‘Fantastic’ Buckie Community High School has bright future with ‘so much potential’
“The sky’s the limit” - that was the hugely upbeat verdict from Buckie Community High School’s (BCHS) new headteacher after her first term at the reins.
Jemma Playfair swapped the helm of Milne’s High School in Fochabers for BCHS at the start of the new school year and, with a full term now under her belt, there is plenty to be positive about.
She said: “When you look at the journey that Buckie has had in the last five years, it's going from strength to strength.
”It's a school with so much potential and that potential is not only because of the dedicated teaching staff and support staff that we've got here, it's because of the young people.
“They really want to work hard and they want to do the very best that they can, and I think when you've got staff and young people that want to do their very best, the sky's the limit for you. That was what was quite attractive about the move from Milne’s to Buckie, but I do definitely think that we've only reached the surface of what we can achieve here.
“There’s been a lot of press about Buckie High that focuses on what’s happening on the exterior of the building, not what’s happening inside it. What we really want to be speaking about is the buzz that's in here.”
The move from Milne’s has meant a step up in school roll, with the Fochabers secondary roll coming in at around 480 while BCHS tips the scales at just over 800.
Ms Playfair continued: “The last 18 months or so when I was at Milne’s I was responsible for both the secondary and the primary, which together comes to around 700, so in terms of the amount of young people, it's not that much more when I had two of them put together.
“BCHS is a much bigger school than Milne’s High School, but with it being bigger, you get more opportunities.
“We have got young people that really want to take on leadership roles; we've maybe not been at the space where we've fully realised that yet, but we are starting to do the work on that.
“I would say that even though the school’s bigger, the feeling of community is still very much at the centre of that. Sometimes when you go to a school that's quite big, you lose that sense of community. There's some schools in Fife that [have a roll of] 2000, or in the central belt that are that big and you almost lose that sense of community. I don't think you lose that here with the size of the school.
“I think you've got the uniqueness of each of the feeder primaries so that you've got that real sense of community. What I would say about the young people as well is they're really up for a challenge and they're really up for change.”
As part of her first term in charge, Ms Playfair has been undertaking wide ranging consultations with staff students and parents/carers on a range of issues.
She stressed: “I want to base any changes on evidence and it's not changes that are going to benefit me, this isn't my school, I'm not doing things to benefit me, it actually has to benefit the young people otherwise there's no point in doing it.”
“I don't want to come in and just change everything because there's lots of good things that are already happening at this school; I don't want to lose them and replace them with other things if they're already working well.”
Looking ahead to the end of the school year, Ms Playfair said she was aiming for a refresh of the school’s core values of compassion, ambition, respect and effort to have been successfully completed. among the sweeping review of vision and values is a drive to promote the wearing of school uniform, something the BCHS boss said was gaining strong support from parents.
Ms Playfair continued: “It's all about us being part of this team and we're all on the same team, we're all representing the school.
“It's really about having that pride, having that pride in the building, pride in being part of the school.”
After Christmas will see the introduction of a pilot scheme reintroducing registration classes at the start of the day. This will give kids a regular teaching staff contact each day. Youngsters may feel more confident approaching a teacher they see every day should they have a problem and, conversely, make it easier to spot a student who may be having issues.
School excursions and trips, which have not bounced back to pre-Covid levels, is something Ms Playfair is keen to encourage, not least the school’s long-standing link with Tanzania. Having been to the African nation herself when at Milne’s, she described it as being a “life-changing experience”.
The role of the wider community in the ongoing development of BCHS remains central for Ms Playfair.
She continued: “It’s been quite unfortunate that during the first term that some of the things that have been featured about the school have been perceived as quite negative.
“However, there's lots of positive things going on.
“I want people to speak about the school and feel proud of it. I think a lot of people do because when I came to that meeting [in June, discussing a revamp/rebuild for BCHS] about the future of Buckie High there's a lot of people that are really invested, but we need to be invested in the young people. We need to actually think about what is it that we're doing for the young people, so working with the community to look at how can we integrate better [is essential].”
Looking at the school’s transition policy for P7 pupils stepping up to S1 is one of many areas which will find itself in the spotlight to look at ways to help prepare them for the major changes ahead.
The outlook for BCHS, stated Ms Playfair, was overwhelmingly positive.
She added: “This is a fantastic school, there is so much potential.
“I think that the parents really want to see it do well, the staff really want to see it do well, but the resounding voice from young people is that they want this to be a school that we speak about in a positive light.
“They're wanting to do their part as well and we need to look at our social media, we need to look at how we're engaging. We've got a student newspaper - they've been doing videos on Instagram those videos are going to start to go on Facebook because we're saying ‘you're doing so much hard work, let's actually sell everything that you're doing’.
“I think once we start to see more positive things going on our social media people will speak about those positive things, but I would just say this is a fantastic school to be part of. I actually feel really privileged to be the head teacher here.
“It's a privilege to do this job - the staff morale in here is fantastic.”