Junior

As with the Prep School and Senior School, we concentrate all our efforts with Junior School pupils in helping them develop to the very best of their ability. If you’ve met our Rector, or read his newsletter, you might be familiar with the concept that ‘a happy child learns faster than an unhappy one’. It’s this duality of wellbeing and intellectual encouragement that we’ll always seek to foster in our classrooms and life in general here at Dollar.

Junior School pupils benefit from their very own dedicated building, giving them a space of their own, away from their younger counterparts. This separate building is a symbol of transition, reinforcing the idea of the next stage and helping add to that feeling of preparedness.

The syllabus and activities we have lined up for Junior School classes makes for more than just a ‘feeling’ of readiness however. Working within the SQA’s Curriculum for Excellence framework, the broad range of subjects and topics offer each child a great opportunity to form strong foundations for their upcoming career at the Senior School. All this is complemented by teaching from senior subject specialists in Art, Music, Modern Languages, Computing, EDT (Engineering, Design and Technology), Home Economics and P.E.

Time away from the textbooks is important too, of course and the various trips, activities, using the school’s variety of on-campus facilities and visiting speakers help keep those young minds fresh, stimulated and eager to achieve. Junior 1 pupils can look forward to a two-night trip away (most recently to Ford Castle, Northumberland), whilst Junior 2 pupils set off for five days at Benmore in Argyll.

Continuous assessment takes place throughout the year, and involves observation, reflection and testing. This allows teachers to chart the progress of each individual child and share their learnings with parents through two yearly Parents’ Consultations, written reports in June, and informally through Dollar’s commitment to an ‘open doors’ policy.