Craigmount High School

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Craigmount High School Logo

Craigmount High School is a comprehensive state school located in the East Craigs area of Edinburgh, Scotland. It moved into new premises at the beginning of the 2003 academic year. The current headmaster is John Campbell. There are currently 1389 pupils attending the school.

1 History
2 New building
3 Sport
4 Extracurricular activities
5 Head Masters
6 External links

[edit] History

The first school premises were built on the site of an old working farm in 1970 to alleviate pressure on surrounding secondary schools due to an increase in new housing. With its 1970s architecture, the school was hailed as a marvel of intelligent design^[who?], incorporating a large drama theatre and a campus layout with large open spaces between buildings linked with raised corridors.

Due to an increase in pupil numbers putting pressure on building capacity and lack of money to make repairs to the flat-roofed buildings, the school took the decision to build a new premises. In 2003, work began on the new Craigmount building. The decision was made to sell the land the existing building was standing on along with the upper sports pitches to a property developer and with the revenue created, build DA new building in a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) scheme.

[edit] New building

The new school building was built on the site of the old school's playing fields. It was completed in 2003, and pupils and teachers moved into it that August.

In a 2004 edition of 'Skools' magazine, the new building was labelled as 'an intelligent investment' by Tony Blair^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Sport

The 2003 U18 squad who won the Scottish Cup

Current sporting activities in Craigmount High School:

[edit] Extracurricular activities

The choir ready to sing at one of the music tours

Craigmount High School provides the sporting clubs mentioned above in addition to a wide range of other organisations.

Once a year, Craigmount holds a three day Alternative timetable when upwards of fifty activities are offered to students in years S1, S2 and S3. Students can choose between three single day courses, one three day course or even a week long excursion abroad.

In addition to this week several annual trips take place organised by various departments of the school. The music department runs a music tour abroad every few years (locations have included Paris 2000, Brittany 2002, Barcelona 2004, Austria 2006, and The Netherlands 2008). The history department also runs a trip to the WWI trenches in Belgium each year.

The school debating club has enjoyed considerable success in recent years, competing regularly with other local and national teams. In 2007 two S6 pupils won the Scottish Donald Dewar Memorial Debating Tournament, beating three independent schools to win the title.

Another exclusive activity is the Photography Club, run by Mister Mervyn McIlmoyle. The Photography Club provides all photographs to the school, from Craigmount Christmas Cards to photographing school sports teams. They currently meet in the computing department on Thursdays after school.