Knowing our community is key to how we build relationships in Lornshill Academy. By knowing and understanding our community, we have been better able to meet the needs of our students.

Building community through our formal parent body has been important. By acting upon feedback from our families and hosting the forums online, we have increased accessibility and convenience for our families.

We take the stance “You said, we will do” and commit to moving forward suggestions made by our Family Forum and wider families. We actively consider how to reduce barriers that our families may face. Initiatives such as 'Cooking with Lornshill' allow families to cook together to promote family bonding and learning together opportunities in a relaxed setting; allowing opportunities to build on life skills. Such opportunities are funded by the school to remove any financial barriers that may exist.

Through making changes to how we communicate with families, we have been able to introduce more engaging processes. Through the use of an online reporting system, our data shows that having a readily accessible system available to families has increased the level of family engagement. This has allowed families to have meaningful discussions with their children and has led to more productive conversations at pupil progress evenings.

However, knowing our community doesn’t start when students join us in S1. We host transition evenings for the families of the new P7s, enabling families to have opportunities to visit classrooms and meet teachers. This allows families to make connections with staff and receive answers to questions as well as alleviating concerns they may have. This early interaction helps to establish a sense of community that we continue to develop during every student’s time in Lornshill.