Examinations for students in senior school were recently completed with staff now busy marking scripts and producing parental reports.  These will be issued to parents in school through meetings with pupil support to allow realistic targets to be agreed and set.  Staff continue to offer a tremendous range of study classes after school in an effort to fully support candidates for SQA examinations.

Muir Street Primary and Logans Primary P6 and P7 pupils celebrated Burns Day by participating in the Annual Day of Dance at Braidhurst.  Over 100 pupils enjoyed showing off their Scottish country dance skills.  The dance programme consisted on a range of simple ceilidh dances and very complex Scottish country dances which included difficult formations.  Mrs Jean Gardner from the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society led the pupils through the dance.  She was full of praise about the quality of dancing.

This event is part of the primary/secondary transition programme and provided P6 and P7 pupils with an opportunity to work with others from different schools.  The next event is a sports afternoon for P7 on Monday, 16^th February.  The P6 enterprise morning is on Wednesday 18^th March.

Students at Braidhurst High School came face to face with some knitted nightmares thanks to Glasgow University.  Dr Mhairi Stewart and Dr Jane Munday, from the Parasitology, visited S4 and Higher Geography students.  The researchers helped students explore Scotland’s extensive history in the discovery and control of tropical diseases and how the parasites responsible for both malaria and sleeping sickness cause problems for people and economies around the world.  Pupils also got up close and personal with some of the parasites common to Scotland, including a 30m long crocheted replica of the world’s longest tape worm.

This is Dr Munday and Dr Stewart’s second visit to Braidhurst High.  This gave pupils the opportunity to find out more about university life and what it’s like to work each day with some of the world’s most dangerous creatures.  Dr Stewart, co-ordinator of Glasgow’s ScienceGrrl chapter, was delighted to speak to a large number of female students looking to excel in science in higher education.

Braidhurst High recently lost one of the school’s longest serving members of staff when after 23 years loyal service Mrs Patsy Doyle gave up her position as cleaning supervisor.   Patsy’s service was recognised by a presentation by the Rector Mr Hannan with janitorial and cleaning staff in attendance.

Don’t Fret have been together since 2013 and are competing in this year’s Battle of the Bands in Motherwell Civic on 5 February.   They are mainly influenced by Biffy Clyro, Muse and Foo fighters.   This week they performed in the school foyer at lunchtime to entertain pupils and teachers.

Our Rock Band members are all in S6.   Jack hopes to go on to study sound production, Fraser is doing Advanced Higher music and Music Technology this year as well as other Highers.   Ben is a keen linguist and hopes to go on to further study in this area.   Ashleigh is doing sever Highers and is enjoying being part of the band.

We wish our rock Bank the best of luck in this year’s competition and certainly all of Braidhurst is behind them.

Braidhurst High School robotics Club have successfully started to make the journey to Scotland’s high tech future by activating their Raspberry Pi.   The robotics club is committed to delivering Scotland’s STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) future.   The club meets on Wednesday and Friday lunchtimes and is supervised by Mr Hussain of the Science Department, the topics covered by the club so far include Logic circuits, robotics and computer software/hardware architecture.   Pupils pictured are studying National 5 physics and one pupil is studying advanced higher Maths (One of the youngest pupils to do so in Scotland).

Their teacher Mr Hussain has a background in science and engineering, having worked as a commissioning engineer for some of the most well known companies around the world, such as NASA in the United States and Mitsubishi in Japan.   In the background is a picture of a robotic hand made by a Scottish company called Touch Bionics (www.touchbionics.com/) based in Livingston.   This company is where Mrs Hussain is a robotics engineer, “she’s the real expert in the family”, comments Mr Husain.   The company is a real success story that Scotland should be celebrating and has offices in many countries as well as fabrication facilities in the United States.