Inspectors praise significant improvements at Ardnamurchan High School

Following Education Scotland’s Inspectors’ return to Ardnamurchan High School in January, the recently published letter reported ‘a number of significant improvements to its approaches to monitoring and tracking the progress of young people, to learning and teaching, to self-evaluation and to the quality of the curriculum.’ 

The letter also reports that, ‘under the leadership of the headteacher and the extended management team, the school is developing a more comprehensive system to evaluate and improve the quality of its work.’ And that  ‘Staff feel more involved in making improvements to the work of the school’.

While it notes that there is scope for further improvement in consistency, pace and challenge in lessons, it goes on to note that, ‘Over the past two years, every young person  leaving the school has gone on to college, higher education, training or employment’ and that,  ‘the school has made good progress in further developing the curriculum in line with Curriculum for Excellence. Staff work hard to ensure that young people receive broad and varied experiences across all aspects of the curriculum.’

The positive impact of the work of parents, partners and pupils themselves are given particular mention with positive examples being Duke of Edinburgh, the Christmas show, charity fundraising, leadership of the Pupil Council and vocational curriculum opportunities.

Head Teacher, Christopher Millar-Craig said: "In 2013, the school, was already deemed,  ‘Good’ under the headings of  Improvements in performance,  Learners’ experiences and Meeting learning needs, however, in common with many other schools at the time,  Self-Evaluation  was identified as  a key area for improvement and  development. ‘ I am very pleased to say that Education Scotland have now recognised the significant improvements we have made in this area and passed the baton to the Highland Council to work with us.   We still have areas to continue to improve on and we look forward to working with parents, pupils,  staff and the Council’s Quality Improvement team as we continue to strengthen these areas.

"My thanks to all staff, pupils, parents, partners, and staff -stakeholders of Ardnamurchan High School - who have supported the hard work and huge efforts over the last year to secure the improvements so far."

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