Year in View

Year in View: Head Boys and Girls

Left to right: Malcolm Nimmo, Deputy Head Boy, Katie Anderson, Head Girl, Anna Hudson, Deputy Head Girl and Sid Sripada, Head Boy

Our final year has begun with the launch of our Core Values. These are the qualities that the School community has identified as a way of describing what it means to be a part of the High School of Dundee.

Each value is matched to one of our Pillars, supporting our ethos that everything we do and say demonstrates the kind of people we are: honest, kind, creative, respectful, confident and resilient. We are a community that, most importantly, delights in the success of others and we treat each other with kindness and compassion. For the first time, this allows us to articulate and develop these qualities, from the nursery right up to F6, so that we can go out and change the world for the better. Looking ahead, the School strives to improve and maintain its high standards as a progressive, open community. Our new genderneutral uniform options allow students to feel themselves within the School community. Our integrated curriculum has, and continues to deliver, an all rounded education suited to everyone. We have seen another year of academic success for the School with several of our pupils performing well in their SQA exams. This theme of success carries over to Mayfield, where our sports teams continue to develop their performance with many pupils achieving successes beyond school level. Our 1st XI Hockey and 1st XV Rugby teams have had the assistance of enhanced performance analysis and team management as part of our High Performance Sport programme, further showing the School’s commitment to supporting sporting excellence. At the High School of Dundee, teaching staff regard F6 as an important transition year between the structured timetable of Secondary School and the more flexible approach adopted within Higher Education. F6 Pupils are given the opportunity to fully develop their approaches to independent learning and time management, to broaden their experience and to take on greater responsibility for themselves and others. Since the start of term, pupils have been creating a timetable that meets their own personal needs, offering them a much greater degree of flexibility with their timetables than other year groups. Progress toward the new centre of excellence for performing and visual arts continues. This new addition to the School will enhance the education of thousands of pupils in the years to come, as well as the wider community. In addition to supporting the creative and expressive arts, the new building will bring the opportunity for a greater sense of togetherness in year groups via its new social spaces. It was announced at the beginning of the summer term that the 2019 Senior School production will be Lord of the Flies. The play was adapted by Nigel Williams from the 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning English author William Golding. Both the novel and the play tell the disturbing tale of a group of British schoolchildren stranded on an island and the tension caused by fear and power. Weekly workshops, led by the Drama Department and former pupils of the School, are underway preparing the cast for forthcoming auditions.