
In September we had our annual senior prizegiving ceremony. Ewan Henderson and Isobel Barrie, recently-retired heads of English and geography, were guests of honour. Speeches and excellent musical pieces were followed by academic prizes for each subject at Standard Grade, Intermediate, Higher and Advanced Higher levels. Certificates of Merit were presented to students who had gained six, seven or eight Level 1 passes at S Grade, together with S5 students who had attained at least ten points in their Higher Grades. Quaichs were presented to former S6 students for Service to the School (Andrew Goldie), Service to the Community (Liz Duncanson), Service to Music (Julia Boon) and Service to Sport (Callum Cockburn and Dougie Orr). Glen House won the Rotary Prize for being House Champions. The climax of the evening was the awarding of the Dux Medals to our joint winners Robert Hanson and Rebecca Knight.
SQA Results
The school’s results for 2008 continued our strong tradition of academic excellence.
A very high 58% of our Fourth Year gained five or more awards at Level 5 (Credit). Very pleasingly, 87% gained five or more at Level 4 (Credit and General / Int 1) and 95% gained five or more awards at Level 3. What these results do not show is the sterling work done by our pupils with exceptional needs in S4, who gained a number of awards which unfortunately do not show on the nationally published statistics. In S5, 22% of the original S4 yeargroup gained five Highers, with eleven students gaining five A awards, one of them with top grades in all awards. 44% of the original S4 yeargroup gained three or more Highers - the Higher Education ‘benchmark’ - and a record 66% gained at least one Higher. In S6, 31% of the original S4 yeargroup gained at least one Advanced Higher. Very pleasingly, S6 awards complement S5 awards at Higher level in particular, meaning that a large number of students leave school after S6 with five or more Highers.
These results are the amalgamation of individual results in individual subjects of individual pupils. They paint a clear picture of strength for which everyone can feel justifiable pride.
Activities and Achievements
I now come to a section in which I shall try to indicate the breadth and depth of our achievements in session 2007-2008.
Competitions and Awards
We enjoyed success in a number of competitions and won many awards.
S3 students took part in the Stock Market Challenge in Edinburgh. Twenty-five schools competed in the competition and our team performed very well, working together to make the most of their £15000 investment and ending the day with £74300. They finished second in the event. The team members were Chris Gibb, James Lahaise, Jordan Moffat, Seb Mann and Fraser Scott.
A group of S1 pupils were involved in a Europe-wide competition aimed at raising the awareness of discrimination in Europe. They produced a set of posters as part of this work.
Emma Aitken, Zoe Moskal Guy and Joanna Casson were selected for the National Girls’ Choir of Scotland. Alister Mackenzie was chosen for the National Boys’ Choir of Scotland. Emma Aitken and Polly Waters were selected for the National Children’s Orchestra of Scotland, with Joanna Casson being selected for the training orchestra, and Alexander Casson was chosen for the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra.
Kari Spence and Hannah Tennant took part in the Young Scot awards in Glasgow.
Teams participated in three Enterprising Mathematics competitions, the first of which was a National final.