All under one roof Fraser playing in the orchestra
Gardening Club activities
Celebrating the joy of Maths
Eco ambitions
Although a specialist music school, we support our pupils with a wide-ranging education, ensuring their choices remain open, and Maths is a subject that’s definitely alive and kicking here!
Climate change and environmental responsibility have always been high on the School’s agenda and the EcoSchool club is looking forward to a busy year ahead. Here’s what Mrs Holm has to say:
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Pupils are involved in numerous extra-curricular activities to stretch their thinking, from the Scottish Maths Challenge, the Enterprising Maths Challenge, the UK Mathematics Trust (UKMT) Team Challenge and the follow-on British Maths Olympiad and Royal Institution Mathematics Masterclasses. In 2019/20, for the first time, the School’s Maths department extended its offering to include National 4 Applications of Mathematics and Advanced Higher Mathematics of Mechanics (in conjunction with St George’s School for Girls). Assessments were verified by the SQA and the report noted ‘exemplary practice’. One pupil who has been at the forefront of every UKMT challenge in the past seven years is Fraser, heading off to Trinity College, Cambridge, this year to study… Mathematics. As well as being a superb pianist, Maths has always been Fraser’s passion and he achieved a Distinction in the first round of the British Mathematical Olympiad 2019/20 and was invited to sit the second (and final) round paper, achieving a Distinction again. A phenomenal result and a marvellous end to a hugely impressive seven years of UKMT competition participation! We wish Fraser well at Cambridge.
To keep our Green Flag awarded by ‘Beautiful Scotland’ we create an action plan each academic year with three main topics based on sustainable development goals. Our focus for 2020/21 will be on litter, food and environment, and energy. As a school community we are doing really good work to reduce litter and, if possible, we’ll organise a litter pick up outside of school as we have done in the past on Portobello Beach. This time we’ll work with St Mary’s Cathedral to do a litter pick on the Cathedral grounds. A big part of reducing litter is disposing of waste correctly and we’ll keep auditing our recycle bins and updating the school community on the best way to recycle. In 2019, we successfully created Christmas crackers from recycled materials and would like to do this again in 2020, perhaps with even more recycled items. Climate change is an important topic that we will keep addressing, as a school and as individuals. Planned activities include participating in WWF’s Earth Hour, publishing a newsletter, organising an awareness and fundraising event, growing our own herbs and vegetables, taking part in the RSPB bird watch and more! We’re working with the kitchen staff to keep improving and promoting healthy and sustainable eating and our new S2 year group has started designing a planting schedule for the school garden, with some great new ideas - these will be judged by an experienced panel, including horticulturist Tony Garn. Over the years we have worked on reducing our energy use and we will keep doing this with a focus on some areas in the school, like certain practice rooms, where we believe improvement can be made. Finally, it’s important to keep ourselves healthy too and, throughout the year, activities like running club will continue with Dr Taylor and Ms Findlay. If possible sports day will be combined with an eco picnic and we are looking into organising cycle training with Ms Ulferts, a certified trainer.
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Fraser with his teacher Mr Beauchamp
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Christmas lunch with eco-crackers!
