Whalsay School

Whalsay School’s Primary 6 and 7 pupils were hard at work last Thursday afternoon at Skaw. They were helping the Shetland Bird Club to plant up a crop of plants aimed at attracting bumblebees and birds, a so-called ‘Bumblebird’ crop. This crop is part of wider project across Shetland funded by the Viking Community Benefit Fund, and thirty crops have been established this year across the Islands.

Laurence has been hard at work for the past few nights rotavating two patches of land at Skaw, near the Golf Club House. When the pupils arrived the ground was looking great and had already been sectioned up.  Pupils were put in groups of two and each group got a bag of seeds which they had to spread evenly over their section. These seeds include kale, phacelia, fodder radish, red clover, linseed, buckwheat and mustard. Each group designed a flag which they tied to a pole in their section.

Around the edge of the whole plot the pupils planted bere (barley). The seeds were raked in to protect them from hungry birds, before being rolled with a heavy roller to flatten the ground. At another, smaller plot, oats were planted

Laurence will now erect a small fence to protect the crop from sheep.  It will take approximately 6-8 weeks for the crop to fully grow and bloom so keep your eyes peeled at Skaw!

A HUGE well done to everybody who took part.  There was great team work and many willing hands make light work.   The weather was nice and dry but now we’re all hoping for some rain to get the seed   germinating.  (Not too much tho) 😊

The  Revellers

On Saturday the 4^th of April the Whalsay School fundraising group held an all-ages Revellers gig to raise money for the Symbister Hall renovations. Our group spent their Friday afternoons during term 3 Wider Achievement planning and organising this event. The event was very well attended, and the night went really well!

We believe that this is a really important thing to support because the Hall is an important way to connect our community. It allows everybody to be included, and it’s really good to have the Hall to use for a variety of different events such as, weddings, Sunday Teas, bairns Halloween and Christmas parties.

We gained lots of skills during this short period of time such as organisation, teamwork, communication, customer service and working towards deadlines.

We have lots of people to thank for their help and support as you can see below.

We were successful in applying to the Youth Bank to cover some of our costs and we are also very grateful of the kind donations we received from Shoard and JWJ.

We would like to thank JWJ, Tetley and Anderson and Youth services for selling our tickets.  Thanks also to Ability Shetland for loaning us ear defenders for the event.

We would also like to thank all businesses and member of the public who kindly donated raffle prizes.

Huge thanks to the Revellers and Stallions of the Highway for playing at the gig. Thanks also to David Bisset for working with the sound.  A special thanks to Ann-Marie and Michael Anderson for sharing their experience to help us organising this gig.

Thanks to the Symbister Hall committee for their help and guidance at our initial stages.  The hall committee shared information on their plans to renovate the hall and the commitment required to achieve this which helped motivate us to pull off a successful event.  Thanks also to the hall committee for providing bar staff and running the bar on the night.

We are delighted to share that we have raised a grand total of just over £2500 after all expenses have been paid. This will be donated to the Symbister hall to help with their renovation project.  We wish the hall committee well with the remainder of their fundraising.

Whalsay School Fundraising Group – Josie Sandison, Morgan Pearson, Mollie Anderson, Annie Wilson, Ria Eunson and Isla Porter.

Dear parents/carers,

Please check out the offering below:

We are delighted to finally share we are now taking orders for a recipe book featuring recipes from our Canteen.  This includes recipes from the past 60 years of our school, including classics such as Battered Fish, Bacon & Egg Pie, Tiffin, Chocolate Cracknel and Sponge and Orange Sauce!

If you would like a copy, please complete the link below.

Whalsay School – Canteen Recipe Book – Fill out form

Payment can be made by scanning the QR code attached or by clicking this link: – https://ip.e-paycapita.com/AIP/itemSelectionPage.do?link=showItemSelectionPage&siteId=096&languageCode=EN&source=AIP&fc=99&sc=SVC00374&ic=ITM04239

The cost is £8.00 per book with all proceeds going to our school fund.

Please pay for your book when you order.

All orders must be received by WEDNESDAY 11^th FEBRUARY 2026.

Books will be delivered to Whalsay School and can be collected from there.

Over the last few months there have been quite a few sightings of Bats in Whalsay.  Several of the pupils have seen (and heard them).  Ms Irvine saw two bats at Hamister and even managed to get a smudgy photo of one as it flew past her.

Mrs Simpson’s S2 class were full of questions that she couldn’t answer so she decided to invite our local Bat expert, Mr Pete Gulliver, to visit the class.

Pete came into school on 3^rd December and gave a fascinating talk and slide show.   He has tracked and monitored bats for years and often cares for injured or exhausted bats.  He had amazing footage of a bat flying around his hallway at home.  He took in the equipment he uses to listen to bats and played audio clips, explaining how to distinguish between the different species.  In one sound clip there were 4 different species of bat identified at one time.  What shocked everybody was that this sound clip came from Skerries a couple of months ago!

Bella Jamieson, who only recently took up crocheting, had made a beautiful bat (without a pattern!) as a thank you gift.  Bella presented this to Pete on behalf of the whole class.

Pete messaged later to say “The pupils were wonderful and very attentive.  Please make a special point of thanking Bella for my beautiful gift, I am thrilled with it and am going to name it ‘Pip’ ”.

The feedback from the pupils was very good.  Several said they were now much more interested in seeing a bat and knew what to look out for and when.   One pupil stated they thought Mr Gulliver was very kind to be devoting so much time and effort into caring for bats and helping release injured ones back into the wild. Everybody left the talk much more informed and enthusiastic about bats so the whole class would like to say a HUGE thank you again to Pete.