Dumbarton school praised for exam results

Oct 31 2008 by Amanda McKendrick, Lennox Herald (main ed)

A DUMBARTON high school is being hailed as a shining example after achieving outstanding exam results.

Our Lady and St Patrick’s pupils are earning their school plaudits at every stage of SQA examinations from fourth through to sixth year.

Last week the school, its pupils and teaching staff were singled out for praise at a meeting of West Dunbartonshire Council’s education committee.

The committee heard that the school was showing strengths at foundation, general and credit level for standard grade exams as well as highers.

Ten measures were assessed including strength at five or more standard grades, strengths for five or more highers and strengths in English and maths at standard grade.

Our Lady and St Patrick’s was the only secondary in West Dunbartonshire which featured in every measure when compared to 20 similar schools across Scotland.

External consultant Stewart Jardine, who was called in to assess the authority’s examination performance said: “The schools which appear are either improving or in the top 25 per cent of their comparator schools.

“Our Lady and St Patrick’s appears in every single measures. Those are lessons which have got to be learned and I think we should be looking for good practice there.”

The school’s head teacher Charles Rooney said the outstanding performance was down to the dedicated teaching team and hard work at Our Lady and St Patrick’s.

He added: “We are obviously once again pleased with our examination performance. Our continued success comes from the professionalism and expertise of our teachers, the effort of our pupils and the on-going support that we receive from parents. We are committed to building on these successes.”

The report to the education committee revealed that performance in exams at standard grade and higher has been consistently improving across the authority since 2001.

At foundation level the authority’s pupils are outshining their classmates across Scotland, while at general level pupils are on a par with the Scottish average and at credit level just below the national average.

At higher level, West Dunbartonshire has closed the gap on national figures but is still lagging with results for between one and five highers.

Across the authority over the last three years, standard grade pupils showed strength in art and design while improvement was most marked in biology and modern studies.

At higher pupils across the area showed strength in art and design and economics, improvement was noticeable in modern studies results.

The challenge for next year is to improve results in English, history and physics.