News

Last week a bunch of our pupils joined in on our annual residential trip to Glencoe.  The residential is one of a range of outdoor activities that we partake in at this time of the year and, as well as being personally challenging, pushing everyone out of their respective comfort zones, is also loads of fun.  Our thanks to Andy and Mikey from Hebridean Pursuits who once again g...

Congratulations to our pupils who successfully completed their Duke of Edinburgh Award expedition at the weekend.  Their two day walk was based in the hills around Peebles and Innerleithen and involved interesting navigation challenges and some steep climbs in very warm weather.  They worked well as a team and met all twenty DoE assessment requirements for a successful expediti...

As part of our outdoor learning programme our pupils are currently in the midst of an eight week programme with the National Trust for Scotland at Newhailes House.  The Trust's "take me out" programme explores surviving in the wild and so far we have found out about building shelters to survive wind and rain, purifying water, lighting fires (safely!) and cooking over the fires....

Well, it's that exam time of year again and our pupils kick-off today with National 5 Maths.  However, as well as preparing for exams, many of our pupils have been working hard to finish off and submit their course assessment work and, for Art & Design and English, their portfolios.  Well done to everyone for all the effort they have put in over the last couple of months. ...

Our pupils successfully completed their Duke of Edinburgh Award practice expedition at the weekend and are now looking forward to the "qualifying" expedition in June.  Over the preceding weeks they had explored the key knowledge they needed to complete the two day walk and overnight camp including map reading and navigation, first-aid and emergency procedures, camping and cooki...

Today in school we celebrated Mac’s 6th birthday.  Mac is the school’s emotional support dog; he comes into school twice a week to help the pupils who are feeling particularly anxious or low. The pupils can go for a walk with him and a member of staff or they can just sit and cuddle him in school. Mac loves all the attention he gets in school and we have found that he is a huge...

As we move into spring our pupils are now starting to get out into the garden again so we are very pleased to have our new garden shelter completed. The shelter was designed and built by Dave Crosbie from Tree-ditions Woodland Crafts School with a lot of help from our pupils.  The shelter was only possible thanks to a very generous grant from The Percy Bilton C...

Four of our pupils are currently working towards their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh award.  As part of the award they have to complete a two day outdoor expedition, including an overnight camp.  The pupils will be fully responsible for all aspects of the expedition including route and equipment planning, navigation, cooking meals and setting up camp. This week we went for a shor...

Last week we started our first ever film club! Several of our pupils had expressed an interest in films and getting together to share and discuss them.  Elaine, our English teacher, enrolled the school into an online film club that gives us access to a huge film catalogue.  The pupils involved in film club take responsibility for thinking of titles to watch and order.  These wi...

On Thursday 2nd February the whole school went on a trip to the Five Sisters Zoo in West Lothian. The zoo was an ideal location to build on the pupils’ experiences of biodiversity and adaptation which is part of all the biology courses they are studying. The pupils and staff really enjoyed this trip. There were opportunities to walk around and see all the interesting ani...