Big Debate: the Referendum!
On Wednesday 20 March, senior pupils from Broughton High School will debate the Referendum in ‘Question Time’ style, chaired by Arthur McIvor, Chief Executive of the Scottish Parliament & Business Exchange. Local councillors will be in attendance. Pupils have demonstrated high levels of engagement on this topic in recent months and the event is set to be lively and informative. Community Learning & Development Worker at the City of Edinburgh Council, Callum McLeod, who is based at Broughton High School, organised the event. The Parent Council will be tweeting live updates throughout.
More pupil triumphs!
What a month! Our young people are doing us very proud.
Last week Broughton S1 students won a prize for creativity in writing and performing a play entirely in French. This was part of Recontres Theatrales, an event organised by the French Institute.
In sporting news, five S2 boys have been chosen for the SFA’s Southeast Scotland Regional Selection Camp later in the month. No other school in the area has more than one representative. And David Hand has been selected by GB Tae Kwon Do for the second of three selection phases for the next Olympics!
Triumph of a different sort comes with Isla Ratcliff, who has been longlisted in Amnesty International’s Protest Song Competition. Over 744 people from across the country took part in this competition, and Isla’s entry has made the top 12 in both the Performance Category and the Lyric Category.
And hot off the press, BHS won 1st prize at junior and senior level on Friday, at the Edinburgh Schools Dance Competition, held at Forrester High School. Junior choreography was by Jenni Inglis; senior choreography was by Laura Proudfoot.
Three cheers from the Parent Council!
The Broughton Association: another way for parents to get involved
You may have heard of the ‘Broughton Association’, and wondered what it is.
Answer: the fundraising arm of the Parent Council. The general idea is to organise social activities to deepen relations between staff, parents, and others associated with the school, and to make money to donate to various places in school — club trips, for example, or learning materials, or things like software licences.
Want to get involved? The BA meets the first Wednesday of the month during term time (6.30-7.30pm). Current attendees are Carole Melee (Chair), Naomi Crowley (Treasurer), Fiona Robb, Jane Bremner, David Martin and Caroline McKeown. The school representative is Susan Bennett. Just drop her a note, at Susan.1.Bennett@broughton.edin.sch.uk if you’d be interested in joining in!
‘Tenner’ — another way for young people to get involved
Here’s an exciting opportunity, much like our own Enterprise programme, for youngsters to try their hand at entrepreneurship. The ‘Tenner Challenge’ is a national competition for young people and schools who want make a new business idea happen, using real money, taking real risks in the business field, and hopefully making a real profit – and making a difference in people’s lives, too.
Read about Tenner in detail here, and let us know if you’d like to explore the idea more!
our volunteering — it’s working!
A big thanks to everyone who helped staff the Broughton Association cafe at the Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships on Saturday, and those who provided an abundance of delicious homebaking. It was a very busy day, reports organiser Naomi Crowley, with pipe bands coming from as far away as Benbecula! Here is a link to the event, if you want to see what was going on. Our pipers did very well! There were a lot of positive comments about our school’s facilities, our stewards (Broughton senior pupils), and our cafe. (Only one customer was disappointed — they wanted a latte!) The profit? £405. Naomi’s team shopped around to keep the prices down for everyone, which people pretty clearly appreciated. More broadly, as Naomi observes, this is the sort of event that is really raising the profile of our school — which in turn benefits our kids. Harald Tobermann, PC Chair, echoes this, saying, ‘[T]he value of such efforts is not only in the funds generated, but the raised school profile. The BHS school roll has increased in recent years, bucking demographic trends: as school funding is tied to pupil numbers, this is clearly something all pupils at BHS benefit from.’
