Lockerbie Academy Bulletin - January 2010

A Message from the Rector

Firstly, may I take this opportunity to wish all pupils, parents and staff a Happy New Year. 2010 brings the 16+ preliminary exams for S5 and S6 students. These exams begin on 18 February and, as always, we wish all students involved in these every success. We hope all parents involved will encourage their youngsters to follow a planned programme of revision and work hard to achieve their potential during this very important time in their school careers.

This edition marks the first of our termly bulletins for 2010. We increasingly rely on schoolbag mail, together with other means, to communicate with you on a wide variety of topics. Please ask your children, on a regular basis, if they have any communications from school.

Each time we issue such information, we shall send an electronic version via Parentmail (www.parentmail.co.uk) to those families who have enrolled using the free registration service on the internet (163 families currently use this facility).

We thank you for your patience with regard to the recent school closure and appreciate the problems this can cause for working families.

We did our best to communicate the school closure via our own website, Parentmail, the Council website and Groupcall. Unfortunately, Groupcall could not cope with the capacity of traffic and some messages took several hours to deliver, or were not delivered at all. The company was very apologetic about this and is working on improving this aspect of its service.

It is important therefore that our records are up to date with the correct mobile numbers for Groupcall, and that if you have internet access, you are registered with Parentmail as another means of contact.

Finally, thanks to the courtesy of Dumfriesshire Newspapers and the commitment of our “staff” reporters, we shall also inform you about school events via our regular column in the ‘Annandale Herald’.

Staffing

Mrs S Bain has been appointed Headteacher of Dalbeattie High School, and Mr M Turner appointed Depute Headteacher at Wallace Hall Academy. Mrs Bain began her career as a Business Studies teacher in Doon Academy in 1982 and was promoted to Principal Teacher. She was appointed to Lockerbie Academy as Assistant Rector and took up post in April 1993.

Mr Turner began his teaching career in St Leonards Secondary School in Glasgow in 1992 and was acting Assistant Principal Teacher for six months before leaving in 1997. He was appointed Principal Teacher History/Modern Studies and began at Lockerbie on 1 April 1997. When management restructuring occurred, he was appointed Principal Teacher Curriculum for Humanities.

We wish them both every success in their respective new posts.

Mr N Terrace has been appointed Acting Principal Teacher of Humanities until a permanent appointment can be made. Mrs A Anderson has been appointed Acting Depute Headteacher on an 18 month secondment and Ms S Linton has been appointed Acting Principal Teacher Pupil Support (Annan), replacing Mrs Anderson.

We are also pleased to welcome Mrs L Gardiner to the Support for Learning department and Mr J Carrick to the Humanities faculty. We also wish them every success in their new posts.

Fairtrade School

Thanks to the hard work of Mrs Cotter and pupil and staff groups, we have achieved Fairtrade status. We are the first school in Dumfries and Galloway to do so and one of only 72 in Scotland.

There have been a number of awareness raising activities within the school including Fairtrade tuck shops, assemblies, Fairtrade fortnight, quizzes and coffee mornings.

All tea and coffee at staff functions and parents’ evenings is purchased from the ethical superstore.

Further information can be found on the Fairtrade webpage on our website.

Syracuse Scholarships

The application process has begun for those aspiring to become the 2010 Syracuse scholars. Stefan Hanley and Alistair Inglis are the current scholars and Alistair returned home for Christmas. Unfortunately, due to the weather, Alistair was unable to get in to school to speak of his experiences to this year’s potential candidates.

Success of Coffee Morning for Thawale Primary School, Malawi

What a great success the Malawi African Link Enterprise Group’s coffee morning turned out to be. Over 150 supporters enjoyed endless cups of coffee and home baking and the Lockerbie Academy students were to the fore, not only sixth year students manning stalls and serving coffees, but also lots of younger pupils helping behind the scenes and also on many enterprise stalls. The entry fee, competitions and amazing raffle with almost 100 prizes raised a final total of £1020.

For such a link to be successful it is vital that there is a degree of equity in the link and, therefore, it was important that both Lockerbie Academy students and Thawale Primary School benefitted from this enterprise activity. So far the Enterprise group has helped organise a sponsored walk and cycle, raising over £3,000, as well as sending 300 pen pal letters and 100 books. In future there will be a continuing exchange in cultures, resources and a partnership with the Fairtrade groups in the school. Thanks also to Mr Turner and other staff and parents who helped support the event. Ms Wright has now taken over the co-ordinating role for this link.

Exceptional Closure Days

To allow the smooth transition of moving to the new school, we have been provisionally granted four exceptional closure days. Therefore the school will be closed from Monday 31 May 2010 to Thursday 3 June 2010 inclusive. This is the allocation allowed by the Scottish Government. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may cause parents.

Library News

At the end of the year I had a look at borrowing information to see just which books and authors had proved to be the most popular over the past twelve months. I would have to say that there were not too many surprises. Although generally speaking it is not very ‘pc’ to separate the boys from the girls, from my point of view it is interesting to see how the borrowing pattern figures differ as this can help me when choosing new stock. I concentrated on fiction as non-fiction books are often used without actually being taken out of the library and therefore they don’t necessarily show up on the reports generated by the library management system.

Amongst the girls, the book borrowed the most last year was It’s OK, I’m Wearing Really Big Knickers! This is the second in the Angus, Thongs, series by Louise Rennison which was recently turned into a film. This was followed by Mates, Dates and Sleepover Secrets by Cathy Hopkins. Sleepovers by Jacqueline Wilson took third place and The Fellowship of the Ring by J R R Tolkien came in fourth as a welcome contrast to the teenage ‘chic lit’ which is always popular.

Boys too appear to enjoy the works of Tolkien as the book they borrowed the most was The Hobbit. In second place, in sharp contrast to that was A Mission to Menace, part of a very popular series of Dennis the Menace books. In third place was Silverfin by Charlie Higson, one of a series of books about the young James Bond and in fourth place was The Wind Singer by William Nicholson. It is the first part of the Wind On Fire trilogy and is a fantasy novel set in a land where exams are everything! Perhaps at some point this year it would be good to look and see what members of staff are reading. L Langlands

School Website www.lockerbie-academy.co.uk

Thanks to the diligence of Mrs Bell and a small group of pupils, our website continues to be updated and go from strength to strength. We encourage you to log on and browse, especially the e-boards which contain a valuable amount of curricular information from faculties.

Parental Forums

The first meeting of this year’s parental forums was held on 26 October 2009. The new school was discussed as well as parental views on the Health and Fitness and Creative and Aesthetic faculties. These views will be incorporated into our audit reports on the faculties and parents were thanked for their assistance with this.

The next meeting of the parental forums will be held on 22 February 2010. If you have any matters you wish to raise, please contact Mr Herbert on loffice682@ea.dumgal.sch.uk, telephone 01576 202626/202189 or by writing to the school (for the attention of Mr Herbert).

Sixth Year Charities Committee

This year, the nominated charities are Macmillan Cancer Support and Steps (supporting anyone affected by hip, leg or foot conditions). Since summer, the Sixth Years have held a number of fund raising events and to date they have amassed a total of £728.30.

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