Anyone aged 16 or over is able to vote in the Scottish Parliament Elections on 6th May 2021. You must register before you can vote and the deadline for this is 19th April. This can be done online. You must also be either a British citizen, an Irish citizen or a citizen of another country living in Scotland who has permission to enter or stay in the UK, or who does not need permission. Please see the slides on the link below or watch the short video explaining how elections to the Scottish Parliament work.
Like all Scottish secondary schools, we are using the alternative certification model to deliver results for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher courses this session. Our teachers will use assessments that pupils have taken part in over the course of the year as evidence to decide the grades that our pupils should be awarded. Unlike last session, all grades will be awarded based on a young person’s demonstrated attainment. It was always our intention to carry out further assessments towards the end of the year and give our pupils the opportunity to be assessed when they had completed their learning. Please see the link below for details of our plans for carrying out these assessments and a calendar of when they will take place.
Dr. Vance invited questions from parents / carers and pupils about the re-opening on 15th March. Please see the link below for answers to the questions we have received.
From Monday 15 March, pupils in S4 to S6 who are taking national qualifications will begin their return to school and will have priority for face-to-face lessons. Learning and teaching, whether in school or through remote learning, will continue to enable both teachers and pupils to review and consolidate all learning, before moving on to focus on completing assessment evidence.
The number of assessments which pupils will undertake for qualifications purposes may vary across their subjects. This is due to the nature of individual subjects and how they are taught. Pupils should talk to their teachers if they have any questions about what work will count towards assessment evidence.
With the SQA exams being cancelled this year, teachers will use their professional judgement to decide results at National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher based on the marked evidence from pupils’ assessments. These will remain provisional results until all quality assurance checks have been carried out.
To ensure provisional results are fair and credible across the whole of Scotland, quality assurance processes will be applied in two phases:
In the first instance quality assurance will be carried out by the school, with support from the local authority. This includes discussing and agreeing the marking of pupils’ work across all classes and local schools.
Alongside this SQA will also carry out quality assurance as support for teachers. For example, reviewing their assessment and marking standards. This is to ensure that when teachers conduct assessments, that national standards are applied reliably and consistently across Scotland.
Schools will submit provisional results to SQA by 25 June.
SQA will not adjust provisional results. It will check for administrative errors that might have happened when schools were sending the quality assured results to SQA. When that check is completed, provisional results will become final.
Pupils will receive their results by post on Tuesday 10 August 2021. They will also receive their results by text and/or email if they decided to sign up for this service at www.mysqa.org.uk.
Our plans for the re-opening of our school for all pupils from 15th March onwards are now final. The letter below from Dr Vance covers these arrangements in detail. Pupils have been given a copy of this letter in their PSE classrooms today, where they will also find details of the Groups they have been allocated to. Each group will attend one day per week. Please contact your child’s Guidance Teacher if you have any queries about these arrangements.
