Bags packed, shoes polished, pencil case filled, uniform pressed - are you ready?
Wednesday sees the start of the new school year and all of the teaching and support staff are very much looking forward to seeing our students arriving and ready to make a success of their time here. Every school year represents a real milestone in each of our student's lives and one of the privileges of being a teacher is to be able to play a positive part in helping them develop, learn and grow as people. I would like to particularly welcome all of our new Year 7 students who are starting their time with us at Lower School. We also have a record number of students coming to study in the Year 12 of our Sixth Form and I am also pleased to welcome three new members of staff to our teaching team. Miss Edmondson has joined our Maths Department, Miss Powell has joined our Humanities team and we also welcome back Ms. Geal-Wilkes, our Head of Modern Foreign Languages, who has returned following a year's sabbatical in Italy.
Following our successes in the external exams this summer we are continuing to progress the school and this September will see a number of changes to how we do things here at St. Ninian's. Our new 'Ready to Learn' behaviour policy will take effect and we will also be acknowledging and celebrating the good work our students do through our new Epraise reward system which will go live across the whole school, including the Sixth Form. Our Annual Presentation of Awards Ceremony will take place on the earlier date of 2nd October and we will now be using the Villa Marina as the venue for this important occasion. Arrangements for this are already well underway and we hope as many of you that can are able to come and join us on that afternoon.
We are continuing to develop and add more to our new school website and I would encourage all of you to use this as point of reference for the school, as you should find much of what you are looking for included in its pages. We are also always looking for ways of improving it so please do pass on ideas or suggestions you may have on how we can make things even better.
Can I take this opportunity to wish all of our students and parents all the best for the coming school year.
Mr. Coole