People often ask what a typical day looks like as a Head Teacher. The honest answer is there isn’t really a ‘typical’ day. What never changes however is that behind every school day is a carefully balanced mix of leadership, relationships, problem-solving, and a relentless focus on children.

Here’s a snapshot of one day.

7:00am – The Day Begins Before It Begins

The first job of the day is checking staffing- who is in, who is absent, and how we ensure every class and area of the school is supported. Plans are adjusted quickly and a daily schedule is sent out. This is where the tone of the day is set: organised, responsive, and focused on keeping learning uninterrupted.

By 7:25am, emails are open. There are always updates, requests, safeguarding notes, and ongoing projects to respond to. Some can be answered immediately and others are flagged for later.

8:00am – Building Check (and Coffee!)

Before the children arrive, there’s a walk around the building. Is everything safe? Ready? Calm? And yes, this is also when I make my daily coffee!

8:40am -Welcoming at the ‘Bunker’

One of the best parts of the day – welcoming pupils as they arrive. Conversations, smiles and small check-ins are where relationships are built and maintained. My ‘bunker’ isn’t just a place- it’s my wee hub of connection.

9:00–10:40am -Meetings That Matter

The morning is filled with scheduled meetings with parents/carers and professionals. These are often the most important and sometimes the most complex parts of the day. We discuss success, support, progress, concerns, and next steps. Every conversation is about getting it right for each child.

10:40am – Pupil Break Engagement

Back to the Bunker for HT playtime groups. This is deliberate time spent with pupils- building trust, listening, and understanding their experiences of school.

11:00–12:20 – Pupil Support and Strategic Work

The late morning moves between direct pupil support and leadership responsibilities:

• Supporting individual children
• Meeting with the Business Manager to review finance and health & safety
• Ensuring systems are robust, compliant, and working for the school community

It’s a constant balance between people and systems.

12:20–1:30pm – Pupil Lunch Engagement

No two lunch times are the same. This is where you see the social side of school life: friendships, disagreements, laughter, and everything in between. I also try to pop over to the dining hall to see the high quality food on offer.

1:30–3:00pm – Leadership in Action

The afternoon is a mix of strategic and relational leadership:

• Meeting with the Depute Head Teacher to review healthcare plans, pupil support plans or attainment information
• Working with the pupil leadership team – ensuring pupil voice is real, not tokenistic

This is where improvement work becomes visible and shared.

3:00–4:15pm – Staff Support and Development

After the pupils leave, the focus shifts to staff:

• Individual check-ins – celebrating successes, supporting, problem-solving
• Staff meeting – developing practice, aligning priorities, and moving the school forward together

A strong school is built on a supported and valued staff team.

4:15–5:15pm – The Second Wave of Emails

Emails return- responses, follow-ups, planning for tomorrow. Much of the unseen work of leadership happens here.

5:45pm – Final Sweep

Before leaving, there’s one final walk around the building. Ensuring everything is safe, secure, and ready for the next day.

So What Is a Head Teacher’s Day Really About?

It’s not just meetings.

It’s not just emails.

It’s not just leadership.

It’s about people- every decision, every conversation, every moment comes back to one thing: making the school the best it can be for every staff member and child.

And tomorrow, we do it all again.

One of the things I am most proud of at Craigroyston Primary School is the wide range of experiences our children enjoy beyond the classroom. Throughout the year our pupils visit museums, parks, theatres, sports venues and places within our community. These excursions are not “extras” rather they are an essential part of learning.

At Craigroyston we also have what we call our Craigie Promise. This means that every child, at every stage of their school journey, is guaranteed certain experiences. We plan carefully to ensure that pupils will visit particular places and take part in specific opportunities as they move through the school.

Just as importantly, we do not charge families for these excursions. We believe that every child should be able to take part in these experiences, regardless of family circumstances. By removing the cost barrier, we ensure that every pupil can benefit from the same opportunities and no one misses out.

Why excursions are so important

Children learn best when learning feels real. While reading about something in a book is valuable, experiencing it first-hand is often transformational.

Excursions allow our pupils to:

• See the wider world beyond the classroom
• Connect learning to real places, people and experiences
• Develop confidence and independence
• Strengthen friendships and teamwork
• Build memories that help learning “stick”
• Understand that they are ‘Edinburgh’

For many of our pupils, school trips also provide opportunities that they may not otherwise experience. Visiting cultural venues, green spaces, sports facilities and historical sites helps broaden horizons and builds cultural capital.

These experiences matter enormously. They help shape how children see themselves and what they believe is possible for their future.

Bringing the experience back into the classroom

Trips are not stand-alone events. In fact, some of the most important learning happens after the visit. Back in the classroom, teachers deliberately build on the experience so that it deepens understanding and strengthens learning. Pupils might:

• Write about the visit in their literacy work
• Use the experience as stimulus for discussion, debate or storytelling
• Create artwork or digital presentations based on what they saw
• Connect the experience to science, history or geography learning
• Reflect on what they noticed, questioned or wondered about

Because pupils have shared a real experience, the learning becomes richer. They are not imagining a place or concept-  they have seen it, explored it and talked about it together. This helps learning to stick. It also helps children make stronger connections between different areas of the curriculum.

The work behind every trip

While trips are exciting for children, they involve a significant amount of planning and responsibility for staff. Before a trip can even take place, staff must:

• Complete detailed risk assessments
• Organise transport and timings and lunches
• Check venues and facilities
• Prepare medical information and emergency contacts
• Plan learning activities linked to the visit
• Arrange supervision ratios and staffing
• Communicate with families and manage permissions
• Ensure accessibility and inclusion for every pupil

Staff also carry a huge duty of care on the day itself. When pupils leave the school building, teachers and support staff are responsible for their safety in busy public spaces, on transport and in unfamiliar environments. It is a big responsibility, and our staff take it extremely seriously.

Why we keep doing it

Despite the work involved, our staff continue to organise these opportunities because they know how valuable they are for children. The smiles, excitement and conversations after a trip tell the story. Pupils return inspired, curious and eager to talk about what they have seen and learned. Those moments make the planning worthwhile.

A thank you to our staff

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff at Craigroyston Primary who go the extra mile to make these experiences possible. They do this so that every child benefits from the Craigie Promise and the rich experiences that make school memorable. Our staff do it because they care deeply about giving our pupils the very best opportunities. And our pupils deserve nothing less.

At Craigroyston Primary School, we are deeply committed to getting it right for every child. A key part of this is ‘quality assurance’. This is about the ongoing process we use to check that what we plan, teach and provide is having a real, positive impact on our learners. Quality assurance is about professional curiosity, reflection and improvement. It helps us answer some very important questions:

How do we know our learners are progressing?

Are our approaches working for all children?

What should we do next to improve further?

How we assure quality at Craigroyston

We use a range of evidence to build an accurate picture of learning and wellbeing across the school. This includes:

• Regular classroom visits and learning walks, where we look at engagement, relationships and the learning environment
• Professional dialogue with staff, focusing on what is working well and where support or development may be helpful
• Tracking and monitoring of progress, ensuring learners are supported and challenged appropriately
• Learner voice, listening carefully to what children tell us about their learning and experiences
• Feedback from parents and carers, which helps us reflect on our impact beyond the classroom
• Looking beyond our setting and finding out about what other schools are doing well.

These sources come together to inform our improvement priorities and ensure decisions are evidence-based.

Our upcoming HMI inspection

In February,  Craigroyston Primary School and ELC will take part in an HMI inspection. We see this as a valuable opportunity to engage in professional dialogue with external colleagues and to reflect on our work together.

Importantly, our approach to quality assurance means that inspection is not something separate or additional. The processes inspectors will see (including classroom visits, learner conversations, use of data, and reflective discussion with staff) are already part of our everyday practice.

The inspection provides an opportunity to:

• validate our self-evaluation
• celebrate what is working well for our learners
• identify clear and focused next steps for improvement

We are confident that our strong culture of reflection, collaboration and continuous improvement will be evident throughout the visit.

Always improving, always learning!

One of the best parts of my role is stepping into classrooms to see learning in action. Over the last few weeks I’ve spent time, alongside colleagues, visiting classes across the school and I wanted to share why these visits matter and what I’ve loved seeing.

Classroom visits aren’t about clipboards or checklists. They’re about connection. They give me the chance to understand how our pupils are experiencing learning every day, celebrate the brilliant work our staff are doing, and make sure that our improvement priorities are genuinely making a difference.

What has stood out most recently is the purposeful calm in our learning spaces. Whether it’s our new reading scheme settling in, the creative ways teachers are stretching learners in numeracy, or the small strategies that support wellbeing, the consistency is clear: our staff care deeply about getting it right for every child.

I’ve also had some wonderful conversations with pupils. They love talking about what they are learning and they’re increasingly confident in sharing their ideas, next steps, and what skills allow them to offer their best. Their voices remind me why our focus on understanding how the brain works (and using that knowledge to support learning) is so important.

For staff, classroom visits give me a real insight into what’s working well and where we can support further. Sometimes it’s about noticing when a resource could help, or where our playground developments and wellbeing work are having a positive impact inside the classroom. Often it’s simply a moment to say ‘wow- look at the impact of your work!’.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been making some purposeful changes across Craigroyston Primary to help our staff do what they do best: teach brilliantly.

Two of the biggest improvements are the arrival (very soon) of our new classroom chairs and the launch of our new reading scheme. Although they might seem like simple additions, both play a significant role in supporting high quality learning and teaching and they send a clear message to our staff: you deserve the tools and environment you need to do a great job.

New Chairs, Better Learning Spaces

Every learning environment should feel comfortable, purposeful and ready for learning. Our new chairs will make a noticeable difference. They’re sturdy, supportive and right sized for our pupils, helping them sit comfortably and stay engaged for longer. For staff, they create safer, more organised classrooms where movement and transitions are smoother and quicker. They are pretty hard to swing on too!

It’s a small detail that actually makes a big impact on how a classroom feels and how it functions. When our teachers step into a space that works well, they can focus fully on teaching, not managing furniture.

Our New Reading Scheme: A Step Forward for Literacy

We’re also excited to introduce our new reading scheme, which brings high quality texts, clear progression pathways and resources that genuinely support differentiated learning. Teachers now have access to texts that are engaging, inclusive and structured in a way that lifts attainment while building children’s confidence and enjoyment in reading.

This sits firmly within our improvement priority of raising attainment in literacy. The scheme will help ensure consistency, support learners with the right level of challenge, and strengthen home school links through shared reading.

Supporting Our Staff to Be Their Best

Ultimately, these improvements reflect something deeply important to us as a school: making sure our teachers have everything they need to do a great job.

From high quality resources to well designed learning spaces, we want our staff to feel equipped, valued and supported. When teachers have the right tools, they can spend their time on what matters most- building relationships, planning great learning and helping every child thrive.

Thank You

At Craigroyston Primary, we believe that every child’s voice matters and that they can make real change in their own community. This session, we’re excited to have launched our Pupil Leadership Groups– a fantastic way for children to take an active role in shaping school life and driving improvement.

Each group focuses on an important part of our School Improvement Plan. Children from across the P3-P7 classes applied to join and shared why they wanted to make a difference. Their enthusiasm was inspiring!

Our groups are:

Pupil Leadership Team– organising events and sharing information across the school

Sustainability Group- working to improve Outdoor Learning for all and sort out the school’s recycling systems

Playground-  improving play spaces and helping us make the most of our outdoor areas

Library– championing our new reading scheme and creating new class libraries

Equalities- monitoring how well everyone feels like they belong

Pupil Leadership Groups will meet regularly with staff to share ideas, give feedback and plan real change.

What makes these groups powerful is that children see the impact of their ideas. When something changes because they spoke up, it builds confidence, pride and the belief that they can shape the future- not just at Craigroyston, but far beyond.

We know our pupils have incredible creativity and determination. Giving them leadership opportunities is a big part of helping them develop meta-skills including self-management, social intelligence and innovation -the skills they’ll need for life and work.

I’m so proud of the thoughtful, brave and ambitious leaders emerging across our school. Watch this space; their ideas are already making Craigroyston Primary an even better place to learn and grow!

At Craigroyston Primary, we know that learning is about more than reading, writing and numbers. To thrive in school and in life our children need to develop important skills for learning, life and work. These are called meta-skills: the building blocks that help us manage ourselves, work well with others, and adapt to new challenges.

To bring these ideas to life, we’ve introduced three characters to support our learners: Craig, Roy and Stan.

Self Managing Craig

Craig reminds us how important it is to stay organised, focused and responsible. He encourages us to set goals, manage our time, and keep going when things feel tough.

Socially Intelligent Roy

Roy shows us the value of working well with others. She helps children think about kindness, empathy and teamwork. With Roy’s support, we learn how to listen, share ideas, and resolve problems together.

Innovating Stan

Stan inspires creativity and curiosity and encourages us to explore new ideas, solve problems in different ways, and embrace change with confidence.

Together, Craig, Roy and Stan give us a common language to talk about our learning. You’ll start to see them around our school, in classrooms, and in assemblies. They will help us reflect on how we learn, not just what we learn.

This is part of our wider work on raising attainment and preparing our learners for the future. By focusing on self-management, social intelligence and innovation, we are giving our children the skills they need to succeed not only in school but in life beyond Craigroyston.

We’re excited to see how Craig, Roy and Stan will inspire our pupils this year. Look out for updates as pupils share how they are using the meta-skills in their learning and play!

Welcome Back to a New School Year

It has been wonderful to see Craigroyston Primary full of energy again this week as we welcomed pupils, families, and staff back for the start of the new school year. A special welcome goes to our new Primary 1 children and their families- we are so pleased you are now part of our Craigroyston community.

The first days of term are always an exciting time, full of fresh starts, new routines, and lots of learning ahead. Our team have been busy preparing classrooms and planning engaging learning experiences. Already, we can see children settling well, showing resilience, and building positive relationships with staff and peers.

This year, we are focusing on some key areas to help every child thrive:

• Attendance- supporting children to be in school every day so they can make the most of their learning

• Reading- rolling out our new reading scheme to build skills and a love of reading across the school.

• Wellbeing- continuing to strengthen our approach to relationships, behaviour, and staff wellbeing.

• Playground improvements- making sure our outdoor spaces support play, friendships, and fun.

• Pupil Voice- through our improvement groups, children will continue to have a say in how our school develops.

We will keep families updated through newsletters, parent/carer council meetings and here on the website. Please do keep in touch with us- your partnership and support makes a huge difference to children’s experiences and success.

Here’s to a year filled with learning, laughter, and achievement.

Warm regards,

Mrs Rebecca Favier

Head Teacher