Harlaw Academy weekly blog:
24-28 August 2015
David Innes
(Head Teacher)
Over the summer much had been done to improve the school – this included:
 a new Games Hall floor
 new floors in two Art rooms
 a new support space for pupils
 improving rooms in Science, Music, Social Subjects and Maths
 deep clean of the whole school
Also over the summer senior pupils received their SQA results. Overall the
results for Harlaw Academy look very good as the table below shows:
National 4
99.4% of presentations passed
National 5
81.4% of presentations passed
34.9% of these were A’s
Higher
84.9% of presentations passed
27.4% of these were A’s
New Higher
80.4% of presentations passed
28.3% of these were A’s
Advanced
78.7% of presentations passed
Higher
27.9% of these were A’s
We also welcomed the following new teachers to our staff:
Miss L Elliot (English)
Miss K Fraser (English)
Miss E Ritchie (PE)
Miss A Crawford (Geography)
Miss R Prentice (RME)
Miss K Cleland (Mod Lang)
Miss S Murray (Music)
Miss D McConville-Rae (Biology)
Mr A Coutts (SfL)
At present we are also in the process of making appointments in French, Biology,
English and for a new post of PT Wider Achievements.
As pupils returned we were delighted to welcome an enthusiastic group of S1
pupils to Harlaw – for the first time Hanover Street is part of our associated
school group and the new S1 is roughly 60% ‘in zone’ and 40% ‘out of zone’. Since
summer we have been processing a lot of new requests to join Harlaw Academy
and are now almost full in every year group.
Senior pupils were fantastic as buddies to the new S1 pupils and we benefitted a
great deal from appointing the prefects and the Head girl (Catherine Barrett)
and boy (Keir Lynch) to their posts before summer. From day 1 of the new
session our seniors have shown outstanding leadership.
We started the session emphasising our vision, values and behaviours to pupils:
The idea of heightened expectations is one we will keep repeating – we all have
to recognise that the local economy is changing and jobs may in the future be
harder to obtain. We need to do all we can to give Harlaw pupils the best
prospects and they need to set high expectations of themselves and keep
producing their ‘best work, on time, first time, every time’.
I want to thank every pupil who turned up in school uniform (and also thank each
family for their support). We have a range of uniform options and suppliers to
suit most tastes and most budgets.
At the start of term we also promote the wider range of wider opportunities
available at Harlaw Academy:
 On Wednesday I attended a meeting for the group going to
Krakow/Auschwitz in September.
 Also on Wednesday pupils received information on groups which were running
in PE and Music.
 We also learned that the Harlaw Defenders (our anti bullying group) had
been short listed for an award at the Annual Children and Young People’s
Services Awards to be held on 1 October.
 On the first Friday of the new session our Head Boy, Keir Lynch, ran training
to give 96 senior pupils a basic/intermediate first aid qualification
I hope as many pupils, parents and teachers as possible will follow the regular
news/information updates on various school twitter feeds: @harlaw_academy or
@HarlawMusic or @HarlawAcademyPE and on this new weekly blog.
Finally for your information here are some key dates for the session:
Term dates:
Term 1:
Term 2:
Term 3:
Term 4:
Tuesday 18 August – Friday 9 October 2015
Monday 26 October – Friday 18 December 2015
Monday 6 January – Friday 1 April 2016
Monday 18 April – Friday 1 July 2016
In-service dates:
Monday 17 August 2015
Monday 16 November 2015
Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 February 2016
Tuesday 3 May 2016
Holidays
Monday 15 February, Friday 25 March, Monday 2 May
Other dates:
Monday 31 August PTA meeting 7.00
Thursday 3 September Parent council AGM 7.00
Saturday 12 September 2015 (Doors open day)*
Friday 2 October 2015 (Forest Walk)
* Doors Open Day - Please bring family, friends, pupils, ex-pupils along to see
around the school - the school is open 10 – 4 with tours taking place every
quarter hour.