School’s out for summer

Summer is in the air; the holidays are about to begin, and the Parent Council is feeling cheerful. Last week’s decision by the City’s Education, Children and Families Committee to commit to investing £10million on developing sports facilities at Bangholm and progressing plans for refurbishment of Trinity Academy was such a great way to end the school year. This decision comes after a long period of campaigning by the Parent Council over many years. It will be great to start the new school year with the school community working with the Council on shaping our new facilities. The Education Committee’s decision and three amazing performances of We Will Rock You have given us a warm end of term glow!

Campaigning for investment in the school has been a major focus this year for the Parent Council but we’ve been busy with other things too. We have been working with the school on initiatives to tackle the costs of the school day which can make life difficult for some families. We’ve worked together on a project which should result in more parental involvement in the life of the school. We’ve done loads of fundraising and we made a donation of over £12,000 to the school to fund projects such as stage sound and lighting systems, laptops for pupil support, cricket kit, the new school website and ties for our new S1 pupils. Our members have helped with the recruitment of new curriculum leaders for Mathematics and Expressive Arts. And our first survey of parents for many years gave us really useful feedback – thank you to everyone who contributed.

September 4th 2018 is Trinity Academy’s 125th birthday and a year-long programme of events to celebrate this milestone is planned. The year will kick off with a celebration event on Friday 7 September – details of this exciting event will follow – watch this space. The ever-popular Bangholm Fun Day takes place this year on Saturday 1 September. The Parent Council’s first meeting of the year will be on Wednesday 12 September. We would love to see you at any or all of these events.

On behalf of the Parent Council, I would like to thank all parents, carers, pupils, teachers and staff and our elected representatives for their support this year. As Trinity bids farewell to the pupils and teachers leaving the school this year, we wish them well in their future careers and destinations.

An island in the summer with boats in the foreground

We hope everyone has a good summer break and returns refreshed and ready for an exciting year ahead.

Liz Blair
Chair, Trinity Academy Parent Council

First Meeting

Our first Parent Council meeting of 2016/2017 is next week — September 5th at 7:00pm.

We have a great group of committed parents who each give a few hours every term to help in a variety of ways. Some attend meetings, some help with fundraising, some help run events, and some help with campaigns or communications.

What could you do? What time could you give? Every little bit helps, and all talents are welcome!

We would particularly welcome new members from those who have just started in S1 this year but everyone is welcome and there is no pressure to speak. Please come along next Tuesday and learn more about the parent council and the life of the school.

January Meeting

Our next Parent Council meeting is this Thursday 26th January, 7:00-9:00pm. We will be discussing Parent Council priorities for next year (including investment in school, community database etc) and the head teacher’s report.

You don’t have to be a member of the parent council to come to our meetings. It’s a great opportunity to learn more about the work of the school and help your child.

Wave 4 Investment Letter

This week we issued a letter to the Council regarding the ‘Wave 4’ programme for refurbishment of Edinburgh schools and the need for continued investment in the school.

Since the programme was first reviewed in the summer of 2015, there has been  no visible progress made on the first of the activities the Council is carrying out — forecasting the future school roll. It was originally stated that this would be complete in 2015 but is still continuing. The purpose of our letter at this stage is apply pressure to the Council to finish these studies and also to highlight that for us as a parent body, any holding back of necessary investment during this period is not acceptable.

First Parent Council meeting of 2016/2017

Our first Parent Council meeting of 2016/2017 is just one week away — September 6 at 7:00pm.

We have a great group of committed parents who each give a few hours every term to help in a variety of ways. Some attend meetings, some help with fundraising, some help run events, and some help with campaigns or communications.

What could you do? What time could you give? Every little bit helps, and all talents are welcome!

We would particularly welcome new members from those who have just started in S1 this year but everyone is welcome and there is no pressure to speak. Please come along next Tuesday and learn more about the parent council and the life of the school.

Welcome to 2016

New year 2016

Happy new year and welcome to 2016, a new year and school term. To start the year we thought it might be useul to provide a one-stop summary of all the ways to stay in touch with what’s happening at the school and Parent Council. Feel free to pick those that suit you best.

School

The school has a website and it is updated regularly and the Rector’s blog is usually updated once each week. The school also provides a number of Twitter feeds:

Some of the Twitter feeds are private which means you need approval (and a Twitter account) to follow them.

Parent Council

Most of our communication is posted to this website but we also update our Twitter feed and Facebook group regularly. Please feel free to follow any of those accounts and we’d love to hear your feedback too.