Drummond Community High School

We are a small school with big ambition for our pupils. We pride ourselves on developing all our young people’s academic potential, talents, interests and abilities and offer a fantastic range of opportunities across the curriculum from S1 to S6. Our results reflect our ethos of aspiration and ambition for all our pupils. We are really proud of what we do at Drummond and think that you will be impressed too.

You may be aware of the current proposal to move GME provision from James Gillespie’s High School to Drummond. You will find more information on this under the Parent Council tab.

For us all at Drummond it is business as usual, continuing with the highest standards of teaching and learning and focusing our seniors on preparing for their exams in the summer term.

Our overall aim at Drummond Community High School is to provide for each pupil the opportunity to develop his or her individual talents and abilities. As parents you will naturally wish for the best for your child. We, too, share that wish for personal achievement and our efforts are directed towards your child’s education in the widest sense. We want to provide the best possible academic education, but we are also concerned with developing a wide range of personal qualities and skills. Above all, we seek to encourage and support your child’s development into a socially responsible and independent young person.

School will play a major part in achieving these aims, but effective education depends on a partnership between home and school. To realise this partnership we actively encourage you as parents to take a full and positive interest in your child’s education and to pursue this interest through events such as Parents’ Meetings or through direct personal contact.

An important theme of the school is participation. We encourage our pupils to identify with the school, to be proud of its reputation and to be involved in the life of the school. We hope that you as a parent will also take an active interest in the life and affairs of the school.

You will naturally have a range of questions and anxieties concerning your child’s transfer from primary to high school and we hope that this handbook will help to address some of these questions. The Handbook this year follows a new format, containing information about educational provision in Scotland and Edinburgh generally, as well as in Drummond Community High School, although we have tried to provide as much practical information about the school as possible. We hope that you find it useful, but if you have any questions, or would like any further information on any aspect of the school or the education of your child, please do not hesitate to contact me.

We’ve changed our curriculum model to offer S4 pupils the opportunity to study seven National Qualifications. Pupils in S5 and S6 can still study five Highers. We are also running more Advanced Highers than ever before. We offer the full range of subjects at National 5 and Higher levels, from Art & Design to Drama to all three Sciences to Graphic Communication to Spanish, and everything in between. We have invested heavily in iPads for all pupils and upgrading the ICT across the classrooms with Smartboards.

We offer a wide a range of sporting and cultural activities as possible. There is a range of extra-curricular activities available for pupils during lunchtime and after school. Parents will be informed about these by the school. In addition to inschool activities, classes also make regular educational visits and field studies. These visits are linked to pupils’ class work.