School Excursions

As a school we offer a number of excursions to enrich the learning experience. Foreign Travel Opportunities for organised travel abroad are frequent. For many years, the History staff have taken parties of pupils to the battlefields of Flanders. More recently, groups have travelled to the U.S.A., Italy, India, Spain and France. An increasing number of pupils are taking part in World Challenge expeditions with recent trips to South America, Africa and Asia.    An exciting development has been pupil  participation in the Polar Academy. 

Polar Academy

The Polar Academy was set-up in 2013 Craig Mathieson, Scotland’s greatest living polar explorer.  His vision is to inspire youth through exploration and to help young people positively transform a life blighted by crushed self-confidence, anxiety and / or a lack of self-esteem. Over the past six years, Craig  has worked closely with teachers to identify what he calls ‘invisible’ youths. To date, five expeditions involving pupils from a total of eleven secondary schools have experienced the life-changing methods deployed by the charity that helps participants to redefine their physical and mental limits. Over 70,000 youths have already been engaged and inspired by the charity.

Since March 2019 we have been involved in this very exciting initiative. Twenty pupils have had the opportunity to prepare to go to Greenland.  We have been  pushed outside of our comfort zones!  In August 2019 we started our tough training programme of insanity every week. This started as 30 minute sessions and then each one after December lasted an hour and it was indeed INSANE!!! January saw doing a 10km tyre haul, February a 20km (in rain that was so crazy our waterproofs were no longer water proof!) and in March we did a tyre haul on St Andrews beach. This one was a little different as the day before we were told that our trip to Greenland was cancelled  (due to COVID-19)but the team showed up determined and ready to complete our training. We are now lucky enough to be continuing with the training and hope to head out to Greenland in April 2021. The pupils, families and Polar team have been incredible. Stay tuned for more of our adventures!