Portpatrick Primary

Pupils at the North Rhins and West Rhins Schools are delighted to share that they have been awarded the Gold Rights Respecting School Award from UNICEF. Having already achieved their Bronze and Silver awards, Leswalt, Kirkcolm and Portpatrick Primaries have been working hard over the last 18 months to achieve their Gold award, with our Pupil Council reps leading on this. Although the 3 schools are no longer partnered together (with Portpatrick now being part of the West Rhins Schools), we started our journey towards the Gold award together, so it seemed fitting that we finished it together!

The award is split into 3 strands – it aims to teach children about their rights; they learn through their rights by demonstrating positive relationships and attitudes, and respecting others’ rights; and finally they learn to take action through their rights to become responsible global citizens.

The UNICEF Rights Respecting School assessor visited all 3 schools at the end of May and pupils were able to share with her the many activities that we’ve worked on in our journey towards gold, including: Children’s Right’s Tuesday; learning about rights at assemblies; our class charters; linking rights to our school events such as House Captain elections, Children’s Mental Health Week and Children in Need; our worry boxes in class; learning about Child Line; our climate change protest; and all of our various pupil voice groups, such as our Eco Schools work.

The schools were provided with a report, sharing strengths and some next steps for when we work towards the Sustaining Gold award. The report stated that, “It was evident that children’s rights are embedded across the school and underpin every facet of school life.” The assessor felt that we have, “Very articulate children who knew a wide range of articles and were confident in the concept of rights.” She was impressed with the extent to which rights are embedded in the day-to-day life of all three schools and the strong commitment of passionate staff as champions of children’s rights. Finally, the assessor highlighted that pupil voice is valued highly across the schools with visible actions arising from pupil suggestions and an understanding from children that they can influence positive change.

We are thrilled that our hard work has been recognised and we have been awarded this accolade. We are looking forward to continuing our Rights journey as we work towards the Sustaining Gold award.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 4: Making Rights Real

SHANARRI – Achieving, Nurtured & Responsible

This week, we had a fantastic start to a new series of workshops for our Primary 5-7 pupils! We were delighted to welcome Matthew from Youth Work to our school, where he will be working with our children throughout the school year on various important topics. The focus for the first three weeks is: online safety!

In today’s digital age, understanding how to stay safe online is more crucial than ever, especially for our young learners. From social media to gaming, our children are exposed to a wide range of online environments, and knowing how to navigate these spaces safely is vital. That’s why we’re thrilled to be working with local community agencies like Youth Work to provide these valuable workshops.

The first workshop was a huge success! The children were fully engaged, participated enthusiastically, and had lots of fun while learning important rules about staying safe online. Matthew did a brilliant job of making the topic interesting and accessible, helping the pupils understand key concepts such as protecting personal information, recognising suspicious behaviour, and knowing what to do if they feel uncomfortable online.

We’re so pleased to see our school fostering strong partnerships with community organisations to bring these essential lessons to our pupils. As we continue with this series, we’re excited to see our students grow more confident and knowledgeable about online safety.

Keep an eye out for more updates on our workshops with Matthew and Youth Work throughout the year!!

• UNCRC Children’s Rights:
  • Article 13: Freedom of expression
  • Article 16: Right to privacy
  • Article 17: Access to reliable information
• SDG Goals:
  • Goal 4: Quality Education
  • Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
  • Goal 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions (protecting children from exploitation and harm)
• SHANARRI Indicators:
  • Safe: Ensuring children are protected from harm online
  • Healthy: Promoting emotional well-being by teaching safe online practices
  • Achieving: Supporting children in developing digital literacy
  • Nurtured: Encouraging a supportive environment for discussing online challenges
  • Respected: Recognising children’s rights to privacy and protection
  • Responsible: Encouraging responsible behaviour in online environments
• Meta-Skills Used:
  • Focusing: Concentrating on understanding and applying online safety rules
  • Critical Thinking: Evaluating online content and situations for safety
  • Sense-Making: Understanding the importance of safe online behaviour
  • Communicating: Sharing concerns and seeking help when needed
  • Integrity: Making ethical choices online
  • Curiosity: Exploring the digital world safely and responsibly

We are thrilled to announce that our 3 Primary 7 pupils have started their journey to become Playmakers, a program led by Alison Murray from Active Schools to help them develop as sports leaders! Today marked the first session, and the six pupils who were in attendance got stuck right in, showing great enthusiasm and energy. They loved every moment of it!

Over the next weeks, our Primary 7s will be taking part in the Playmakers program, which is designed to build their confidence, leadership, and communication skills by planning and organising fun sports activities for their peers. Each of the pupils has been given a booklet to fill in as they progress through the sessions, reflecting on what they have learned and how they can become great role models in promoting physical activity.

We’re so proud to see our young leaders already engaging so actively in their first week! Keep posted on more updates of our Primary 7s in action as they continue their journey to becoming Playmakers and sports leaders! For now, check out the photos below of our Primary 7s excited to embark on this fantastic new project.

• UNCRC Children’s Rights Covered:
  • Article 12: Right to be heard and have a say in matters affecting them
  • Article 29: Education must develop a child’s personality, talents, and abilities to the fullest
  • Article 31: Right to rest, leisure, play, and participate in cultural and recreational activities
• SDG Goals Covered:
  • Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being (Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all ages)
  • Goal 4: Quality Education (Inclusive and equitable quality education for all)
• SHANARRI Indicators Covered:
• Active: Encouraging physical activity and engagement in sports
• Included: Ensuring every child has an opportunity to participate and feel involved
• Achieving: Developing leadership and organisational skills
• Meta-Skills Used:
  • Collaborating: Working together to lead and organise activities
  • Leading: Taking initiative and guiding peers in sports activities
  • Communicating: Sharing ideas and instructions clearly with others
  • Feeling: Building empathy, understanding emotions, and supporting peers
  • Adapting: Adjusting to new roles, challenges, and situations in the leadership journey
  • Initiative: Taking proactive steps to plan and deliver fun and engaging activities
  • Integrity: Demonstrating fairness, honesty, and respect while leading and participating

It was great to be back at Portpatrick school seeing all the pupils’ faces as well as meeting three new children! We had great fun settling back into school.

Our younger pupils had some time playing in their new classroom as well as completing some art tasks and showing us how well they know the alphabet!

 Our older pupils logged onto our new education platform – Purple Mash. This can used at home for extra support on various aspects of learning. Parents can also access the platform through a Parent code which will be sent out with homework diaries next week!

Our children played some board games with Barbara and Mrs. Henry. This will be available for children to participate in more this year as the school looks to further our childrens ‘meta-skills’. These skills include developing abilities such as self-management – focusing, integrity, adapting, initiative and Social intelligence – communicating, feeling, collaborating, leading.

Keep your eyes on the blog for all the updates of the fun activities we will be getting stuck in to! 

Here’s some photos of our Portpatrick pupils from our first day back…

Our council is consulting on proposals to change the structure of the school week, so that there are four slightly longer days and one day per week that finishes at lunchtime.

More information can be found here:

Consultation – School week structure – Dumfries and Galloway Council (dumgal.gov.uk)

Please come along and have your say at the local community drop in about the proposal for changes to the structure of the school week. You are invited to come along to:

Stranraer Academy on Wednesday 28th of August any time between  4.30pm and 7pm.

There will be information and staff available on the night and you will have the opportunity to fill in a survey to share your views and be part of the consultation process.

Please click the link below to access an information PowerPoint.

Thank you

Last day fun for 2024. The pictures speak for themselves. 🙂

All the children had a great time and despite the change of date for our Sports Day, the turnout was fantastic! First of all we had the sprint race as well as 9 other races which included: Skipping, Sack, Egg & Spoon, Throw, Obstacle, Distance and Relay. After this we had the eagerly anticipated Parents’ race which was a fiercely competitive end to the day. Well done to house Portree who won the relay race and to all the boys and girls who participated and gave their all during Sports Day!

Article 24: Health, Water, Food, Environment

Global Goals: 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing

SHANARRI: Healthy, Active, Included

Following on from the children’s musical workshops, please find below a link to watch a video of their experiences.

Thank you

UNCRC – Article 31: Rest, Play, Culture & Arts

After a verification assessment today, we are delighted to announce we have been awarded our shiny, new Digital Schools Accreditation. Portpatrick, Kirkcolm and Leswalt are the first schools in Dumfries and Galloway to achieve this recognition for our ongoing commitment to a digital technologies approach for our school.

We can now share our certificate and new award badge.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – 28 Access to Education, 29 – Aims of Education

On Thursday 30th May we were delighted to welcome visitors from UNICEF UK and family members to discuss how our school and school community have been working towards our Gold Accreditation. The P1-7s have been working very hard to ensure we are a Rights Respecting School. In our journey to becoming a Gold Accredited school we have completed activities such as rights assemblies, developing a rights mascot, sharing a rights homelink book, designing rights games, hosting a rights open afternoon and singing the ‘We’ve All Got Rights Song’ with sign language. Our pupils took full responsibility for showing our visitors around the school and carefully explaining and discussing all of the exciting things we have been up to.

As part of our learning and teaching during the visit, linked to our writing topic – Instructions, we gave ourselves the challenge of following instructions to make a paper Rights Fortune Teller. This proved quite tricky but by following the instructions carefully and with a little bit of help we managed to fold them successfully and began adding rights to test our peers!

We are very proud of the boys and girls for warmly welcoming our visitors and confidently sharing their super knowledge. As a little treat for all of their hard work we enjoyed a bowl of ice cream together as a school and recapped our Rights journey so far.

Great work everyone, we look forward to hearing back from UNICEF UK to find out if we have successfully achieved our Gold Accreditation.

• UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 4 Making Rights Real / Article 13 Sharing Thoughts Freely
• Sustainable Development Goal: 4 – Good Education
• SHANARRI – Achieving, Responsible, Respected, Included