One highlight of this week was undoubtedly attending the Learning Places Scotland conference at the SEC in Glasgow. It was a great opportunity to think specifically about the architecture of our new building and how this promotes innovative approaches to learning and teaching. I particularly enjoyed learning from the experiences of young people from both West Calder High School and Inverurie Academy, all of whom had recently moved into new build schools. They had some great advice about the importance of letting pupils gradually get used to the variety of different learning spaces. I also had the chance to speak with a range of potential partners about how we can support an exciting BGE curriculum within the STEAM facility, including Glasgow Science Centre and Morrison Construction.
On Wednesday, I joined a number of Wallyford residents and the Community Centre, for a Bite and a Blether. This included a talk on the history of Wallyford, by Alister Hadden. I learned so much about the way in which the community has grown and changed over the years, and I want to make sure that the eventual name of our school and its Houses really do reflect our unique context. We did laugh a lot together when we saw the images of the original school building in Wallyford, with only four rooms!
All parent and pupil engagements around Theme 1: Our school’s purpose, have now been completed. I therefore held a brief Google Meet on Thursday to summarise some of the findings. These Google Meets are recorded and will be added to the website in the next few days. The website also includes graphics showing the main areas of discussion. However, do feel free to join live if you are able to, as this gives you the chance to add any questions to the chat as we go.
Still on the subject of questions, you may have noticed a couple of new pages on the website. I have pulled together both Pupil and Parent FAQs. These can be accessed through the link to the relevant Google document, which makes it easy for me to update as we move towards opening.
Our next Parent Engagement session is on the 24th November at Pinkie St. Peter’s Primary, at 5.30pm. This will still be going ahead, despite potential disruption to the normal school day. I look forward to seeing some of you there.