Standards and Quality Report 2013-2014

Larbert High School
Standards
& Quality Report
Session 2013 - 2014

The past year has been a terric success for Larbert
High School and I am condent that you will be impressed
with the achievements of our young people. This report
provides a mere snapshot of what has taken place over
the course of the last year and as a result of the
commitment and talents of both our young people and a
really dedicated, hard-working staff.
Curriculum for Excellence continues to ourish and provide our pupils with
ample opportunities to develop their Skills for Learning, Life & Work.
Combined with a very strong set of examination results in August 2014 (where
Team Larbert once again achieved many more personal bests) our pupils are
placed in prime position for life after school. Indeed, we recorded our highest
ever gure for positive destinations with 99.3% of pupils entering employment,
training, further or higher education (as at November 2013). This is quite
remarkable given the current economic climate and is proof that everything we
are doing as a school is coming together and producing the desired effect.
When this is coupled with further improvements in attendance and a reduction
in exclusion levels, to the lowest level ever, we know we are moving in the
right direction and the momentum is therefore strong to secure even more
improvements.
Were constantly reecting and looking at what we can do even better because
all of us want the very best for each and every young person who passes
through LHS. Headline gures are important, but behind those and what is
most important, are the talents and dreams of our young people and its our
job to help make those become a reality. So, congratulations to our staff and
our pupils and thank you to all of our parents and partners for the invaluable
support which has been provided. When everyone is working United in
Purpose to aim for the very best for our young people, it is very powerful
indeed.
I hope you nd this report helpful and informative. As always, if you have any
comments on it, or on our school, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Jon Reid, Rector.
page 2 standards and quality report for 2013-2014
A Word from the Rector
Our School
Larbert High School has
been on its present site
since 2000, but can
trace its origins as far
back as 1631.
The school roll has
increased signicantly in
recent years, reecting
the growing numbers of
those who choose to live in the school catchment area plus a demand for places
outwith.
In August 2013 we had 1718 pupils, 144 teachers and 44 support staff. Our
school works in close partnership with the head teachers and pupils of our seven
associated primary schools within the Larbert cluster and with Falkirk Councils
Education Services.
In addition to being encouraged to achieve the highest standards in academic
studies, Larbert High School pupils have the opportunity to participate in a wide
variety of extra-curricular interests. At Larbert we believe that these leisure and
school experiences make a very valuable contribution to a young persons
education.
We are a community sports hub ofcially recognised by sportscotland (Tryst
Community Sports Club), a School of Rugby in partnership with Scottish Rugby
and a School of Football in partnership with the Scottish Football Association, a
School of Basketball in
partnership with
Basketball Scotland and
a School of Dance in
partnership with NRG
Dance.

standards and quality report for 2013-2014 page 3
Improvement Plan Priorities 2013-14
In session 2013-14 we carried out a number of improvements in the following
ve areas:
G
Curriculum (for Excellence)
G
Learning and Teaching
G
Ethos
G
Support
G
Leadership
Successes and Achievements
How are we doing?/How do we know?
In this section we report on our improvements in performance, our
expectations and our promotion of wider achievement.
Examination results are only one indicator of the schools effectiveness and
should be considered within the context of each pupils individual progress.

Headlines from our 2014 Exams
From S4
G
The results achieved in 2014 at all levels in S4, outperformed both the
Falkirk and Scottish averages.
G
Two pupils passed Higher Latin, three pupils passed Higher Photography
and eight pupils passed Higher Modern Studies all one year early.
From S5
G
Our pupils in S5 maintained a very strong set of results at Higher level with
increases at all levels and which we anticipate will place us in the top 50
schools in Scotland (from over 400) for the fourth year in a row.
G
86 pupils (27%) passed 5 or more Highers - with 14 pupils achieving 5
Highers at Grade A.
G
156 pupils (48%) achieved 3 or more Highers and 213 pupils (67%) achieved
at least one Higher these are our highest ever levels!
G
As well as these excellent Higher results, two-thirds of S5 have at least 5
Intermediate 2 awards (which can be used to enter college or as a stepping
stone to Higher).
From S6
G
Larbert High School pupils, in S6, have secured another very strong set of
Higher and Advanced Higher results, with an overall improving trend over the
last 5 years.
G
Five pupils gained the Scottish Baccalaureate in Science and Languages.
G
Eight of our pupils passed three Advanced Highers at the same sitting, with
two of them achieving grade A in all three.

Highlights of our Achievements and Developments
There have been numerous achievements which have helped to develop and
enhance pupil experience and school identity. These have included:
1. In November we had the privilege of mingling with the very best leaders in
their eld at the Nature of Scotland Awards, which are designed to recognise
and celebrate excellence, innovation and outstanding achievement in
Scottish nature conservation. We won the highly coveted Youth & Education
Award, which was presented to us by Sally Magnusson and Fred MacAulay.
This recognises the wonderful work that has been done in the Carron Dams
Nature Reserve which is used by many subject areas in an interdisciplinary
learning capacity.
2. All of our rst years have taken part in the John Muir Award with over 300
pupils achieving discovery level. This is led by the humanities faculty with a
focus on encouraging people from all backgrounds to care for wild places.
3. We have established a school community garden with the help of
Communities Along the Carron (CACTA) which has resulted in us accessing
grants, local help and now growing and selling our own produce.
4. Our work in promoting Glasgow 2014 and the Commonwealth Games
Legacy resulted in Education Scotland awarding us with a Game On Scotland
plaque.
5. Our Captains Challenge was launched this year involving 1200 pupils and
will leave a lasting legacy in the school for generations to follow. It included
a visit to the school by Sir Chris Hoy in April and Judy Murray in October. The
aim of the challenge was to increase physical or cultural activities in our
young people and was complemented with a series of visits from seven
Commonwealth athletes.
6. Nicola Morgan, our Patron of Reading, hosted an event along with our S1
literacy quiz during our Literacy Across Larbert week in March, to promote
our young people as better readers, writers, listeners and speakers.
7. We have had many activities in the Science eld with awards being won from
the Concrete Society, The Royal Society of Chemistry, The Chemistry
Olympiad and our Go4set winners from last year shared their good practice
at the UK Young Scientists and Engineer Fair in Birmingham. In addition we
received a visit from Lab in a Lorry as part of the National Science and
Engineering Week celebrations and hosted a Science, Technology,
Engineering and Maths Fair, designed to increase the number of young
people entering into a positive destination in these elds.
8. Our charity work and fundraising
continues to grow from strength
to strength, supporting Help for
Heroes, Maggies Cancer Centre
soon to be built at Forth Valley
Hospital, our link with Woodlands
School in Cape Town; Children in
Need; Movember; Shoe Box
Appeal for Belarus; Epilepsy
Awareness Day and the
Childrens Hospice Scotland raising around 14,000. In total the generosity
of our young people and their families has been outstanding.
9. Thirteen pupils working towards their gold Duke of Edinburgh award visited
Gambia in April volunteering and renovating a skills centre for locals and
almost seventy pupils achieved their silver award.
10. The Tryst Community Sports Club continues its success with the promotion
of health and wellbeing across the school with 63 different clubs and
activities from 7.30am until late in the evening and 17 young sportsmen
and women regularly competing in a variety of sports at regional, national
and international level. We have secured funding in excess of 220,000 to
construct a bike pump track, which will be the only one of its type in
Scotland.11. We continue to host numerous high prole events, all
performed to capacity audiences. Our school show Fame was outstanding
and highlighted an abundance of dramatic and musical talent, our Dance
Showcase showed off dance and movement skills of a professional standard
from all year groups including some from our cluster primaries and our
School of Dance pupils. Our fourth environmentally friendly Trash Fashion
show produced some stunning creative and artistic outts all designed and
made by our pupils.
12. The Expressive Arts Faculty had an evening of celebrations where the
Musical Theatre and Theatre in Education WAO performed, and the Music
Technology WAO provided the lighting and sound back up and the
Photography WAO mounted a display of their work. This was in addition to
performances at Strathcarron, the Dobbie Hall and our associated primaries,
a performance with an African Choir and the Drama groups play First
Contact written and devised by the pupils.

What are we going to do next?
In session 2014-2015 it is our intention to continue our journey to excellence by
ensuring academic and wider opportunities are available to all our pupils through
our Broad General Education (S1-S3) and our Senior Phase (S4-S6) offering a
diverse range of courses and experiences to allow our pupils to achieve success,
prepare them for their pathway when they leave school and to strive for further
academic excellence.
In particular we are going to focus on:
G
improving levels of attainment for all learners.
G
enhancing our tracking and monitoring approaches to track attainment,
achievements and skills in the Broad General Education (BGE) and Senior
Phase.
G
integrating our subject proles with our S3 proles and our Optimum Award
to support young people in articulating their strengths, their achievements
and their next steps.
G
the implementation of the new National Qualications and revise our internal
verication and moderation procedures to ensure a consistently high quality
of delivery.
G
updating our learning & teaching policy to include best practice video clips
from across our Cluster schools.
G
extending our interdisciplinary learning (IDL) policy across all year groups.
G
introducing a new electronic homework system called Show My Homework

Work and Life of the School
During session 2013-2014, the school made very good progress with
improvements in the following areas:
G
We have ensured that our 2 year courses have added value units to give
our pupils the best possible chance of achieving their targets.
G
Wi-Fi has been installed throughout the school, and we produced and
published a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device policy) to allow the use of mobile
phones and other technology to enhance the learning experience for our
young people.
G
We continued to improve our transition processes at all stages with a
particular focus on individual plans, course choices and vocational
experiences which resulted in 99.3% of our young people moving into a
positive destination. This was achieved through partnership working with
Forth Valley College, Employment and Training Unit, Community Learning &
Development and Skills Development Scotland.
G
We introduced the Optimum Award for our rst year pupils, which is a
Larbert achievement award to complement pupil proles.
G
We planned for the implementation of a 33 period week including introducing
electives in S2 to complete the BGE and further rene our Senior Phase.
G
We developed and implemented a new Numeracy across Learning policy
resulting in all rst year pupils gaining their numeracy passport.
G
We redened our pupils support facilities and created a nurture base to
provide additional support for some of our young people and their families.

We will:
G
extend the range of subjects available in the Senior Phase working with
partners and local businesses to achieve this and we will review our
curricular policies to take account of this.
G
we will implement additional time within our BGE for S1 Transition and extend
the Skills for Learning, Life & Work agenda with the addition of further BGE
electives.
G
introduce a S6 Transition programme, a community volunteering programme
and create a framework for the delivery of RMPS in the Senior Phase.
G
with colleagues across our Cluster, pilot a new approach for the delivery of
PE and Music and design a 1+2 languages programme which complements
our work within our BGE.
G
revise our health and wellbeing (HWB) programme, particularly focussing on
transitions from the BGE to Senior Phase with the aim of achieving 100%
positive destinations.
G
develop an alternative to exclusion programme and further embed the
principles of a nurturing school.

Vision and Leadership
We work with teachers, parents and other parties to develop and shape a
common vision for our school. Our vision is rmly based on outcomes for our
learners and is clearly linked to national and local priorities.
Continuous improvement, achievement and success for our learners are central
to our schools strategic direction. In this respect, one of our key priorities is to
continue with our positive partnership working and to develop and distribute
leadership at all levels.
We have made very good progress in the following areas:
G
Our pupil council was restructured to involve senior pupils leading and
mentoring younger pupils.
G
We involved pupils in the recruitment and selection of staff through lesson
observation feedback and involvement on interview panels.
G
We embarked on a tiered introduction of the new employee review &
development (ERD) process to further enhance the skills of our staff.
G
We have ensured our quality assurance system is in place involving
leadership at senior and middle level and requiring all staff to play a role in
this.
G
A successful IDL experience for S3 pupils was led by our probationer
teachers and resulted in a project for the entire year group involving all
subject areas.
G
We have registered and are working towards achieving UNICEF Rights
Respecting School status through excellent work in global citizenship and
sustainable schools.
G
Our programme of three learning and teaching reviews within a school
session continued involving members of the senior and middle leadership
teams and using the ndings to inform our improvement and quality
assurance agendas.
The priorities for our Improvement Plan for session 2014-2015 have been
identied through consultation with groups of pupils, staff and parents.
In particular we will:
G
look to increase pupil and parent voice through surveys, questionnaires and
focus groups and extend our programme of parental information sessions.
G
introduce a Leadership Academy to provide formal leadership opportunities
for S1-S6 pupils so that this contributes to the condence and personal
skills of our young people to equip them for life in the 21st century.
G
enhance our self-evaluation and quality assurance procedures with the
introduction of a Performance Manager Role at Senior Leadership level to
track and monitor targets, data and process to ensure that they have an
impact on pupil progress.
G
continue to implement our new ERD programme which is linked to the
General Teaching Council Scotland (GTCS) professional update process.
G
update and embed our self-evaluation policy in line with national guidance
from Education Scotland.
Conclusion
Larbert High School has a focused continuous improvement agenda which we
have made very good progress in the last year in almost all of the areas
identied. In session 2014-2015 a number of further improvements will be
embarked upon which will enhance the experience of our pupils. Full details of
these improvements can be found on our website at www.larberthigh.com.

Appendix 1
S3 Achievement in 2014
Since 2008, Larbert High School has presented all pupils in S3 for SQA
examinations. This is a year earlier than most other Scottish secondary
schools. S3 results are not published nationally this only applies to results in
other year groups.
Under Curriculum for Excellence, other than in exceptional circumstances,
presentation for examinations in S3 is being phased out (this is a national
position).
In 2014, the following results were obtained by pupils at the end of S3:
G
57 pupils achieved awards in three National 5 subjects;
G
102 pupils achieved awards in two National 5 subjects;
G
161 pupils achieved an award in one National 5 subject.
S4 Achievement in 2014
Previously in S4, some of our pupils topped up what they had achieved in S3.
Other pupils start their Higher and National courses which they complete over
two years.
As intimated previously, the introduction of new Curriculum for Excellence
qualications means that comparisons with the past results are no longer
appropriate or valid for the S4 pupil cohort.
However, some headline gures from 2014 worthy of note are:
G
Our most literate S4 cohort, ever! 174 pupils (59% of the year group)
gained a qualication in National 5 English (an increase of 8% when
compared with a similar level of qualication from last year) and all pupils
who attended school achieved a literacy qualication.
G
99.3% of the year group achieved a qualication in Mathematics, with more
pupils achieving this at a higher level than ever before.
1 or more Awards at SCQF Level 6
(% of pupils achieving 1 pass, or better, at Higher Level)
2012 2013 2014
67% 68% 69%
S6 Achievement
By the end
of S6
(% of pupils achieving 3 passes, or better, at Higher Level)
2012 2013 2014
48% 53% 51%
By the end
of S6
2012 2013 2014
35% 39% 38%
By the end
of S6
(% of pupils achieving 1 pass, or better, at Advanced Higher Level)
2012 2013 2014
20% 28% 27%
By the end
of S6
2012 2013 2014
42% 39% 48%
S5 Achievement
By the end
of S5
2012 2013 2014
28% 21% 27%
By the end
of S5
2012 2013 2014
62% 65% 67%
By the end
of S5
Feedback of our Standards and Quality
We are very keen to receive you comments and feedback to help us to
improve our report for next year. If you could take a few minutes to complete
the questions below we would be most grateful.
1. Did this report have information that was useful to you

about Larbert High School?
2. Was the report written in way that was easy to read and
understand?
3. Was the examination information easy to understand?
4. Please give any comments that you feel would be useful
for us to consider when designing next years report
Yes No
Please return to: Rector
Larbert High School
Carrongrange Avenue
Stenhousemuir FK5 3BL
www.larberthigh.com Twitter: @LarbertHigh
A
NE FOR A
'
Larbert High School
Carrongrange Avenue Stenhousemuir Larbert FK5 3BL
Telephone: 01324 554233 Fax: 01324 503551
Email: larberthighschool@falkirk.gov.uk Web: www.larberthigh.com
Twitter: @LarbertHigh P
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