Springburn Academy is a school in the North of Glasgow. It has 45% free meal entitlement and has a number of challenges which impact on leavers’ destinations and examination results. It is 5th poorest in the Scottish Multiple Deprivation Indices. The School is the result of an amalgamation of Albert Secondary, Colston Secondary and Possilpark Secondary – this happened around 20 years ago. After that the school lost many of its pupils to East Dunbartonshire. At one point 15 years ago the school roll had shrunk to fewer than 400 pupils. Some years before the school got its new building in 2002, a real effort was made to turn around the loss of pupils, which helped increase the intake in S1.

At present, the school’s S1 intake is over 200 pupils – this has been true for the last 6 years. Six years ago there were very few pupils going to University – perhaps 2%. This figure has now risen to 13% for 2007/2008 and should be considerably bigger this year – looking like over 20% for 2008/2009.

In the introduction to our Transformational Plan we stated that we would hope to create:

• The embracing of the following concepts from A Curriculum for Excellence:
  • Confident Individuals
  • Successful Learners
  • Responsible Citizens
  • Effective Contributors
  and the matching values of Springburn Academy:
  • Respect
  • Learning
  • Community
  • Responsibility
• The development of Students within the ACE and SAV framework
• The development of Staff to allow the growth of skills and dispositions which will influence the approach and demeanour of the whole learning community
• The gradual reframing and development of Parents as a highly influential and positive force for increasing confidence, success, responsibility and mutual cooperation, and an awareness of the crucial effect of parents’ views of themselves.