Stonelaw High School

Stonelaw High School is a non-denominational state high school located in Rutherglen, Scotland near the city of Glasgow.

Admissions

Stonelaw High School is a leading Scottish school delivering the new National 4/5 qualifications introduced by the SQA. The current head teacher is Brenda McLachlan who took over from Brian Cooklin in 2012.
Stonelaw was awarded 'sports hub' status on 5 November 2013 by MSP Shona Robison Minister for Commonwealth Games and Sport. Outwith learning hours, the sports facilities are available for hire by the local community in partnership with South Lanarkshire Council, with several local clubs based there.

History

Stonelaw Public School on Melrose Avenue was built in 1886. It became Rutherglen Academy in 1926. A separate institution, Gallowflat Public School was based on Hamilton Road from 1909.

Grammar school

Prior to 1970, a selective secondary education system existed in Scotland that involved two grades of secondary schools: Senior Secondaries and Junior Secondaries. At the heart of this selective system was an exam called the 11-Plus taken by all children in the last year of primary school. Those who passed the 11-Plus went to one of the Senior Secondaries while all others attended one of the Junior Secondaries. Senior Secondary pupils were expected to stay on at school until aged eighteen and proceed to some sort of tertiary education at university or college, whereas Junior Secondary pupils had to leave school aged fifteen for jobs and/or apprenticeships. Before 1972, fifteen was the minimum school leaving age in Scotland.

Comprehensive

Stonelaw High School was established in August 1970 as a four-year school, merging some of the pupils already at Rutherglen Academy with pupils from Gallowflat Junior Secondary. Other Academy pupils who had been at primary schools in Cambuslang, Carmunnock and Burnside largely went up to the new Cathkin High School. Subsequently, Stonelaw pupils wishing to do Highers or Certificates of Sixth-Year Studies - these being pre-university qualifications - transferred to Cathkin High for their last two years.
The new Stonelaw school was based in the former Rutherglen Academy buildings at the corner of Stonelaw Road and Melrose Avenue along with an 'annex' – the Gallowflat Junior Secondary buildings on Hamilton Road The previous annex of Rutherglen Academy, the mid-19th century Macdonald School building in the heart of the town, closed at the same time – both arrangements involved hundreds of pupils walking through 400 yards of residential streets between the sites several times a day. Eventually Stonelaw High became a six-year school.

Relocation

The school relocated to new premises on Calderwood Road, Rutherglen in summer 1998, on land which had once been part of a farm. The playing fields, adjacent to the new site but finished in 1996 prior to the construction of the buildings, were previously the recreation grounds for the James Templeton & Co textile factory located at Glasgow Green which had also built some company houses in nearby streets.
The main Rutherglen Academy building, a Category B listed structure which survived a World War II bomb intended for nearby industrial sites, was redeveloped into 36 residential apartments in 2001, with the other buildings demolished and further modern flats constructed within the footprint, in a complex known as Academy Gate.
At the Gallowflat site, the main building was used by Rutherglen High School, a special needs school, from 1999 until 2008 when they relocated to a new facility shared with the rebuilt Cathkin High School. By that time, most of the peripheral buildings had been replaced by modern housing, and the main building was soon replaced by a nursing home, David Walker Gardens, opened in 2011. The remaining east block is also Category B listed but has lain empty and disused since the 1998 move, although plans to convert it into residences were approved in 2015.

Feeder Schools

The primary schools whose pupils progress to Stonelaw include Bankhead, Burgh, Burnside, Calderwood and Spittal located within Rutherglen, James Aiton in Cambuslang, Park View in Halfway and Toryglen in the Glasgow district of that name.
The inclusion of Park View Primary in Stonelaw's catchment list following its construction in 2014 caused some local controversy, as other schools nearby are affiliated to Cathkin High School; however due to capacity issues there, the new school was linked to Stonelaw despite the sites being apart, which - along with another new school in Newton being affiliated to Uddingston Grammar School - caused concern from parents that divisions would be created in the communities of eastern Cambuslang. By contrast, Calderwood Primary is immediately adjacent to the Stonelaw buildings.

Extracurricular activities

The school has many extra curricular activities and clubs including football, volleyball, a table tennis club, a cricket club and a soul band. They also have a band with full brass, woodwind and percussion sections. The music department also hosts a choir, brass ensamble and a recently started Samba band.

Notable alumni