Junior School

Welcome to Dunottar Junior School.

The Junior School is a warm stimulating and secure environment where our girls are able to prosper and grow. We work hard to establish and maintain a caring, supportive atmosphere in which girls feel confident to be themselves, to respect everyone in the community, to be proud of their achievements and to persevere when given a new challenge.

The benefits of a girls’ only environment mean they grow up happy to endeavour, and achieve in all subjects, without any gender stereotyping. Girls and boys learn in different ways, so a school like Dunottar can meet the needs of the pupils 100% of the time. This is done by allowing girls to learn from their mistakes without a fear of failure. This leads to resilient and well-rounded girls able to tackle the problems of later years with confidence. Our aim is to create resilient and resourceful girls keen to be lifelong learners. We strongly believe that our girls make the best progress when they feel happy, secure and valued, so we place great emphasis on pastoral care.

The Junior Department curriculum is based on the National Curriculum, including the Primary National Strategy. It is challenging, and designed to give a balanced educational experience covering academic and creative subjects, along with many sporting and extracurricular activities. We have spacious buildings with wonderful grounds and facilities in which our girls can both learn and play and we find that they thrive in the safe and friendly surroundings which we provide. Education should be a partnership between the teachers, parents and pupils, all working together to make sure that our girls receive the education and support they deserve.

Most importantly I believe school should be fun. If we want today’s girls to be tomorrow’s leaders we have to give them a firm educational basis to start from so that they will want to be life long learners.

We look forward to welcoming you to our school so that you can experience the special atmosphere for yourself.

Catriona Macleod, Head of Junior School