This year in Portree High School has been a year of new happenings and people. We have welcomed new S1s and quite a lot of new teachers and new faces. One of our new happenings was Yes We Can.
2024 was a historic and sad year as one of Portree High School’s longest-serving teachers, Mrs Mary MacDonald, retired, bringing an end to an era.
One of her main accomplishments was the establishment of the Money Mile, as it was phrased. The children would collect pennies and line them up, and many miles have been made over the years.
However, it grew harder and harder each year to run the Money Mile as our world was moving into a modern era of a cashless society; therefore, some action had to be taken to preserve this much-enjoyed tradition.
The organising committee made the decision to bring this tradition into the modern world and to preserve it for generations to come. It was decided to change the coins for canned food, to help our local foodbank, this was named Yes We Can, and we did just that.
The canned food would be donated to the Skye and Lochalsh Community FoodBank to help families this Christmas. Christmas time is a time of rejoicing, but it is also a scary and uncertain time for many people across the country. With rising prices and the cost of living and inflation falling and rising, it is harder for families, young and old, to afford meals this Christmas time. This is an issue close to our school and community’s hearts as it will benefit some of our pupils and their families.
This year, the pupils were asked to bring in tinned food to help the effort. The students were divided into three groups according to their house groups as the Money Mile worked. These houses were: Glamaig (which is made up of all the pupils through the Gaelic Medium), Marsco and Tianavaig, and they had to compete against each other.
Each house group was allocated a floor to line their cans on. The students were told to line the cans in straight lines starting from the middle of the corridor; prefects and teachers assisted them.
It was a day of much tension and excitement. At the end, the prefects had a large and difficult job counting all the cans which were the following.
Glamaig: 156.75m and 1536 cans
Tianavaig: 110.57m and 1084 cans
Marsco: 74.2m and 684 cans
Overall, the G House, the record winners of the Money Mile and so far Yes We Can won the day, with Tianavaig coming in second and Marsco at the bottom in 3rd place. The amount of cans per pupil were also counted
Tianavaig: 8.1 cans per pupil on average
Glamaig: 7.5 cans per pupil on average
Marsco: 5.3 cans per pupil
Overall the lines spread 341.52m and 3,304 cans were collected for the foodbank. This was an incredible achievement for the school and there was an amazing turnout by pupils.
A comment from Oliver Langlands, who is a pupil in Marsco and is the head boy: “I thought the ‘Yes We Can’ competition was a great opportunity to have a bit of interhouse rivalry. I thought it was a great day with a great outcome, being able to supply over 3,300 cans to the local foodbank was definitely a privilege to be part of. It was nice to see all the pupils working together in their houses to accomplish the longest line of cans possible, as well as leading up to the day where there was great encouragement by pupils and teachers to achieve the best we could.”
The day was much enjoyed by all who were involved and we are looking forward to next year.
Portree High School would like to thank the Co-op and Maggie’s Fruit and Veg for all their help and support.
Jonathan MacDonald, 2.G.1