Next Monday, the 8th May, is an important date in the Wallyford Learning Campus story, as it marks 100 days until Rosehill High School opens to pupils. This meant yet another photo opportunity as our staff team was joined by Councillor Fiona Dugdale and young people from our partner schools this week, to mark the occasion. Please look out for the subsequent story that will appear via ELC, including up to date images of the site.
This important milestone has come alongside some big decisions. After extensive work with our community, we are delighted to share that our school vision is:
“Rosehill: a place to learn, grow, and thrive.”
Learning comes first, in all of its guises: knowledge, skills, and for its own sake.
Growing as people through character education and a focus on our core values of respect, kindness and responsibility.
Thriving as the best possible versions of ourselves, in school and beyond.
We hope that this reflects our desire to ensure that we continue to look at wellbeing and learning as two sides of the same coin. This vision will influence all of the work we are currently doing around policy and procedure, and will provide a touchstone for our upcoming improvement planning.
We’ve also finalised our House emblems, and our emblem for The Brae. These can be viewed below:
Mr. Valentine is working on class lists with our partner schools and all young people will get information about their House allocation in June- without the need to make use of a sorting hat.
A great spot from one of our parents came this week as she noticed that our Rosehill school dress code items are now on sale! Please see the Border Embroideries link below:
We will have sample sizes available for both the Welcome Evening on the 25th May and the Twilight Tours that we are planning for June.
We’ve kept it simple in this first tranche by using black and the whole school colour (the deep green/blue). In future, we intend to offer ‘House’ options too, and will keep the conversation going as to what dress code might look like in the senior phase.
If you’re planning the school wardrobe, you may find it helpful to refer back to the information on dress code that was shared previously, in response to our pupil and parent consultation:
In summary, our dress code is quite straightforward, and focuses on clothes that are smart, affordable, and appropriate for active learning:
- White shirt, T-shirt or polo shirt (polo shirts with the school emblem are available)
- Hoodie or sweatshirt with school emblem (plain black can be worn as an alternative)
- Black on the bottom
- (School lanyard with swipe card- supplied by the school)
- With regards to logos: small ones are sometime hard to totally avoid, but young people should not look like they have been sponsored to attend their place of learning!
Our main priority is that every young person is in school, on time, and ready to learn.
We continue to work on supporting Safer Routes to Schools. Following on from your helpful comments and suggestions, a draft of our School Travel Plan in available on this link. This is a working document which will develop as we move closer to opening and as we begin to see how school travel works in reality. Please be aware that a number of the paths mentioned in the plan will completed over the summer break.
Rosehill High School Travel Plan
There were a couple of comments about supporting safer travel by looking at the school day. However, there is an ELC wide agreement as to the start and end times of the school day, which we are not at liberty to alter at this stage.
We continue to work closely with our partners to establish what the first weeks and months of opening might look like. As Head of Establishment as well as Head of School, I have a responsibility to ensure that this highly beneficial partnership working happens in a planned and cohesive way, throughout the course of session 23-24, and beyond. For example, the library and learning resource centre will be open to Rosehill pupils straight away, with public access after school hours available from around mid-September. This will allow us to complete all the relevant safeguarding checks, with young people in the building, to ensure that we can work towards shared access in due course. We’ll continue to keep our community updated as the provision expands.
Our curriculum leaders have begun their visits to our partner primary schools, starting with some active input on Health and Wellbeing with Mr. Cuthbertson and Science and Technology with Mr. Thomson. Mrs. Stewart-Young and Mr. Valentine also did some initial sessions around the importance of character in being the best versions of ourselves. Their slides are available here:
Rosehill High School Assembly 1
Everyone has been very impressed by the level of involvement from pupils and the rest of the team are excited to get out there, too. Please remember that, due to arrangements around timetabling and examinations, our transition activities for MGS will focus on the month of June. This will also be the key time for young people coming to join our mainstream from out of catchment.
Mrs. Fleming and I attended the Wallyford Parent Council earlier this week, but have pulled together our summary comments to ensure that they can be accessed by everyone:
Parent Council Updates 2nd May 2023
I also met with the Parent Engagement Group this week, and was joined by both Ms. O’Neill and our new business administrator, Ms. Fiona Glass. The topic of conversation was effective home/school communication, and our starter slides are here:
Parent Engagement Group: Home School Communication
A flavour of the discussions is available here:
Home/school communication key talking points
In combination with these and the parent discussion that followed, we will be producing a ‘one page’ policy in the coming weeks, that allows as to start as we mean to go on in terms of positive connections with the community.
Our Curriculum Evening will be led by Mrs. Stewart-Young, is open to all parents/carers and young people, and will take place on the 10th May. A reminder of the details and link is below:
Parental Engagement – Curriculum
Wednesday, 10 May · 7:00 – 8:00pm
Time zone: Europe/London
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/eio-yycs-vey