Last night, after a busy weekly ward surgery at Blackness Primary School, I attended the latest meeting of the Harris Academy Parent Council.
Following on from the update Head Teacher Mr Thewliss gave to the August Parent Council meeting regarding the 2012 examination results, Mr Thewliss gave an indepth report of more of the detail last night, which showed excellent and improving performance at Harris, both in terms of year on year over the past eight years, but also in relation to comparator schools across Scotland. It was a very encouraging report indeed and reflects extremely well on both the quality of teaching by staff throughout Harris Academy and the hard work of the pupils.
There was also a further update on the school rebuilding project's progress, the pre-application planning notice now being lodged with Dundee City Council. As part of the planning consultation process, there will be an exhibition at the school from 2pm-7pm on 22nd November, 10am-1pm on Friday 23rd November and 10am-1pm on Saturday 24th November - an excellent opportunity for the school community, parents and local residents to see the plans for the new school building and feed back their comments about them. Additionally, there will be a presentation about the plans to a special meeting of the West End Local Community Planning Partnership (LCPP) on Thursday 18th October at 7pm at the Tartan Coffee House in Perth Road.
In the building development update at last night's meeting, the Parent Council was given the detail of project planning for the school's decant to the Rockwell building next summer - a challenging logistical exercise that is clearly being extremely well-planned.
The Parent Council is holding a social media event for parents at the school on Thursday 25th October at 7pm, covering issues like tackling cyber bullying, identity theft and online grooming. This event is a really good initiative and more details will be given on the Parent Council's Facebook page in due course at www.facebook.com/HarrisAcademyPC.
I was back at the school this morning at the annual Harris academy Charity Coffee Morning and as the photo (right) indicates, this was really well attended. The charity coffee morning will raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support and also Keans Childrens Fund, that supports local young children who have cancer.
At the coffee morning, a new Harris Academy tea towel (see below) was on sale. With the new school being built in the near future, this tea towel commemorates former Harris Academy buildings and proceeds will be used to benefit the new school building once opened. If you are interested in purchasing a tea towel, they are £3.50 and available via the school office.
