I am pleased to inform you that Emily Thompson and Adam Innes secured the most votes and are therefore elected as our new Head Girl and Head Boy. Both campaigned well, made excellent speeches and won the popular approval of both staff and pupils. Adam and Emily have grown in confidence and leadership throughout their time in Barrhead High School, and I am confident that they will make a great job of their new position within the school. Their photo would have been posted sooner but one of them wanted to wait until they were suitably prepared – not saying who!
All of the other candidates who ran are now committed to being deputes and playing a full role in the senior student leadership of the school. They all deserve praise for the way they presented their speeches and their written submissions -their posters were pretty good as well! Thanks to them all for putting themselves forward.
On Tuesday evening, we held our SQA Awards Ceremony to recognise a number of individuals who had outstanding success in their SQA exams.
As usual we recognised the pupils from S4 who had attained a National 5 award in 8 or 9 subjects. This year we had 21 of them including 2 who achieved 9 A passes – Ben Cross and Briony Giblin.
We also acknowledged the 27 pupils in S5 who achieved 4 or 5 Highers. 4 of these young people achieved all 5 awards at an A grade.
For the first time this year we also identified and recognised the individual with the highest mark in each subject in the SQA exams.
Another new award this year has been to celebrate the Dux and Runner-Up – the S5 pupils who scored the highest levels across all their 5 subjects. This year Iain MacCuish was our Dux and Amie MacKenzie was Runner-Up.
Well done to all pupils whose achievements were recognised on the night. Well done to all the other pupils whose own achievements were also significant for them.
Barrhead Waterworks won a public vote in November 2013 and became Grow Wild’s flagship site in the UK. The original project was led by East Renfrewshire Council and Barrhead High pupils and staff played a key role in the setting up the project and in winning the competition at the time. Each new S1 yeargroup has returned to the site since then and helped maintain it alongside other community groups, making it a special place for the town.
Some S4 pupils, who were the first pupils involved when they were in S1, returned to visit the site to hear some great news. Grow Wild has today been named UK’s Best Environment project in this year’s National Lottery Awards, and it had been decided that the Barrhead Waterworks site was the most appropriate place to make the presentation.
TV presenter on BBC One’s Countryfile and star of Strictly Come Dancing, Anita Rani, was present to hand over the award and took time to talk to our pupils (Ailidh Hamilton, Cara Stevenson, Holly Campbell and Erin Brown) about the part they had played.
By now all our S4, S5 &S6 should have received their SQA results and hopefully most will be happy with their achievements. We have seen some very good results.
However we know there will be some pupils who have not achieved what they hoped for. If you wish to discuss your results further, and particularly if you need to renegotiate your option choices for this session, Mrs Crawford (new S5) and Mr Beaton (new S6) will be available this Friday (12th Aug) to meet with you between 8.45 am and 10.20am or from 12.30pm to 1.30 pm.
If you missed the event on the night, or even if you were there and want to relive the excitement of the moments – check out the clips below.
The evening opened with our 3 missing gymnasts running around the school, chased without success, by the intrepid Mr Maybury:
Once he got them to the Games Hall, then things really took off – right over Mr Sinclair’s head … and the night just got better and better! What a showcase!
Hopefully most pupils have enjoyed their holiday weekend – unfortunately for a few there have still been SQA exams! Our exams finish on Friday with PE.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) is an Inservice Day so only pupils with exams should be in school. On Wednesday 1st June, we start the new timetable and the existing S1, S2 and S3 move up to S2, S3 and S4 respectively. School starts at the usual time of 8.45 am.
Seniors (new S5 and S6) return on Monday 6th June at the usual time of 8.45 am. Some pupils will need to see Mrs Crawford about changes to options if we have not been able to run all the courses.
3 of our S1 pupils – Sophie, Jamie and Kyle – accompanied Mr Sinclair to the official “turf-cutting” event for the new school last week. They were joined by ERC councillors and officials celebrating the start of the process.
It was exciting to see the difficulty they had in finding a bit of turf to cut. Work has already started and things are moving quickly. The noisy pile-driving stage has been completed ahead of schedule with no disruption to the SQA exams. You can now see the shape the building will take from the piles that have been sunk into the ground to support the foundations and the whole area has now been dug up ready.
Sophie wielded a mean spade and the boys could only doff their hats in respect! Well done to all 3.
We are now half-way through Day 2 of the exam programme and things are progressing well.
Over the past few days we have been monitoring noise levels from the work on the new build. While it is great to see things progressing quickly, we have been conscious that we are in the noisiest period of the building work – the piledriving of the foundation supports into the bedrock.
While the noise-levels are not too high, the constant thumping could be disturbing to pupils’ concentration. Consequently, we took the decision yesterday, based on that monitoring, to re-room our exams to the opposite side of the school. When pupils sign in they may be told a different room to go to from what is on their exam timetable but otherwise things will be as before.
We will continue to operate this for the duration of the noisier work to ensure that all pupils have the best conditions possible to produce their best work.
I am pleased to inform you that Emily Thompson and Adam Innes secured the most votes and are therefore elected as our new Head Girl and Head Boy. Both campaigned well, made excellent speeches and won the popular approval of both staff and pupils. Adam and Emily have grown in confidence and leadership throughout their time in Barrhead High School, and I am confident that they will make a great job of their new position within the school. Their photo would have been posted sooner but one of them wanted to wait until they were suitably prepared – not saying who!
3 of our S1 pupils – Sophie, Jamie and Kyle – accompanied Mr Sinclair to the official “turf-cutting” event for the new school last week. They were joined by ERC councillors and officials celebrating the start of the process.