{"id":1693,"date":"2017-03-05T13:21:40","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T13:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harlawacademy.aberdeen.sch.uk\/?p=1693"},"modified":"2017-03-05T13:21:40","modified_gmt":"2017-03-05T13:21:40","slug":"13th-17th-february-facing-up-to-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/2017\/03\/05\/13th-17th-february-facing-up-to-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"13th-17th February – Facing up to challenges together"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week was a short one for our pupils with a holiday Monday and then two days with no school.\u00a0 On these two days staff were involved in a range of work aimed at developing their skills and taking forward some of the priorities of the school.<\/p>\n

The Tuesday saw many of us go over to AECC for an event jointly organised by a number of the local authorities in the North of Scotland (sometimes referred to as the Northern Alliance).\u00a0 The event opened with an address by\u00a0Depute First Minister John Swinney.\u00a0 He spoke about new\u00a0funding which will come directly to schools to help youngsters\u00a0who are affected by poverty.\u00a0 Mr Swinney also spoke about initiatives to recruit more teachers to our schools.\u00a0 Both of these are welcome initiatives which we hope will help us overcome\u00a0some of the challenges we are facing at present.<\/p>\n

It leads very well into the report which I gave to the parent council\u00a0at their meeting on Thursday night –\u00a0a copy of which you can see here: Parent Council HT report 16 February 2017<\/a>\u00a0 The report identifies that although we are doing relatively well in terms of teacher recruitment there are some areas where we are struggling to get\u00a0teachers (Computing, Biology) and others where we feel vulnerable if anyone should leave.\u00a0 I have noted\u00a0we may, depending on the budget decisions being taken by the council, find ourselves unable to recruit to some non teaching posts a situation which we would need to monitor closely.\u00a0\u00a0My report also\u00a0highlighted\u00a0concerns I had in relation to finances.\u00a0\u00a0As your\u00a0Head Teacher I am required to provide parents and pupils with impartial and factual information and this I have tried to do.\u00a0\u00a0At the parent council there was quite a bit of concern and discussion over the position reported and in the end the parent council agreed to write to our local councillors to eek reassurances that there would continue to be investment I the school building and\u00a0youngsters would not miss out on opportunities as a result of the financial position faced by the City Council.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that we are facing considerable challenges.\u00a0 I am a great believer that our real character comes through when\u00a0we are required to work through\u00a0challenges.\u00a0 Do we remain optimistic\/resolute, work together and look after each other or do we grumble\/crumble, blame others\u00a0and\u00a0work against each other.\u00a0 We are going to face some pretty stern tests in the months and years ahead and I\u00a0will be trying to\u00a0work with pupils, parents, local and national\u00a0groups – to help them through the challenges they face and to get what help and ideas they have to\u00a0help us\u00a0with\u00a0the challenges we will face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week was a short one for our pupils with a holiday Monday and then two days with no school.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parents","category-weekly-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}