Setting challenges

Introduction

Craigie High School in Dundee is a secondary school of approximately 850 pupils and around 80 staff serving a mixed area to the east of the city. The school houses a sensory unit for pupils with both hearing and visual impairments. There is also a resourced location ASN unit.

Helen Jack, Principal Teacher of Guidance and Enterprise in Education Co-ordinator, helped to come up with the idea of using the registration period for setting challenges for pupils. This idea was developed through the Determined to Succeed Working Group.

The idea was implemented when the school decided to change from a horizontal system of registration, based on year groups, to a vertical one of S1-S6 in the same registration class.

Helen Jack explained the reasons for this:

'We wanted to make more use of the 10 minutes of registration time by using it to set up paired learning partnerships and expand our existing system of S6 buddying S1 pupils to include all pupils. We also needed a way to increase participation in the inter-house championship, which had focused mainly on sporting or academic achievement as the way to win points.' 

The project has run since August 2007 and is continuing on a monthly basis. The project is due to be fully evaluated in the near future.