Dunbar Grammar School

We started the week hoping that our ICT problems would be resolved in time for us to proceed with the Awards Ceremony on Thursday night.  The office, already under pressure, had been without access to files for approx. two days in total.  Fortunately we were able to proceed on Monday, though there are still problems to overcome.  Monday for me was a mixture of meetings and classroom observation.  Likewise for Tuesday.  On Wednesday evening I had our first School of Ambition meeting of the new session.  This got the juices flowing again and I left convinced that we would have an exciting year ahead of us despite the lack of finance as the budget is already committed.  On Thursday I headed off for the first Head Teachers’ conference of the session which was divided between an update from our District Inspector on the new HMIe inspection model and a collective look at our approach to literacy.  I had also been asked to provide some musical entertainment for lunchtime and I have to say that the students did themselves and the school proud.  I then returned for our Awards Evening.  This was a fantastic event with a mixture of awards, stories of achievement and entertainment, culminating in a celebratory buffet and drink.  The hall was bursting at the seams and the event was a great success.  So much so that we are planning to have a junior event in June.  On Friday we had our second Board of Studies of the session where I reported back from the HMIe session at the conference and introduced a development in our STACS process where we look at SQA results.  This will involve a pre-STACS meeting between PT’s and PT’s to look at the results in more depth and in particular come up with action points.  All in all a very exciting but tiring week.