\Balfron High

\Alloa Academy

Inter-House competition This week’s competition was, once again, a close-fought affair. Erskine House topped the table with 13 points, Schaw were in second place with 12 points and Bruce were in third place with 11 points. Class 1S1 topped the list for weekly co-operation and 3B1 had the highest number of homework merits. In the Inter-house basketball competition, Bruce were champions gaining 15 points and in the badminton. Erskine took the top honours. Healthfest Cluster Health Week takes place next week and all classes will be looking at an aspect of Health during curricular classes. All Cluster schools will also be contributing to an exhibition which will take place in the assembly hall on Thursday, March 16. SYP Voting took place in Alloa Academy for the Scottish Youth Parliament. All students had the opportunity to vote and the school wishes all candidates good luck in this important role. Sports Council Awards Well done to all pupils and teams who were nominated for a Clackmannanshire Sports Council Award. Alan Frew achieved in the Overcoming Adversity section, while Aidan Hunter was nominated for his excellent work as a Young Leader. The Futsal team were nominated for the Team of the Year award. EASN Programme One of the EASN groups took up the opportunity to challenge themselves as part of the Rural and Urban Training programme. They were challenged to complete circuits on quad bikes at Knockhill Racing Track. All of the group reported that this was one of the best experiences that they had ever had. Easter Revision School One week of revision mornings will be taking place at Alloa Academy in the week of April 3-7. Different subjects will be holding sessions each day from 9.30am-1pm and lunch will be served each day. The timetable will be available next week and this is a great opportunity for some focussed study before the exams take place. Reports Tracking and monitoring reports will be issued to all S2-S6 students on Tuesday, March 14. House Group time will be extended to allow students the chance to discuss their progress with their House Group Leader. A full S1 report will be issued on Friday, March 24. ing and nearly everyone we asked answered our questions with a smile. The next day our confidence had improved so much we were keen to include interviews in our video about Strasbourg. My group got lucky and had to talk about the food of the area, so we spent a day going to cafes, sampling some traditional food and even interviewing a local cheese shop owner. Both experiences really made boosted my confidence, and now I’m back I’m all the keener to speak French as much as possible! The other side to the trip was politics based, with our Friday being spent alongside young people from 21 European nations in the EU Parliament in Strasbourg. The MEPs were not in session, but we’d been lucky enough to visit earlier in the week to speak to Labour MEP Catherine Stihler, so had got a feel for what a busy place the Parliament is. The day began with introductions from each country, our two spokespeople introducing us in French, and followed through into a question and answer session with one of the Vice Presidents of the European Parliament, MEP Evelyne Gebhardt, which was particularly interesting due to the changes occurring in the EU at the moment. In the afternoon, we split in to committee rooms, and I was elected as spokesperson for Human Rights and Security. When we went back to the chamber, I had to make a short speech on what we had discussed before taking questions from the floor for 10 minutes. Having only had an hour to talk about the subject, I was incredibly thankful that this bit was in English (due to working rooms not having translators, we had to choose one language for the working groups). The whole trip has given me so much confidence in both my language skills and ability to push myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve made friends with people from not only Scotland but Greece, Ireland, Germany and France and I cannot thank Callander Rotary enough for allowing me to have such a once in a lifetime opportunity. U16 Central School Cup On Wednesday, March 1, McLaren travelled to Balfron High School to take part in this year’s U16 Cup competition to meet Larbert High in one of the semi-finals. An extremely close match finished 14-14 and the game moved into “Golden Point” extra time, with the next point scorer securing a place in the final. Unfortunately for McLaren it was Larbert who scored the decisive try. McLaren’s points were scored by Lewis Gallagher and James Isgrove, with Peter Hayes successfully converting both of the scores. McLaren then faced Stirling High in the 3rd/4th play-off. After putting so much effort into the Larbert match, the boys were tiring, and some strong running from Stirling ensured that they ran out 26-7 winners. Peter Hayes scored the consolation points for McLaren. Debating The Owen Britton Debating Competition took place on Tuesday, February 28. The speakers were Jack Britain, Jamie Cushing, Hamish Finn and Tom Morley and the motion was “This house believes space exploration is a waste of time and money”. It was a fantastic, high quality debate watched by the whole of S1 and the school’s debating club. The debate was won for the second year running by Tom Morley. Shortlisted Charlotte Schmautz (1L2) has been shortlisted for the Poppies Scotland Letters Home competition. There were more than 1000 entries so this is something of which she is rightly proud.