Dear Parent/Carer
End of Term and Next Session: Parent Update 24 June 2021
This final update for the session will cover the following
End of Term
This session will end on Friday 25 June at 12:15pm. This is in line with our normal finishing time for a Friday. All school transport will run as normal.
Covid Guidelines – Summer
From Wednesday to Friday all students in school have been keeping a record of their own close contacts. By Friday all students should have a list of their close contacts from Wednesday through to Friday. Please keep these documents safe as they will be required by the Health Protection Team should your child test positive for Covid 19 at the start of the holiday.
If a child receives a positive result on a Lateral Flow Device at home during the summer, they must report the result online at www.gov.uk/report-covid19-result, self-isolate and book a confirmatory PCR test. This can be done via www.gov.uk/get-coronavirus-test. The Health Protection Team (HPT) advise visiting a community or drive-through test site as this is the quickest way to get tested, or parents/carers can order a home test kit. It is important that children begin self-isolation immediately after they receive a positive result from the LFD test, and do not wait until the result of their PCR test.
SQA Results Day – 10 August
On Wednesday 23 June students received their Provisional Grades Report in school. The reports for those absent were posted and should arrive by the weekend. If there are any concerns relating to these provisional results please contact the school by email: penicuik_hs@midlothian.gov.uk. A reminder that the school will close on Friday for the summer break, therefore any concerns should be emailed before this time. The SQA Appeal service opens on 25 June 2021. Students can access appeal information via this link SQA Appeals 2021 – what you need to know. This guide will also be posted on our website. Please click on this link: SQA Appeals 2021 Student Booklet June
On 10 August 2021 all students will receive their SQA results via post or text. If there are any concerns relating to their SQA results, please email penicuik_hs@midlothian.gov.uk. Your query will be forwarded to the appropriate member of staff.
Next Session
The current date for all students to resume is Wednesday 18 August 2021.
We have not changed timetable early this year, therefore students will be issued with their timetables on the morning of their first day back. Arrangements for the first day back will be sent to parents/carers once final decisions have been made.
The Covid 19 Education Response Group (CERG) will continue to meet over the summer. They will be looking to update health and safety advice as we move towards the new session in August 2021. There is some chance there will still be mitigations in place in August 2021 therefore information about the situation into August will be sent out on all parents/carers nearer the session start date.
We understand that there may be some disruption during the first week as we navigate our new timetable and adjust to potentially new mitigations. Senior students who require re-coursing will be invited by Guidance staff to attend a re-coursing meeting during one of our staff in-service days (Tuesday 17 August).
Information regarding school lunches for 2021 can be found in the accompanying letter. Please click on this link: Lunches letter June 21
Head Teacher Message
Over a year ago it is doubtful that anyone could have foreseen the depth of disruption that Covid 19 was going to wreak on society and in particular the education of our children. Over that time I have read and dealt with many local and national guidance documents, written numerous operational documents and sent hundreds of communications to parents and carers. Throughout this period there is one thing that has shone through and that is humanity is never diminished in any situation and that communities are more than capable of supporting and protecting the vulnerable. Throughout this pandemic we have tried to honour the commitment we must have morally to look after your child and educate them. I know many of you have written to say how much you appreciate it and I also know on occasions that we may not have met some of your expectations. In those cases, I hope you have found us open to criticism and willing to strive to improve. I am extremely proud of the staff and the young people in this school. We are a very strong community and are continuing to look for ways to grow and change what we do to the benefit of the young people in our care. To all parents and carers, I would like to say thank you for your on-going support of staff and your children. It is only working together that we can truly ensure that young people will learn both emotionally and academically and become productive and happy adults and that is the real endgame.
To all of you who have lost loved ones during the pandemic, I offer my sincere sympathies on behalf of the school community. To those of you who have sick loved ones or are unwell yourself, I wish you all a speedy recovery. I hope the summer brings new hope, new freedoms and lots of sunshine.
Best wishes
Craig Biddick
Head Teacher
Dear Parent/Carer
Parental Update – Senior Virtual Awards – Prize Giving 2019-20
As you will be aware we have not been able to hold last session’s Senior Prizegiving or note excellent performance in the lower schools as part of a formal Prizegiving.
Last week we announced further BGE Pride Awards which are our ethos based awards recognising students who display our values. This week we will release two further virtual award announcements which can be accessed below. I would like to note my thanks to Mrs Murphy in Music, and Mrs Davidson in the office for all their work on these presentations.
These are announcing our Senior Prize giving winners for last session 2019-20 split into two presentations – S5-S6 and S1-S4. Our S6 Leavers have been recognised and they received their personal awards, recognising their work in school during S5 in person last Friday. A number of them are going on to study at University and have good offers from some of our top Universities. We wish all students well in their future endeavours and thank them for their contribution to the life and ethos of the school.
We are very proud of all the winners from last session and are pleased we can finally recognise their achievements and hard work. In particular the school community congratulates our 2019-20 Dux – Abigail Stuart – who has excelled academically over her time in school and is going to read medicine at University. We wish her all the best in her future studies.
Finally we are hoping that this session’s Prize Giving for 2020-21 may be able to be held in person at school and we will update you on these arrangements in August. As part of this we do have some long serving members of the school community we want to acknowledge.
Kind regards
Craig Biddick
Head Teacher
S5-S6 Awards
S1-S4 Awards
With Covid measures preventing a proper send off for our S6 this year we decided to do something a little different to make sure they got the send off they deserved. The staff got together to create a video full of farewell messages for our S6 which can be watched through the link below:
ELTI Summer Activity Week
This will be a week-long programme filled with a variety of activities and workshops, starting on 28 June. The programme will be based at Queen Margaret University. Participants will: work on a project with ELTI Tutors and QMU Students, gain connections for work experience opportunities, pick from many workshops to support their next steps, have the opportunity to win prizes.
The Activity Week is open to current S3 – S6 pupils who were involved in the ELTI Tutoring Programme this year, or who may be involved next year.
More details: https://www.qmu.ac.uk/study-here/access-to-higher-education/elti-summer-activity-week/
How to apply: Pupils should sign-up by 21 June by emailing elti@qmu.ac.uk
Click on link please: Summer School
Dear Parent/Carer
In April we sent out a link to our first set of BGE Pride awards. This was an initiative to recognise the young people in S1-S3 who had continued to work hard and who were committed to learning despite the difficulty of the pandemic as well as on their return to school. By being an award based on displaying one of our different values PRIDE values – Participation, Respect, Inclusion, Determination and Excellence; we were able recognise a large number of pupils not just those who are more academic.
Over this session we have introduced a number of initiatives to recognise young people across the school who have performed well, either through Letters of Commendation or Praise post cards which are also based on our values and are emailed home.
The decision to add the PRIDE awards was to formalise a fixed point where we considered the range of performance of young people across the year. In addition to single nominations in subjects for good performance across different values we also looked at students who had received multiple nominations and organised these into three different tiered awards at Bronze, Silver and Gold.
We will be putting up a presentation of further PRIDE Award winner at Gold, Silver and Bronze on our website and via the link at the bottom of this message which covers a small number of students up to the end of May. We did realise after the April Awards were announced on a Google site that not all of the Praise post card information had been taken account of in determining the winners. As a result parent/carers were asked to contact us about anomalies and this information has been captured in this catch up announcement of further awards.
Looking forward, we will be engaging with the new senior student leadership team that is currently being selected by their peers to help us formulate a merit system that further develops the three strands in place. An award system will be maintained with an emphasis on regular celebration of achievement in and out of school as well as an overarching award in June. As the issues with Covid recede these awards will be in person rather than remote.
Very soon, I will be writing again to announce the Senior Prizegivig Award virtual presentation for last session (2019-20) has been posted online. These awards were never held in person and we want to ensure that the young people who worked hard during that’s session are recognised- including our S6 leavers. The plan at present, is to hold this year’s Senior Prizegving in person, in September 2021.
Craig Biddick
Head teacher
Please note that the applications forms for Free School Meals/Clothing Grant and Education Maintenance Allowance for 21/22 are not yet available. We are still waiting on an update from the Scottish Government.
Please keep on checking our Council website, which will be updated in due course. Unfortunately we do not have a time line, but we are hoping for an update early July.
Dear Parent/Carer
Parent Update – Learning and Teaching from 8 June 2021
Senior Phase (S4-S6) Assessments and Provisional Results
Our Assessment Schedule finished on Friday 4 June. The week beginning 7 June we have arrangements in place for students to sit missed assessments.
We want to take this opportunity to commend our senior students for showing maturity and focus during what has been an extremely challenging period in their school career. We wish to thank parents and carers for the support they have provided. Our teaching staff and support staff worked tirelessly to ensure our assessment period ran smoothly.
Staff are now in the process of marking and moderating assessments. Once the moderation process has been completed staff will start to share assessment results and Provisional Grades with students, either face to face or via Google Classroom. These will be the Provisional Grades we send to the SQA. There is not a set timescale for the sharing to take place; this is dependent on each department’s moderation process. We understand that receiving results will cause different levels of anxiety for our students therefore during the next 3 weeks our Pupil Support Department will provide additional support for any students who are concerned about their Provisional Grades.
On 23 June all students will receive a Provisional Grades Report stating their Provisional Grade for each subject. These Provisional Grades are what students should expect to find on their SQA certificate on 10 August. Students should be assured that SQA will not change the provisional result submitted by the school and that once Provisional Results are submitted the SQA will only check for administrative errors and will resolve these with the school.
The SQA have released information regarding their Appeals Process. The link below will provide further information, we have also attached a PDF version of the SQA Appeals Booklet for Students.
https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/79049.html
SQA Appeals 2021 Student Booklet
In line with Local Authority arrangements we will not start our new timetable until August; new timetables will be issued at the start of next term. Recovery of Learning and Teaching will remain our priority until the end of this term. Please see the arrangements below for specific groups:
Learning and Teaching for Broad General Education students (S1-S3) from 8 June
All S1-S3 classes will not “move up a year” as would be the normal procedure for June. S1-S3 students will continue to work on material for their current year level as part of our recovery and consolidation phase. They will move to the next year group in August.
Learning and Teaching for Senior Phase students (S4-S6) from 8 June
In most subject areas staff will start to introduce new courses. Without a change of timetable we have had to adopt a creative approach. All students will continue to attend their current timetabled classes, even in circumstances where they do not plan to continue with the subject next session.
Some departments are making their own internal arrangements based on the nature of their subject. Other departments will create Google Classrooms for new 2021-2022 senior phase classes and post introductory material/tasks for students who will be taking the subject next session. If a student is continuing to study the subject (for example, from National 5 to Higher) they will receive face-to-face delivery of the Google Classroom introductory material. If a student is still in a class but will not be progressing in the subject next session they should use the time to work independently in the classroom, accessing relevant introductory material for their other subjects via Google Classroom. To that end, all students who currently have a chromebook should ensure they bring this to school. It would be beneficial if students can use their own devices (a mobile phone or similar) to access any online material but we remind parents/carers that any personal device brought to school is at the student’s own risk. We appreciate that this is not ideal but it ensures we continue to provide an engaging learning and teaching environment for the rest of this session, the expectation is that students attend school and all lessons until 25 June. Where a student does not have a suitable device/internet access, we will provide support.
If you have any further queries please email the school office: penicuik_hs@midlothian.gov.uk
Miss H Lyon
Depute Head Teacher (Acting)
Please click on this link for Mr Biddick’s letter regarding uniform next session.
Thank you.