West Dunbartonshire scrapes into top 100 in Scottish schools’ league table
Our Lady and St Patrick’s High School in Bellsmyre, Dumbarton.
By Bill Heaney
All 339 secondary schools in Scotland have been ranked from best performing to worst in a new league table for 2019 which has just published.
The performance levels of pupils across the country have been graded based on the percentage of pupils gaining five or more highers.
Only one school in West Dunbartonshire has scraped into the top hundred – the new Our Lady and St Patrick’s secondary in Bellsmyre, Dumbarton.
OLSP came in at 99th.
The figures, published by The Times, saw Jordanhill Secondary School top the chart, as 83 percent of pupils attained five or more awards at SCQF Level 6, the equivalent of highers.
Dunblane High School in Stirling and Mearns Castle High School in East Renfrewshire completed the top three – with 76 per cent and 75 per cent of pupils respectively hitting the five higher mark.
At the bottom of the league, Northfield Academy in Aberdeen saw just seven per cent of pupils walk away with five SCQF Level 6 awards.
It was closely followed by Lochend Community High School in Glasgow and Edinburgh’s Wester Hailes Education Centre, which bagged eight per cent each.
The statistics for individual schools were released yesterday by the Scottish government.
The measure recognised that deprived pupils generally perform worse than affluent ones.
Overall, East Dunbartonshire continues to smash targets, with 60 per cent achieving five highers against a benchmark of 48 per cent.
East Renfrewshire, West Lothian, Stirling and Aberdeenshire are also performing well.
In West Dunbartonshire, the leading school, in 99th place, is Our Lady and St Patrick’s Secondary in Dumbarton with Dumbarton Academy second, 100 places behind on 199.
In third place at 212 is St Peter the Apostle in Clydebank; Clydebank High is placed at 283, and the Vale of Leven Academy one place behind on 284.
The best results “locally” however were gained by Helensburgh’s Hermitage Academy, which comes under Argyll and Bute Council and took 63rd place.
The top ten schools across the country were: (5+ Highers, per cent) 1 Jordanhill School, Glasgow City (83); 2 Dunblane High School, Stirling (76); 3 Mearns Castle High School, East Renfrewshire (75); 4 St Ninian’s High School, East Renfrewshire (75); 5 Williamwood High School, East Renfrewshire (73); 6 Boroughmuir High School, Edinburgh City (71); 7 Bearsden Academy, East Dunbartonshire (70); 8 Gryffe High School, Renfrewshire (70); 9 Douglas Academy, East Dunbartonshire (69 and )10 Glasgow Gaelic School, Glasgow City (68).
Edinburgh’s overall results found that only 33 per cent of kids attained five or more awards at SCQF Level 6.
This falls short of the 38 per cent prediction set by a government benchmark.
A spokesman for Edinburgh council, which is led by an SNP-Labour coalition, said: “As a council, we use many indicators to measure progress for our schools and do not believe in simple statistics such as league tables because they do not reflect the rich and varied strengths of our schools, nor the communities they serve.”
Predictably, this is the cry that goes up when these tables are issued is that comparisons are odious and unfair to many of the schools since they exist in different circumstances from the others.
West Dunbartonshire’s SNP education convener Cllr Karen Conaghan and chief education officer, Laura Mason, are part of the boycott of The Democrat.