Innovation and Improvement
The school achieved Investors in People status in 2004, renewed in 2007 and 2010. In 2009 HM Inspectorate noted that the school has “a strong capacity for improvement".
Buckie High School brought automated messaging to the UK in 2000 to notify parents and carers of unexplained absences. A Scottish Executive grant allowed an American system to be adapted for use in United Kingdom. The initial system used recorded voice messages to advise parents whenever their child could not be accounted for. This has been replaced by text messaging and is now widespread across the UK.
Innovative strategies have been used to help older pupils support younger ones in their learning. Based on the notion that the best way to learn something is to teach it, cross-age tutoring has been used to teach pupils specific skills. Fourth year maths classes have, for example, paired up with a second year class for pupils to teach fractions. Fifth and sixth year students have paired up with younger students to learn about HIV. This cross-age tutoring in relation to HIV has also involved teachers and pupils from Buckie High School’s partner school in Tanzania.
In 2007-2008, Music, drama and art were used to inspire better performance in Mathematics. The Scottish Arts Council provided funding to allow artists to work alongside Mathematics teachers in classrooms. Finding new ways to help pupils understand key concepts such as volume continues to be central to Scotland’s emerging Curriculum for Excellence.
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Famous quotes containing the words innovation and, innovation and/or improvement:
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)
“The progress of society is mainly ... the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)