Edinburgh Council

Edinburgh City Council NE/SE Locality Meetings

12 February 2021: The Council’s NE/SE Locality meeting was held on 19 January 2021.

The main topics discussed were:

School session dates 2022/2025 – the Council will be sending out a questionnaire to parents, teachers and pupils looking at arrangements for school holidays up until 2025.

Remote Learning Provision – including the roll out of digital devices; the provision of Wifi to those without it; the availability of online teaching/learning resources; the approach to remote learning across Edinburgh schools.

A copy of the presentation can be found here:

NE/SE Locality Meetings January 2021

A note of the meeting can be found here:

NE/SE Locality Meeting 19 January 2021

Capacity issues at JGHS

5 February 2021: Thank you to everyone who attended the meeting hosted by the Parent Council on Tuesday 2 February 2021 on capacity contingency proposals and to all those who put forward comments and questions before, during and after the meeting.

Link to recording of meeting on YouTube

It is clear that there are significant concerns about the plans and in particular about the fact that the Council has ruled out additional classroom accommodation, on the lack of specific communication on the proposals to S5 pupils and their parents, and on the potential effect on next year’s S6 pupils, both from a social and an educational point of view.

The Parent Council has written to the school, Council officers and councillors to highlight these concerns and asked for an early response – see below. Any replies will be posted here when received.

JGHS PC comments on capacity contingency proposals 5 February 2021

Parents submitted a number of comments and questions, prior to the meeting on 2 February 2021, a summary of which can be found below:

Capacity Contingency Plans – Parental feedback and questions 25 January 2021

Upcoming meeting of the Parent Council 2 February 2021

18 January 2021: The next parent council meeting will take place on Tuesday 2 February 2021 at 7 pm.

We will email out the MS Teams link via the school email.

This meeting will look at the specific issue of capacity contingency plans for the 2021-22 session in light of delays to the refurbishment of the Darroch building due to Covid. The meeting will hear from school staff involved and the Council officers with whom they have been working:

Donald Macdonald, Head Teacher
Laura Stewart, DHT (Equity and Rising Rolls)
Lorna French, Schools and Lifelong Learning Service Manager (City of Edinburgh Council)
Crawford McGhie, Senior Manager Estates and Operational Support (City of Edinburgh Council)

The school has provided the following background documents:

Sur vey of Advanced Higher pupils, December 2020

Capacity Parent Council update document, January 2021

An outline of proposals was presented to the Parent Council in November 2020 – the presentation is available below.

JGHS Contingency Planning 2021-2022 November 2020

The section relevant to the capacity issues starts at 18.53.

View the November 2020 meeting on YouTube

The Parent Council is gathering in and collating questions, which should be sent to jghscouncilcomms@gmail.com by 6pm on Sunday 24 January.

Updates from Edinburgh City Council

18 November 2020

NE/SE Parental Engagement Locality Group

The Edinburgh City Council NE/SE Parental Engagement Locality Group met on 3 November 2020.

The Teaching, Learning and Assessment presentation delivered to the meeting, and the minutes are which took place via Microsoft Teams on 3rd November is now available

Teaching, Learning and Assessment presentation

NE/SE Parental Engagement Locality Group meeting minutes

Edinburgh City Council consultations

Edinburgh City Council is seeking parents’ views in two consultations.

One is a formal consultation on the Council’s budget (closing date 10th Dec) and is available here. and the other is an informal consultation on Gaelic-medium secondary education (closing date 11th Dec) and is available here.

Budget consultation

Gaelic-medium secondary education consultation

Updates from the National Parent Forum of Scotland and City of Edinburgh Council

Posted 25 August 2020

National Parent Forum of Scotland

The latest newsletter from the National Parent Forum of Scotland is available.

National Parent of Scotland newsletter

There is an NPFS hosted Q&A Session with the Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, on 10 September and information on the event and the link to email questions is in the attached newsletter.

City of Edinburgh Council NE/SE Locality Meetings

Edinburgh Council is running regular locality meetings (bringing secondary and primary school Parent Council reps from their cluster areas together with Council officials and Headteachers).

The first meeting was held on 4 August, and focussed on Health & Safety and Health & Wellbeing.

Back to school resilience – City of Edinburgh Council

The second meeting on 18 August focussed on Equalities, Equity and Inclusion and the minutes are now available.

Minutes of meeting 18 August 2020

The third meeting will focus on Teaching, Learning (including Digital) & Assessment and will take place on 9 September and the slides and links will be uploaded once available.