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Queen Victoria School provided the only Highland Dancing with 40 dancers and with an audience that really appreciated their performance it was, indeed, one of the highlights of the evening. Our Highland Dancers were not only a great hit with the audience but also with the Royal Party. Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Gloucester and His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent both passed on to me their congratulations to the pupils and Mrs MacDonald, our Highland Dancing Instructor. The end of this session and the run in to the next will, of course, see Queen Victoria School Pipes and Drums, Colour Party and the Highland Dancers all perform in this year's Edinburgh Military Tattoo. More of this next year!
Refurbishment programme
This year has also seen another major step forward in our boarding accommodation with the refurbishment of the top floor of the Main Building. This was completed in time for Cunningham to move in after the Christmas holidays. I am very pleased with the result and a number of visitors, including the Under Secretary of State Dr Moonie and the Adjutant
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General Lt General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman, who have seen the end result have been most impressed. It is, indeed, a great improvement and there is, undoubtedly, much
more privacy and space for individuals, and a very good relaxed atmosphere with up to date sound proofed doors and a good colour scheme, chosen by the pupils. We have already started to dismantle one of the wings on the second floor and both wings will be refurbished in time for the start of the next session.
Although less spectacular but perhaps even more important for the future of the School is the fact that for our Admissions Board for entry in August 2001 we had 123 applications. This compared very favourably with 77 last year and 40 and 42 in 1993 and 1994 respectively. Unfortunately, because of our limited capacity we were only able to take 52 for August 2001.
Amongst our many important visitors to the School three stand out as having a significant impact. The visit by Dr Bonnie Dunbar, the astronaut, who spoke so well about her experiences on 5 space flights and captivated the large audience of pupils, firstly with her
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presentation and, secondly, with the way she answered so many questions. The second visit was by Dr Moonie, the Under Secretary of State for Defence who said that he was most encouraged to see at first hand the excellent facilities that the School offers as well as the
recent improvements; and he continued to say that he "was struck by the noticeably warm atmosphere shared by both pupils and staff". In addition he stated that from his visit he had gleaned "the importance of schools such as QVS to compensate for the instability of Service life".
The third visit was by the Adjutant General who commented that 'clearly developments are beginning to pay off in the new accommodation. . . and that 'QVS is attending to instability in the lives of many of its pupils.'
Unfortunately, as is well known by now, the SQA examinations/results process was thrown into disarray for the 2000 Diet of
Exams. As I write we hove still not had final statistics. However, our Standard Grade results were extremely good with 52.5% gaining at least 5 passes at Grades 1 and 2 and 90% gained 5 passes or more at Grades 1 -3. In
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