Mackie Academy Spring newsletter

You can find the latest newsletter from Mackie Academy on our website here.  We hope you enjoy taking a little time to read about all the achievements of our young people this term.

2024 continues to move at a pace and March is already here.  We often refer to this month in education as “mad March” because there is so much going on, especially around getting our young people ready for the upcoming SQA exam sessions.  However, there are lots of other events on too and we look forward to them all.

Our Mackie Academy Pupil and Parent Information Site has been updated with new information in the following sections:

School News – information about the local authority’s consultation on holidays and term dates for 2025-30 is open until the end of March 2024 and there is also updates from your Parent Council about upcoming events to support parents around the digital world.  Charlie House also has an upcoming open day event for people to find out more about their work in Stonehaven.

National and Local Authority News – information for you as parents and carers from Aberdeenshire Council and wider afield around education in Scotland and issues that impact on you and your child.

Curriculum Pathways and SQA Information – all information related to SQA issues as well as our curriculum sites to help you understand more about what your child is studying and the options available to them.

Learning and Teaching at Mackie Academy  – key information about how learning and teaching works here at Mackie Academy.  Worth noting here is access to learning for young people should there be disruption to the school day due to weather.

Health, Wellbeing and Support at Mackie Academy – information to support you as parents and carers around key issues associated with young people and family’s wellbeing such as social media use and keeping yourself safe online.  The issues of vaping and social media use by our young people continue to be of concern to everyone so we have all the information here you require to help you, as parents, tackle those conversations.

We look forward to moving on with our community colleagues at the Co-op in Redcloak with the return of young people in March 2024 and hope that lessons have been learnt.  In school, we continue to ask our young people to take pride in their school kit as well as their learning environment so please don’t be alarmed if you get correspondence around this from the school.  It is all about getting our young people to take responsibility and be proud of our school values of Commitment, Teamwork, Excellence, and Integrity.

We wish our netball teams all the best later this month when they compete in national semi-finals against schools from across Scotland and we look forward to seeing what our young people who are staying on at school next year are choosing to study going forwards.  As I said at the beginning it is a busy time of year and it certainly does not leave any room for dull moments.

During the course of this month we will see some changes to our Health team.  Mr Main is moving onto pastures new in Aberdeen City in the middle of March and we wish him all the best.  At the end of this term Mr Axten moves to Harlaw Academy as Depute Head Teacher and we are very proud of his achievements here.  His boots will be big ones to fill; however, we are confident that we will find a individual to take forwards the development of this team, contribute to the wider life of the school and its journey towards excellence.  Finally, at the beginning of next term Mr Macdonald is moving into a secondment with the Local Authority to support numeracy developments so he will only be with us part-time on a Thursday and Friday.  A replacement for the Faculty Head post of Mathematics and Computing Science is currently being recruited.  Change is always difficult but we are immensely proud of the promoted posts our staff are moving on and into.

Take care everyone,

Louise Moir

Head Teacher