£20m Coatbridge High School opens its doors

Oct 29 2008 by Judith Tonner, Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser

PUPILS and staff at Coatbridge High School were awestruck as their state-of-the-art new building opened its doors for the first time last Thursday.

The £20 million school in Park Street had been handed over to North Lanarkshire Council just three days earlier, and staff and sixth years worked tirelessly to get it ready to welcome pupils for their first day of lessons.

Its outstanding facilities include an impressive library including a careers centre and dozens of computers, a well-equipped dance and fitness studio, a floodlit all-weather pitch, a recording studio, an amphitheatre in the central outdoor area and even a roof-mounted weather monitoring station which links wirelessly to the geography department.

The ribbon across the new front entrance was cut by Airdrie Central councillor Jim Logue, the council’s learning and leisure services convener, before an audience of dignitaries, community representatives and pupils.

Pipers Nicholas Brophy of S5 and Greig McAllister of S4 then played as the guests filed past them to tour the building, and not even the pouring rain during the opening ceremony could dampen the enthusiasm of its pupils as they saw their new facilities for the first time.

The new school, formed following this summer’s merger of Rosehall and Coatbridge High Schools, has 32 classrooms, including four rooms in the English and maths corridors with full-length folding partitions to allow the creation of one large teaching area, two standard classrooms or four small tutorial areas.

It also boasts three pupil-support tutorial rooms, hi-tech smartboards in all the science labs, graphics studios and business education rooms, interactive whiteboards and plasma screens relocated from the old building, and an array of sports facilities which will be open for community use.

Head teacher Mike Rawlinson said: “There are ‘wows’ round every corner – everything that we hoped for in the new school has materialised.

“The library is amazing, and as my background is in PE, it’s fantastic to see the facilities we have in that department.

“Subjects that are classroom-based like maths and English have wonderful technology available, and such special attention to detail has been paid.

“The staff have been really positive and it’s been a big shot in the arm for everybody to see the quality of the accommodation, and the sixth years who came in to help us were gobsmacked by the sheer size of the place and a little disappointed that they won’t have longer in it!

“We had the job of merging the two schools in August with 550 new pupils and 50 new staff, and it’s worked famously; the children have managed terrifically well and we’ve had huge support from the local authority.”

School captains Greig Walker and Zara Weir, vice-captain Kirsty Adams, house captain Andrew O’Brian and prefects Louise Bell and Iain O’Brien all instantly gave the new school their seal of approval.

They said: “It’s great – the PE department is top-class; all the equipment in the fitness gym is state-of-the-art and the games hall even has an electronic scoreboard.

“Everybody loves the amphitheatre, and all the classrooms are much bigger and brighter than before; the school is so big and modern and is really impressive.”

The new Coatbridge High was the last of the 24 to be opened under the council’s £200 million Education 2010 programme, and Councillor Logue said: “This is a very

proud day.

“These schools are not only improving the quality of the learning and teaching environment for pupils but are also providing benefits to the communities where they are based.

“North Lanarkshire Council will continue to modernise schools by investing up to £250 million of its own money to improve its schools under the Schools and Centres 21 project.”