Boclair Academy - History and Recent Upgrades

History and Recent Upgrades

Boclair Academy was built in 1976 to deal with increased demand in the area, initially the school dealt with overflow with Douglas Academy and Bearsden Academy however later the school had an increased number of placing requests from outside East Dunbartonshire. In 1998, because the school was over capacity, a temporary annex was erected for the Maths department. It has yet to be replaced with a permanent building. In 2001 the school celebrated its 25th anniversary by commissioning a large mosaic from local artist Alan Potter, which can be seen on the front wall to the left of the main entrance.

In 2004 the school changed its uniform from black jumpers (with old school badge) to white shirt and school tie. Also that year the roll was decreased from 210 to 180 because of the large proportion of placing requests. In 2007 Boclair was one of a handful schools to adopt a system of sitting Maths and English standard grades in S3, which increases the available time studying these respective highers. From the 2007 and 2008 exam results it seems that sitting the standard grades in 3rd year has no effect on the pass rate. The first students to sit their Highers under the new system received their results in May 2009 and were seen as some of the best results in over a decade as Boclair as a school had relatively poor performance compared to its neighbours and the council average. The school achieved 11 pupils with 5 A's in 2009(32 were achieved in the whole of Glasgow city council) and the number of boys gaining an A or a B in Higher English increased from 28% to 53% (this was attributed to the new system adopted by the school).

Over the past few years Boclair has been upgraded with new large common rooms in 2007 and new windows in 2008. Nearly every class within the school has been fitted with an interactive whiteboard and the whole of the science department was refurbished in August 2009. In 2011 the lighting in most classes on the upper floors was upgraded while in early 2012 the skylights on the PE block were removed and replaced with solar panels and the canteen, Foyer and common rooms were fitted with flatscreen LCD monitor/TVs, which show BBC News or are connected to a computer so they can display the daily bulletin.