Parent Council

Tonight's Parent Council was positive as usual. It was great to be able to share the general feedback from the HMIe visit with all present. Apart from HMIe business, I updated the meeting on a number of other important issues in my Headteacher's report. This included:

• Staffing
• Roll projection for September 2008
• Finance

Other areas raised in general discussion included a really good discussion on exam leave. Parents were supportive of not giving pupils exam leave for prelims. A query was raised about exam leave for S3 sitting exams this year. It was suggested that S3 pupils taking exams this summer (some are taking as many as 4) should not get exam leave as they would miss out on valuable teaching in other subjects. Instead, it was suggested, for the duration of the exam period,that S3 pupils taking exams this summer, should not be given homework for other subjects. This will be raised at our PTs' meeting tomorrow.

A main topic for discussion this evening was how we can increase levels of engagement between parents and school. I made the point that parents show high levels of loyalty to the school but a disappointing level of engagement. For example, the turnout at last week's S4 parents' night was around 40%. This is less than half the percentage attendance a similar meeting at Dunbar Grammar School (Thanks to Paul Rafaelli for sharing this figure with us through his blog!) At our next meeting on Tuesday 29 April it was agreed that we would spend a chunk of time looking at how we can make parents' evenings more attractive to parents. Any suggestions of good practice in this area will be gratefully received.