St Ninan’s High School, East Dunbartonshire

Key to the work of St Ninian’s is striving to ensure that its young people are fully prepared for life in the 21st century.

The young people who attend the school are encouraged by all of the staff to be ambitious in their achievements, confident in their abilities, responsible within their community and effective in their learning by developing the talents of each individual.

St Ninian’s values are deeply embedded within the school culture at all levels where they can be observed both living and breathing across the school.  Trust, respect, integrity, awareness and creativity were all clearly demonstrated across the school and learning community and were clearly a catalyst for learning.

During the course of the GTCS one day visit to the school it was clear that there is a real sense of equity and deep respect for each other. There is clear belief that in St Ninian’s “anything is possible” for ‘teacher & student learning’.

“The strength of the culture and practice of ‘leadership of and for learning’ is clearly evident.  Across the day it was clear that learning is what St Ninian’s is all about.  Social, human and decisional capital was significantly evident through a real sense of collective responsibility through what was described as an “open culture” where collaborative professionalism is nurtured through frequent and focussed professional dialogue between participants in the whole learning community.  Parents and pupils, teachers and colleagues through different professional learning activities and forums and significant inherent involvement in the life of the whole school, both participate in teaching and shape their own learning. The unity of the leadership, demonstrating being both valued based and values driven, a shared culture of fearlessness and risk taking was a model of distributive leadership in action.” (extract from GTCS panel report 2017)