Gracemount High School is a non-denominational six-year comprehensive secondary school serving south-east Edinburgh, Scotland. It has a current roll of over 600 pupils and around 80 staff. It is operated byCity of Edinburgh Council, the local education authority. No current inspection report is available and it was last inspected in 2013. The school has developed an approach to pupils personal development it refers to as the Gracemount Guarantee and the senior phase is based on personalisation and choice from a range of vocational and academic qualifications. League tables, published in 2019, ranking the percentage of pupils attaining five or more awards at SCQFLevel 6 in 2019, placed Gracemount High at 331 out of 339 schools with 13 per cent; the Scottish Government benchmark figure for GHS was 22. The Scottish Government's school information dashboard for Gracemount High shows attainment levels at SCQF Level 3 in S3 at over 90 per cent for reading and listening and talking in 2018-19; 73 per cent of pupils leave with at least one award at SCQF level 5 or better.
History
Old building
The original school building was opened in 1959 as a junior secondary school and became a six-year comprehensive school in the 1960s. In 2000, with the school in a very poor state and needing repairs, Edinburgh Council decided that the cost of repairing the building was too great, and that creating a new building would be a more viable solution.
New building
Pupils and staff moved into the new building in August 2003. It is located adjacent to Captain's Road, and to where the old school formerly stood. The functional design has a central hall with classroom wings leading off. The building was created under a public-private partnership scheme by Edinburgh Schools Partnership. Gracemount was one of a number of 21st century school buildings in Edinburgh found to be defective. The schools had all been built by Miller Construction, which was acquired by Galliford Try in 2014. Construction expert Prof John Cole published a damning report into the scandal in 2017. Following this the ESP agreed to pay for all structural repair work.
