Covid-19 home testing programme

The Covid-19 Rapid Home Testing Programme has been extended to ALL secondary pupils and S1/2/3 pupils can now collect consent forms and testing kits from the school office every day excluding Friday. Further information on the testing programme is available here on the school website. Pupils are requested to test at home every Sunday and Wednesday evening, prior to attending school.

Jason Leitch, in partnership with Young Scot, will be hosting two live Q&A sessions for young people regarding the Covid-19 home testing programme. The first event will take place on Tuesday 23 March at 13:30 for S1-S3 pupils and there will be a further session with S4-S6 pupils at 16:30. The events will be held on E-Sgoil. One of the benefits of using the E-Sgoil platform is that secondary pupils in any school across Scotland can tune in live if they wish and are able to do so, but if this is not possible then the video can also be accessed afterwards and become a permanent resource for young people and schools. The links to the recorded sessions will be available after the event. Further information is available here http://www.e-sgoil.com/lockdown-live/

Senior Phase Grade books

All Senior Phase Pupils (S4/5/6) have had their Grade books updated to show current progress and recommended levels for further study.  Pupils can access their Grade book online and have been asked to share it with parents.  Individual messages will be sent home next week for pupils that have either changed level or Target Grade.  

As we return to school after another Lockdown and enter a phase of evidence gathering for final provisional grades, we feel it is very important to keep parents up to date with the progress of their child.  Whilst some pupils’ target grades have lowered we also want to reassure parents that with an increase in engagement with their studies, there is the same opportunity for target grades to increase again, before the final predicted grades are submitted. 

Towards the end of this week a full breakdown of the assessment timetable, progress updates and opportunities for parents to engage with staff will be sent out.  This will allow families to prepare for the next term and allow us to work together to support pupils.

Scott Wilson, Depute Head Teacher

Senior Pupils with SQA courses

SQA have produced a booklet explaining how this year’s grades will be awarded. You can find it by following this link.

To help create grades, pupils will produce evidence during Assessment Windows. These assessments will be similar in style to exam papers but they are not exams and will not be marked by SQA. We have a timetable for these but are just running through some last checks before sharing with pupils and guardians. The Assessment Windows will be after Easter.

The first point of contact for all things SQA is Mr Ross and pupils have his email address on the school gmail.

Return to school – Bus times

ALL school buses and duplicates will be in place for the return to school on Monday 15 March 2021. Based on the information we have we do not anticipate any issues except where primary and secondary pupils are travelling together, we have had to double run certain services. This will mean some pupils having to leave earlier or later than before.

Service 33 Cromdale – Grantown Grammar and Primary Schools
To accommodate all the pupils in the morning, Grantown Grammar School pupils will travel separately from Grantown Primary pupils. The revised morning timetable is shown below. There are no alterations to the return from school trips. 

College pupils

University of Highlands and Islands (UHI) are experienceing online problems.

All GGS pupils should check their emails in their college account for an explaintion on what is happening and what they need to do to join any classes being taught this morning. 

West Highland College (WHC) are all taught on Google Classrooms so they are not affected. North Highland College (NHC) are currently working on a alternative for their N5/H Psychology and will email students instructions on what to do ASAP.

For those submitting Applications for college in the coming year, although you can still see course content if you click on “apply now” you will receive an error message.  Hold on until we hear more on this process.

Hopefully this will be resolved fairly soon.