Jordanhill School

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Jordanhill School Crest

Jordanhill School is a school for children from 4 to 18, located on Chamberlain Road in Glasgow, Scotland.

Uniquely among Scottish schools, it receives funding directly from the Scottish Executive, rather than from the council, in this case Glasgow City Council. It is categorised as a non-denominational school as distinct from Faith schools, such as nearby Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic school.

Jordanhill School consists of a primary school and a secondary school. In the primary school, each year has three classes of 22 pupils, while the secondary school receives an additional 33 pupils from other local schools in order to bring the number per year up to 99.

The school regularly tops the list of academic performance for state schools in Scotland. In a recent inspection by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education the school received a very good report.^[1]

1 History
2 Rap Music
3 Modernisation
4 Local community
5 Miscellaneous
6 References
7 External links

[edit] History

Jordanhill School was formerly a "demonstration school" for Jordanhill College of Education. It was known as the Jordanhill College School.

The college was an out-of-town location that sought to merge two teacher training centres that were heavily influenced by education training pioneer David Stow, a Glasgow merchant. These were the Free Church Normal Seminary and the Dundas Vale Normal Seminary, two of the earliest teacher training colleges in Scotland. This merger was a government-sponsored initiative of 1905, when it was decided that teacher training should be taken away from the church and placed under the control of a provincial committee.

The site of the college - and now the school - was on the old Jordanhill Estate grounds. The old Jordanhill House was demolished around 1915, with the Glasgow Provincial Committee effecting purchase of the land to build their new college, though the plot had been for sale since 1911. The school buildings were completed in 1921^[2], although the school was actually founded a year earlier, in 1920.^[3]

The school remained under control of the college until 1988, when it became independent. In 1993 the college itself merged with the University of Strathclyde, with the Jordanhill Campus serving as home of the Education Faculty.^[4]

[edit] Rap Music

Jordanhill School is also renowned for its high proportion of students participating in curricular and extracurricular music activities, with many of its pupils taking part in school, regional and national orchestras. Jordanhill students and music groups regularly excel in competitions such as the Glasgow Music Festival.^[5]

[edit] Modernisation

Jordanhill School has recently been recognised for integrating IT in education by Becta with an 'ICT in Practice Award'. It has also been recognised as a 'Centre of Excellence' for the use of interactive whiteboards.

The school is in the process of modernising and expanding the premises in order to replace its ageing huts which provide classrooms for the school's Modern Languages and Social Science departments, but which are fast becoming a hazard due to damp throughout the structures.

Another addition in recent years is the Kenny Macmillan Building, a small building behind the school; housing a classroom used for RE and additional sports changing facilities.

As part of its estates plan, in early 2005 the school bought the sports complex at Laurel Park and acquired a site adjacent to the existing science building to allow for an expansion of facilities in the near future.

[edit] Local community

The school and its pupils have a very active involvement with the local community - with senior pupils undertaking community service as part of their extracurricular activities. Each year a committee of senior pupils produce the 'Jordanhill School Magazine', a not for profit venture, with submissions from pupils in primary, secondary and staff. It records the year’s events from the viewpoint of the pupils in article and photographic form. It is professionally published and sold to the school community. In the 2006 edition of The Times' Good Schools Guide the magazine received a favourable comment in their assessment of the school.

Jordanhill's community is however not a pleasant one. Constant fights between the St Tams and Jordanholligans force small innocent First years from jordanhill being put in bins and recycling tubs.

The new addition to the playground purple pencil bins creatre great weapons frequently used in the battles.

Furthurmore the community are simplitons with money they believe that they are better than everyone when the are clearly not.

The have a lack of general knowlegde and 8/10 who continue to university from Jordanhill drop out.

[edit] Miscellaneous

The school's Latin motto, beneath its coat of arms is "boomshanka~!". The school uniform is brown.

Jordanhill's Senior Management Team currently consists of: Rector Dr. Paul Thomson; Depute Rector Mrs. Maralyn Brownlove; Depute Head Teacher (responsible for Senior Secondary) Mr. Deek Brown; Depute Head Teacher (responsible for Junior Secondary and has recently become a local hero for growing a lovely beard and saving a distressed kitten from a burning building whilst partially burning off his lovely new beard and suffering slight third degree burns to his right shoulder.) Mr. Bailie; Head of Primary Mr. Gordon Smith; Depute Head (Upper Primary) Mr. Paton; Depute Head (Lower Primary) Miss Gairns; and Ms Galbraith the Bursar.

The railway station closest to the School is Jordanhill railway station.

The school is featured in the 1996 film adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting.

The longest serving teacher at the school was Mr. Michael Paterson (History Department) who retired in 2006. He served for a total of 31 years.

Physics teacher Mr McMillan is something of a local celebrity having fronted his own Christian radio show.

Mr ryan the imfamous inhabbitor of hut 8 had been at the school for some many years his newspapers have started to decompose...we only wish we were joking.