Lockerbie Academy Bulletin - April 2010

A Message from the Rector

This term heralds the examination season for Senior students. A letter has been issued detailing study leave arrangements and subject workshops. We wish all our students every success in the forthcoming exams.

This Bulletin is also being issued to all P7 pupils in our associated primary schools to give them and their families a flavour of their new school. We look forward to meeting our new intake during the induction week in June.

S3 Exams – Wednesday 14 April 2010

Prior to sitting prelims in S4, we feel it is extremely important for S3 students to experience a formal exam setting. Therefore, all S3 pupils will sit their English exam at the same time, and their formal SQA Mathematics examination in May. Other exams will be timetabled in classrooms. These will finish on Wednesday 28 April. Your child will be issued with a timetable which will also be on the school website. You will receive your child’s report on Friday 14 May, before the parents’ evening on Wednesday 19 May.

Staffing

Kenna Bannister retired from the Academy on 24 March 2010. Kenna had been with us for over 12 years and during that time must have photocopied millions of sheets of paper and 'faith healed' thousands of children. She has over those years provided an exemplary service to the school and will be hard to replace.

Congratulations to Mr N Terrace who has been appointed as Acting Principal Teacher Humanities until October 2011 to replace Mr Turner.

Celebration of Achievement Ceremony – 9 June 2010

Our ninth Celebration of Achievement ceremony will take place at 7.30pm on 9 June. This event goes from strength to strength, thanks to our sponsors and the staff who plan and organise it. Sponsors this year have already been very generous but there is always room for more. If you wish to give a donation to the event, either individually or through your business, please contact the Rector. Trophies and prizes, in the form of book tokens, are awarded to S4 to S6 students for academic achievement and endeavour. The guest of honour this year is Alistair Stevenson of McJerrow & Stevenson, Solicitors.

Parental Forums – Meeting 2

The second meeting of the Parental Forums was held on Monday 22 February where there was a good attendance of parents representing each year group. The meeting, held in the Modern Languages Department, was devoted to discussing the Stakeholder surveys, PPP progress, homework and Curriculum for Excellence.

New Lockerbie Campus – Progress Report

The new school is still on schedule to be ready for entry on Friday 28 May. However, on Sunday 25 April 2010 there will be an “Open Day” at “The Old School” from 2:00pm to 5:00pm.

Former pupils/teachers and members of the community are welcome to come to the old school. There will be informal tours and a chance to see your “old room”, photos etc.

After that weekend the school’s heritable items photos, trophies, paintings and Head Boy/Girl and Dux boards will be taken down.

Hope to see you on Sunday 25 April 2010.

Additional Inservice Day/Pupil Holiday

The Scottish Government has allocated one additional extra non-pupil day to help meet the demands of implementation of ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’. Dumfries and Galloway has allocated this day as Friday 11 June 2010.

School Improvement Plan

It is the time of year when the school starts its planning process for the next three sessions and most of our energies for the foreseeable future will be spent developing ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’, which aims to make education more relevant to the demands of the 21st century. We shall also continue to examine our own performance through self evaluation mechanisms and settle into the new campus. However, we are always pleased to receive suggestions about the direction the school should be taking from our stakeholders and invite you to submit these in writing to Mr Herbert in the first instance.

Mobile Phones

We are spending a considerable amount of time dealing with a whole variety of issues surrounding mobile phones. Our policy is that pupils are allowed to bring mobiles to school but they should be SWITCHED OFF AND NOT ACCESSED during the school day within the school building.

We plan to strengthen our procedures of ‘zero tolerance’ surrounding use and more often than not, misuse of mobiles. From now on for a first offence, the phone will be removed, a demerit issued and the phone collected from the Duty Rector at 3.30pm on the same day. Presently, not a day goes by without some mobile related incident. Pupils will also be given the same message.

A second and subsequent offence will involve a parent having to collect the phone from the Duty Rector up to 4.30pm each day.

Persistent offenders will be requested to surrender the phone at the start of the school day, or not to bring the phone to school.

Can I remind you of our procedures if you do wish to communicate with your family during the school day?

• All contact should be carried out through the school office.

• A public telephone, which is in view of the office is available for student use at intervals, lunchtimes and close of school.

If these seem draconian measures may I illustrate the extent of recent problems:

• Cyberbullying, ‘dis’ texts etc.
• Pornography; home made involving other pupils or downloaded.
• Pupils updating ‘Facebook’ and other social networking sites during lessons.
• Pupils filming during lessons.
• Pupils contacting parents to encourage them to ‘complain’ about punishments etc.
• Parents threatening staff about return of mobile phones.

All confiscated phones will be sent to the office for safekeeping until they are collected by a parent.

We did consider an outright ban, or surrender of phones during the school day but decided this was not practical and would be impossible to police.

We hope this strengthening of procedures will go some way to alleviating the problem, which is disruptive to teaching and learning and time consuming for all concerned to deal with.

I trust I have your support in dealing with this matter. G J Herbert, Rector

S3 Monitors 2010

Monitors will be appointed in May. Please encourage your child to apply for this responsible position. Information will be given at an assembly in the near future.

Annual Excursions

A list of all the school’s annual excursions is enclosed with this Bulletin to give an idea of costs and what is on offer during your child’s time here. This list was requested by Parental Forum members to allow parents to budget for trips.

‘My First Year at Lockerbie Academy’

The first thoughts that came into my head, when induction week started, were: What if I get lost? What if I forget my books? Will my teachers like me? To be honest I was scared of all the older kids, new teachers, bigger buildings and so on.

As my bus slowly pulled into the bus park I had a huge amount of butterflies in my stomach. We all rushed into the Assembly Hall and sat in our classes. After Mr Herbert talked to us, our Sixth Year Buddies took us to our period one class. I gradually got to know more and more people, I was getting more comfortable moving from class to class and remembering all my books and homework. I went to see Peter Pan in Edinburgh, which was great because lots of my friends went too. I also went on an RE trip to London, we visited mosques and temples and went to watch a show called War Horse. London was really amazing! I hardly got any sleep though!

Since starting at Lockerbie Academy I have made lots of new friends and learned that if you respect your teachers, your teachers will respect you. Mhairi Burnett, 1B

My first year at Lockerbie Academy was a great one – so many activities to do. I loved all of my classes where there were a lot of good challenges to work at. My favourite classes were active ones which included PE, Drama, Music etc.

I joined the Under 13s football team after taking part in two trials. The first trial was hard because of a lot of competition and the second one was even harder with good players and a lot of competition again. I finally achieved to get into the team and was so pleased.

My year has gone so quick with the same routine every day. A quick bite to eat at break, talk to my friends, then off to class. After two periods it then becomes lunch – a box of pasta for lunch from the canteen.

It was coming to the end of the year and the inter house games were coming up. I was very lucky to get in the Kirtle house football team, with the last position going to me. I also signed up to the basketball team. Unfortunately Kirtle came last in the football competition. We were so unlucky in every game.
Daniel Robson, 1C

Thawale Update - April 2010

Our partnership with Thawale Primary School in Malawi has continued to flourish over the past few months.
January started with the arrival of a second parcel containing much eagerly awaited letters from our pen pals and a huge number of photos capturing a real flavour of school life in Thawale Primary.

By early February replies were sent along with a whole host of interesting paraphernalia – including Winter Weather poems, posters, a school tie and booklets about Lockerbie’s history and the Annandale Way to name but a few.

The S6 Enterprise African Link Group have been as productive as ever, visiting two more of our Primary feeders to promote the link, creating a wonderful wall display of all the photos received and designing a power point for all staff to use on 26 March as part of our Themed Link Event with Thawale on Rights and Responsibilities. From this whole school activity, teaching material as well as pupils’ work was exchanged between the two schools. That afternoon, we were also delighted to have Lorna Argente, from Careers Scotland, talk to some of the Sixth Years about her experiences in Malawi.

March 23rd saw Magdalene Sacranie, author of Tales from African Dreamtime, visit the school and take creative writing workshops with S1 and S6 pupils, as well as an open session in the library for all staff and pupils. The proceeds from her book go towards The Children’s Fund of Malawi.

An Art Competition, organised by Ms Duncan, was also held to design a wall mural representing our link, with winning entries from Ashley Candler, Callum Harvey and Mhairi Burnett.

A freelance journalist, Sarah Finley, also gave some of our female pupils the chance to contribute to a teenage girls’ magazine, with an article on what it is like to have a pen pal from another country.

Our Staff African Link Group also met last session and after consultation with Oscar Muwawa, Thawale Primary School’s head teacher, it was agreed that we would support the Special Project of training six members of staff at our partner school in Leadership and Management.

Last term progress was also made towards acquiring funding for a reciprocal visit with our Link Co-ordinator attending a course run by the British Council. By early May we will know if this application had been successful. Initially an exchange would involve one member of staff from each school and this would help to lay the foundations for a Joint Curricular Project to meet the short term aims and objectives of the link.

A strong sense of partnership exists between the two schools already and this continues to grow from strength to strength with regular phones calls and a genuine willingness for the long term goal, to embed the global dimension in each partner school’s curriculum, to be reached.

Please contact Ms Wright if you have any other ideas on how our partnership could be promoted.

Child Protection

Last term pupils were issued with a plastic card giving information on who to contact if they have any child protection issues. Spare cards are available from the School Office on request.

Dates for your Diary