Last night I attended Westhill Academy Parent Council meeting. The parent council had invited members of the four feeder primary school parent councils to their monthly meeting. This gave parents of primary 7 pupils due to move up to the academy a chance to meet with teaching and guidance staff prior to the extensive transition programme that staff have put in place. Head Teacher Derek Thompson and deputy Jason Fitzgerald explained that the transition programme starts well before the 3-day visit by pupils in the summer. The work actually begins in January of each year when the prospectus is updated, out-of-zone placing requests are processed and a whole raft of work in between finishing with the evaluation process in August. The forthcoming primary school re-zoning exercise was discussed (I’ll post separately about this). Parents were updated on the very successful consultation held back in 2013 regarding school uniforms. This was carried out by the parents themselves. The outcome of the consultation was that 75% (including 6th year) of pupils now own a Westhill Academy hoodie and are proud to wear it outside the school when attending events!
Derek Thompson provided positive feedback on how the Curriculum 4 Excellence was enabling pupils far more flexibility in subjects and learning outcomes.
At present, the academy has “live” adverts for teachers of Art & Design, Computing and Technical with closing dates in early May. Staff are particularly concerned about finding computing staff and have written to parents of pupils who have chosen Computing alterting them to the possible problems. Pupils may have to re-choose if staff cannot be found.
Parent Councils are a great way to interact with school staff and for parents to play an active part in their child’s education. I hope that more new parents are encouraged to join. Westhill Academy has a great website for pupils and parents to find out about what goes on at the school (well almost…… you really have to be there to get the full story!) http://www.westhillacademy.org/