Penicuik High School
Parental Newsletter Christmas 2006
It is a great pleasure for me to have this opportunity to write to you about some of the achievements of our pupils and staff over the last few months.
Can I begin with a sincere word of thanks to each and every parent regarding your support of our school uniform. This has been an outstanding success, with almost every pupil in the school wearing school uniform on a daily basis. What an absolute joy it is to see so many well turned out youngsters proud to be identified with Penicuik High School. What a fabulous start to the year!
School News
The first week back in August saw the school turned into an Edinburgh Festival Fringe venue for the first time. My warmest congratulations go to the pupils and staff who gave so unstintingly of their time to make this such a success. I know that Mr Keith Murphy will give a report of the work of the Music department later in this newsletter but I wish to record my particular thanks to Keith for his drive and enthusiasm in taking forward a very demanding production.
During the first weeks back we had pupil visits to The Edinburgh Book Festival, the Botanical Gardens, Benmore and also to the Film Festival.
The science departments had a visit from Sci-fun who provided junior pupils with the chance to sample science in a fun and interactive way.
Our second Big Day was scheduled for Thursday 14th September. However, due to awful weather this was postponed to the Tuesday following the September weekend holiday. The day is a major fundraising, health promoting, house event. My thanks go to you for your continued generosity in supporting the school in our endeavours. The Big Day proved once gain to be an outstandingly enjoyable occasion for all involved.
In early September we had a visit from Mr Peter McNaughton our district HMIe to discuss our action plan and how we are going to take this forward. He seemed to be pleased with what we have proposed.
The senior English students attended a performance of Romeo and Juliette in the school. Our thanks go to the Parents Association who sponsored this event.
Elections have taken place for the Student Council and the first meeting has taken place. I am sure that the Council will be highly effective in terms of taking forward the concerns of students and helping with the smooth organisation of the school.
Staffing
We welcomed a number of new faces to the staff of the school in August and in the succeeding months: Kirsty Miller in Chemistry and Science, Bart Willemse in Computing, Colin McAndrew in Design Technology, Fraser Hope and Lisa McKenzie in English, Jennifer McLaren in Geography, Helen Ballantyne in Mathematics, Lorraine Gifford in Modern Languages, Amy Parker in Physical Education and Claire Guinan as a Learning Assistant. We hope that they all enjoy their time at Penicuik High School.
We say a fond farewell to Mr Walter Chapman from Modern Languages who is retiring at Christmas time. We wish Walter a long and very happy retirement. Congratulations to Mrs Helene Clark on the safe delivery of a baby daughter, mother and baby both doing very well.
Music Department
It has been a very busy term in the Music Department. We started in August with Penicuik High School becoming an Edinburgh Festival Fringe Venue and putting on our own show entitled �Children of our Time.� The original performance played to three sold out audiences in March, and by popular demand sold out another three nights as part of a Festival run. The show was written by pupils and run collaboratively between the Music and Media studies departments. We also had a number of pupils from primary schools in the Penicuik area involved.
A number of pupils were involved in a lottery day concert celebrating creativity. It took place at The Hub in Edinburgh and was hosted by the BBC. There were a number of well established artists participating. A number of our pupils had written songs for the occasion. They were, Julie Donaldson (S6), Linzi Wilson (S5), Robb Brown (S6), Kirsty Johnson (S6) and an S6 band called Strapping Young Rab.
We have also hosted two extremely successful live music events organised by pupils.
�Live M� took place in October. This was a fundraising/awareness raising evening in the style of �Live Aid.� It was organised by Julie Donaldson(S6) and saw over two and a half hours of quality music and dance performances to a capacity crowd.
We also hosted a Rock Night in November organised by S6 pupil Robb Brown. A number of bands participated and the evening was hailed as a great success.
Pupils have also been involved in a great deal of music in the wider community with a large representation from Penicuik High School at the Midlothian Festival of Music participating in a number of the ensembles.
Our fiddle group performed as part of the Penicuik Folk Festival which was hosted at the Craigiebield Hotel. They treated audiences to a selection of tunes from their repertoire.
We have also had pupils undertaking music exams for the Associated Board and Trinity exam bodies.
S1 Pupil Katharine Thomson achieved a Merit in her Grade 3 Trinity exam in Trumpet.
S4 Pupil Amy Lawson Achieved a Merit in her Grade 4 Associated Board Piano exam.
S6 Pupil Rachel Topham has been busy this term performing at a Masterclass with Pianist Richard Meyrick, playing in a Piano concert at the Penicuik Arts Centre and most recently achieved a pass at Associated Board Grade 8 level which is the highest grade achievable.
Our Christmas Concert will take place this year on Wednesday 20th December at 7.15pm
School Board
The school board continues to meet regularly. You can find minutes of
our meetings on the school website, http://www.penicuik.info/, in
Penicuik Library, or on our noticeboard in school. Our next meeting is on
Monday 29th January, at 7.15pm in room 18. All parents are welcome to
attend. As mentioned in my letter earlier this year, school
boards will cease to exist from the end of this school year, being
replaced by a Parent Forum and Parent Council for each school
in Scotland. There will be meetings for PHS parents in the new year
to decide how we (that's all parents, not the school board!) want to take this forward. I hope that we'll be able to take this opportunity to find new ways of making it easy for parents to get involved in the life of the school.
Murray Cole, Chair (mic@inf.ed.ac.uk, 01968 672400).
Sports reports
Football
Senior Boys Scottish Cup
� Penicuik HS 4-2 Merchiston Castle (3rd Round)
� Penicuik HS 3-2 Liberton HS (2nd Round)
� Penicuik HS 3-1 Armadale HS (1st Round)
Senior Boys Lothians Cup
� Penicuik HS 1-0 Watson's (2nd Round)
� Penicuik HS bt Heriot's (walk-over, 1st Round)
First Year Friendly
� Penicuik HS 5-8 Peebles HS
Hockey
� Ross HS S1/2 0-3 Penicuik HS S1/2
� Ross HS S3-5 0-5 Penicuik HS S3-5
Staff v Pupils
� PHS Pupils 3-3 PHS Staff (pupils won 4-2 on penalties)
Newbattle Tournament
� Penicuik HS "1" 1-0 Dalkeith HS "1"
� Penicuik HS "1" 3-0 Lasswade HS
� Penicuik HS "1" 0-0 Dalkeith HS "2"
� Penicuik HS "2" 2-0 Newbattle HS "2"
� Penicuik HS "2" 3-0 Newbattle HS "1"
� Penicuik HS "2" 1-1 Lasswade HS
� Penicuik HS "2" 4-1 Penicuik HS "1"
Dalkeith Tournament
� Penicuik HS "A" 2-2 Dalkeith HS "A"
� Penicuik HS "A" 3-1 Dalkeith HS "B"
� Penicuik HS "A" 4-1 Lasswade HS
� Penicuik HS "B" 1-3 Dalkeith HS "A"
� Penicuik HS "B" 5-0 Dalkeith HS "B"
� Penicuik HS "B" 1-0 Lasswade HS
Senior Inter House Matches
� Liddell 4-2 Stevenson
� Liddell 1-3 Clerk-Maxwell
� Clerk-Maxwell 3-1 Stevenson
Junior Inter House Matches
� Stevenson 1-3 Liddell
� Liddell 0-2 Clerk-Maxwell
� Clerk-Maxwell 1-2 Stevenson
� Stevenson 0-0 Liddell
� Liddell 1-1 Clerk-Maxwell
� Clerk-Maxwell 0-1 Stevenson
� Stevenson 1-0 Liddell (sudden death play-off)
Skiing
The senior boys ski team for came 11th out of 21 schools at the Scottish School Ski Championship 2006. The boys are now second reserve for the British schools team.
Dancing
Dancing has started on Wednesday lunchtimes and the girls involved are working both on their own choreography and also dances as a whole group. We are going to perform in a dance festival at Newbattle Community High School in December and hope to host our own festival before the summer holidays.
Charlene McMahon has had a fantastic season of Highland Dancing. Amongst her many successes she achieved the status of Champion of Champions for under 15s.
Our Dancers scored notable successes at the recent dance festival at Newbattle.
Swimming
Congratulations to the schools swimming team who swam in the finals of the Edinburgh and Midlothian Schools Championships in November.
The results were;
Kirsty Thompson S6 2nd in the 100m backstroke.
Paul Gray S5 2nd in the 100m backstroke and 2nd 400m front crawl
Nicola Thorburn S3 2nd in the 100m front crawl.
Vicky McFarlane S3 4th in the 100m breaststroke.
Caitlin Liddle S1 6th in 100m butterfly.
Well done to all who took part.
Jennifer Somerville took part in the National disabled Swimming Championships in Sheffield where she won two gold and two silver medals. Absolutely brilliant!
Kirsty Thompson swam across the Forth and raised much needed funds for our Malawi project.
Archery
Matthew Maitland 5A1 was part of the Scotland under 16 team which won an international competition against England Wales and Northern Ireland. Matthew is the 3rd ranked male Scot at any level. Matthew is hoping to represent Scotland at the next commonwealth games in October 2010 in Delhi in India. Matthew is currently a member of Penicuik Archers.
Cricket
Grant Davidson has been selected for Scotland at Under 15 Cricket.
Congratulations to all who have performed so well.
Malawi Link
At the Penicuik �Africa Convention in the Town Hall on 30 September, Penicuik High School students Colin Thompson, Lorna Currie, Michelle Blanche and several others, along with Mrs Stewart, Ms Lombardo and Ms Redford set up a display table explaining our Malawi partnership with Thyolo High School. The display contained a number of artefacts, batiks, jewellery, photographs and a DVD and Power Point presentation made by S5 and S6 students. Other contributors to the convention included Vet-Aid, Penicuik for Africa, and Fair Trade.
The calibre, attractiveness and easily read message of the PHS entry persuaded the Judges to award a cheque for �100 to the school�s Malawi Fund. Mrs Stewart, the Malawi Partnership coordinator said �This money is a godsend for two pupils at Thyolo Secondary School who will now have their education totally funded for the next academic year. Without this award, they would have had to leave the school as they could no longer afford the fees.� On average, it costs �45 per year to educate a child boarding at Secondary School. The students from PHS really enjoyed their day and have made invaluable links with other local people working for Africa. A representative from VetAid has visited the school already to lead students in a Cattle Trading Game. Watch this space ���
An Open Evening for Malawi was held in the School Assembly Hall on 11 October for anyone interested in finding out more about the Penicuik � Thyolo partnership. Mrs Stewart delivered an illustrated talk on her trip to Malawi and Fair Trade refreshments were offered. Visitors to the school also took part in a demonstration of African dancing and tasted nsima, a kind of porridge which is the staple food of most Malawians. Proceeds of �120 went to the school�s Malawi fund.
The senior students organised a Live-M concert, aided by Penicuik High�s answer to Bob Geldof, Keith Murphy, Principal Teacher of Music. This was an outstanding success with many different styles of music, Irish and African dancing, Multimedia presentations, African games generously demonstrated by Rachel and Mark Lawrence, more nsima tasting and the opportunity to buy Fair Trade drinks and snacks. It was so good no-one wanted to go home and we ran out of time! The students raised almost �500 for our Malawi fund.
Many thanks to all staff, students and parents who contributed so much time and effort to all these events.
Mrs Glenda Tait
It was with great sadness we learned of the death of Mrs Glenda Tait on 24th November. Glenda, until her retiral last year, had worked for many years at Penicuik High School as a PE and Guidance teacher. It was a worthy testament to the deep affection that she was held in that so many people (staff and students) attended her funeral.
The numbers were so great that a very large crowd had to stand outside the largest chapel at Warriston. Glenda�s lasting legacy will be seen in the care, dedication and professionalism that she exhibited and in the lives of those students she touched here at Penicuik High School.
Standards and Quality Report
I have enclosed a full copy of our Standards and Quality report. A summary of this report is required to be published annually to each parent. I have decided this year to give a copy of the full report because it draws on aspects of the inspection report and how we are undertaking the action plan. I feel that it is essential for you to have this information to let you know that we are committed to providing the best quality of education possible for your child. This report is I hope an honest appraisal of where we are as a school, where we hope to go and most importantly how we are going to get there.
Can I take this opportunity to wish you a happy Christmas and very good New Year.
Mark Edie
Headteacher
