Parent Council

Parent Council meeting on 2 September 2025

21 August 2025: The first meeting of the JGHS Parent Council will be held online on Tuesday 2 September at 7 pm. All parents and carers are most warmly invited to join the meeting.

Draft agenda

  • Welcome to parents and carers
  • Introduction to the parent council (PC chair)
  • Brief report and finance update (PC chair)
  • Active Schools (Lorraine Burn)
  • School report (Neil McCallum)
  • Q&A

If you have any questions or concerns you would like to raise ahead of the meeting, please contact us by email:.

Email JGHS Parent Council

The joining link will be circulated by the school to all parents and carers before the meeting.

Welcome back for 2025/26

14 August 2025: The summer flew by, the sun is still shining, and we are back to school already! Hopefully everyone was able to take some time to rest and relax over the holidays.

A warm welcome to the new school year from the Parent Council, especially to the new pupils, parents and carers joining James Gillespie’s High School this session.

Parent Council meeting on 2 September 2025

The first meeting of the JGHS Parent Council will be held online on Tuesday 2 September at 7 pm. All parents and carers are most warmly invited to join the meeting.

Draft agenda:

  • Welcome to parents and carers
  • Introduction to the parent council (PC chair)
  • Brief report and finance update (PC chair)
  • Active Schools (Lorraine Burn)
  • School report (Neil McCallum)
  • Q&A

If you have any questions or concerns you would like to raise ahead of the meeting, please contact us by email:.

Email JGHS Parent Council

Parent Council meetings 2025/26

Parent Council meetings usually run from 7 pm. The schedule of meetings for the rest of this year is:

  • Tuesday 2 September 2025, 7-8.30 pm (online)
  • Wednesday 8 October 2025 – AGM, 7-9 pm (in person at JGHS)
  • Tuesday 25 November 2025, 7-8.30 pm (online)
  • Wednesday 28 January 2026, 7-9 pm (in person at JGHS)
  • Tuesday 24 March 2026, 7-8.30 pm (online)
  • Wednesday 3 June 2026, 7-9 pm (in person at JGHS)

Happy summer holidays 2025!

26 June 2025: Amazingly the end of term has already arrived!!

News from Connect

The most recent edition of Connect’s Backchat newsletter is now available, including details of their latest survey on school attendance:

Read backchat

Connect attendance survey

Next PC meeting

The next meeting of the JGHS Parent Council will be held online on Tuesday 2 September – all details wil be shared at the start of the new session.

The Parent Council wishes everyone a lovely summer holiday – hopefully the sun will shine, and we’ll all get some time to rest and relax.

Reports from Parent Council meeting

5 June 2025: The JGHS Parent Council held their last meeting of this school year on Wednesday 4 June – many thanks to all those able to attend.

Agenda and reports

Meeting agenda:

  • Focus on Maths teaching at JGHS – Miss Ashling Dolan, CL Maths
  • Report and updates from the Parent Council, including:
    • capacity and rising rolls
    • finance and fundraising, including report from James Gillespie’s Trust
  • Discussion of issues with particular relevance to S1-S3
  • Headteachers update, including reports on Short Life Working Groups on mobile phones, communications and homework – Mr Neil McCallum
  • Q&A

The meeting minutes, and copies of the presentations and reports from the meeting are now available:

Draft meeting minutes (Padraic Kinsella; opens as pdf)

Parent Council update (opens as a pdf)

Maths teaching at JGHS – Miss Dolan (opens as pdf)

JGHS Maths padlet (discussed at the meeting)

Headteachers report – Mr McCallum (opens as pdf)

Minutes of meeting of James Gillespie’s Trust 29 April 2025 (opens as pdf)

Mobile phone policy

Updated 12 June: As was discussed at the meeting on 4 June , the school has now issued a new draft policy on mobile phone use in school:

JGHS draft mobile phone policy

The school has asked for feedback from parents and carers via the form below:

Mobile phone policy feedback

Next meeting

The next meeting of the Parent Council wil be on Tuesday 2 September. This will be held online, and the joining link will shared by the School after the summer break.

Next Parent Council meeting on 4 June 2025

21 May 2025: The next meeting of the James Gillespie’s High School Parent Council will be held on Wednesday 4 June at 7 pm in the school library.

All parents and carers are most warmly welcome to join this last meeting for the current academic year.

If you have any questions or issues that you would like to raise ahead of the meeting, please get in touch with the PC by email:

Email the Parent Council

Agenda

  • Focus on Maths teaching at JGHS – Miss Dolan, CL Maths
  • Report and updates from the Parent Council, including:
    • capacity and rising rolls
    • finance and fundraising
  • Discussion of issues with particular relevance to S1-S3
  • Headteachers update, including reports on Short Life Working Groups on mobile phones, communications and homework – Neil McCallum
  • Q&A

Reports from meeting on 25 March 2025

Information from the last meeting held online on 25 March

Reports from PC meeting on 25 March 2025

25 March 2025: Many thanks to those who joined the Parent Council meeting this Tuesday.

Agenda

  • Health and Wellbeing – Inclusion X – Ian Porter and Anna Kirkwood
  • Comment from Tracy Urquhart, Senior Manager Quality Improvement Officer, CEC
  • Update from the JGHS Parent Council
  • Headteacher’s report
  • Q&A

Meeting recording

Watch the meeting recording (opens on YouTube)

Summary of meeting discussion (from transcipt, opens as pdf)

Presentations

Inclusion X suport at JGHS (Anna Kirkwood and Ian Porter, opens as pdf)

PC report 25 March 2025 (Hilary Snaith, co-chair; opens as pdf)

Finance update 25 March 2025 (Kirstin Leighton, treasurer; opens as pdf)

Headteacher’s report 25 March 2025 (opens as pdf)

Policy documents

The headteacher mentioned a number of school policy documents in his comments. You can access a range of these policies on the JGHS website:

JGHS policy documents

Next meeting

The next meeting of the Parent Council will be on Wednesday 4 June in the school library at 7 pm – all parents and carers are very welcome to join us.

Parent Council meeting 25 March 2025

The next meeting of the JGHS Parent Council will be on Tuesday 25 March at 7 pm. The meeting will be held online via MS Teams – the link will be shared via the school email.

All parents and carers are most warmly welcome to join us.

Agenda

  • Update from the Parent Council
  • Headteacher’s report, HT Mr McCallum
  • Health and Wellbeing / Inclusion X at JGHS, DHT Mr Porter
  • Q&A

If you have any questions that you would like to see addressed, please contact the PC by email. It will also be possible to ask questions via the Q&A during the meeting.

Email the Parent Council

Have your say – HMIE inspection

4 February 2025: As you will have seen already, JGHS will be visited by inspectors from Education Scotland in the week of Monday 24 February 2025.  

As part of the preparation for the inspection, all parents and carers have been sent the link to a survey about their experiences with the school.

Parent and carer survey

This is an important opportunity to have your voice heard about the issues that matter most to you, so please do take the time to complete the survey and leave your comments.

Please note that all responses must be submitted by Friday 7 February.

The inspectors will also be meeting with the parent council during their visit, and will be particularly interested to discuss:

  • how well the school works in partnership with parents and carers;
  • how well the school keeps parents and carers informed of progress of their children’s learning;
  • examples of how parents and carers work with the school to support children’s/young people’s learning

If you have any comments about these matters that you would like to share with the PC, please do contact us by email.

Please send us any feedback by Monday 17 February so that we can collate the responses.

Many thanks!

Email the Parent Council

Update to SQA exam timetable for 2025

3 February 2025: The SQA issued a revision to the exam timetable for this year on Monday 3 February.

The revision includes a number of alterations to the dates of presentations, including a new date for Higher Psychology, which will now take place on Friday 25 April, rather than Wednesday 7 May, as previously. Higher English remains on Wednesday 7 May.

Full details of the new schedule are now available.

SQA Timetable 2025 (opens as a pf)

Information provided to Daniel Johnson MSP, and forwarded to the Parent Council shows that in the new timetable:

  • the number of coincident exams has decreased by 47%
  • the number of occasions where learners sit two exams in one day has decreased by
    38%
  • there are now nine days where 100% of learners have one exam a day (up from
    eight)

Related info

Letters sent by the PC to the SQA and others requesting timetable revision, and responses received, are available on the Deputations page

PC deputations and campaigns

Report from Parent Council meeting 29 January 2025

30 January 2025: Many thanks to those who were able to join the meeting of the Parent Council on Wednesday 29 January.

We were joined by Headteacher Mr Neil McCallum, Science Curriculum Lead Mr Iain Coltart, and CEC Councillors Steve Burgess and Pauline Flannery.

The meeting discussed a number of issues including:

  • concerns about rising rolls and school capacity, and recent engagement with the City of Edinburgh Council
  • co-scheduling of SQA Higher exams in English and Psychology
  • presentation by Iain Coltart about the delivery of science teaching and S1-S6 pupil pathways

Added 5 February 2025: The minutes of the meeting are now available:

Minutes from JGHS parent council meeting 29 January 2025 (opens as a pdf)

Presentations available

The presentations by Mr Coltart and the PC Co-chair, the finance update from the Parent Council, and the Headteacher’s report are available now:

Parent Council report and comments, 29 January 2025

Science teaching at JGHS, January 2025

Parent Council finance update, January 2025

Headteachers report

Due to lack of time during the meeting, Mr Mr Callum shared a written report with responses to a number of issues raised by the PC, including:

  • SQA exam diet – Higher English and Psychology
  • Capacity engagement
  • English texts
  • S1 residential
  • Pupil bulletin
  • Double periods
  • Streaming
  • Reporting
  • SLWG on phones, homework and communications
  • School news

Headteacher’s report 29 January 2025

Links to recent deputations to the City of Edinburgh Council about school capacity, and the letter to Daniel Johnson MSP and others about the SQA timetable are also available:

Parent Council deputations

Update 3 February: the Parent Council is pleased to note the revision to the SQA timetable published today, which has addresed the issue of co-scheduling of Higher English and Psychology.

Update to SQA timetable for 2025

Next meeting

The next meeting of the Parent Council will be on Tuesday 25 March at 7 pm, and will be held online.

We will hear from DHT Mr Ian Porter about the health and well-being support provided for pupils and JGHS.