Knightswood Secondary School

Coordinates: 55°53′22.4304″N 4°20′17.628″W / 55.889564°N 4.33823°W / 55.889564; -4.33823

Knightswood Secondary School

Motto	Fidelis
Type	State Funded, Secondary
Headteacher	Kay A. Duffus
Location	Knightswood Road Glasgow City of Glasgow G13 2XD Scotland
Local authority	Glasgow City
Staff	110
Students	c.1400 pupils
Gender	Co-educational
Ages	12–18
Website	Knightswood Secondary School Website

Knightswood Secondary School or KSS is a secondary school located in Knightswood in the west-end of Glasgow, Scotland.

The school is one of the city's largest secondaries with a roll of approximately 1500 pupils. KSS is co-educational, non-selective and non-denominational, and provides education for pupils of varying backgrounds. KSS also contains the dance school of Scotland. The pupils of the dance school take part in academic classes with pupils of the secondary school itself, though usually are required to take a lighter academic workload due to dance training. The head-teacher is Kay Duffus.

Management

As well as a headteacher and deputy headteacher, each school year has an assistant head teacher, who is able to have a more personal contact with students. The offices of the headteacher, deputy head and assistant heads are all held in one corridor.

Guidance (known as pastoral care) teachers are assigned by registration classes (see below). There are typically twelve guidance counselors in one school year.

Each department has a department head, who is responsible for organizing the teaching programmes and class allocations of the teacher in that department.

Classes and timings

Classes normally consist of seven periods on Monday and Tuesday lasting fifty minutes each and six periods lasting the same amount of time for the rest of the week. Between second and third period there is a 10-minute break, and between fourth and fifth is a 40-minute break for lunch. In addition, a 10-minute registration class allows attendance to be recorded, and any housekeeping tasks such as uniform checks or letters home to be attended to.

Most subjects have classes in the size of 20 to 30 pupils. For first to fourth years, classes will be named by year and a set letter (i.e. 1A, 3D, 2C) The order of classes does not bear any relation to the skill of the pupils in those groups. In fifth and six year, due to subject choices, classes change with every period, and naming them is not necessary.

Layout and structure

KSS contains four floors, as well as three annexes. Departments are contained as follows:

	Ground floor	First floor	Second floor	Third floor
Facilities	Staff conference room Crush hall1 Dining hall Drama studio2 Guidance offices Offices Toilets	Assembly hall Drama studio2 Staff rooms	Computer suite Staff rooms	None
Departments	Chemistry Design Drama English Technical Studies	Biology Dance3 Drama4 English History Home economics5 Modern studies6 Music Physics	Art Computing Mathematics	French Geography Religious education

¹The crush hall is a social area containing students' lockers. It is given its name for the "crush" of students it is able to contain during rain or other conditions that would cause students to be unable to remain outside during breaks.

² The drama studio, with separate performance and audience areas, extends to two floors.

³ The dance department provides dance instruction for mainstream students, and not students of the dance school of Scotland.

⁴ Due to lack of space certain English and home economics rooms also double as drama rooms, with classes rotating which room they are in.

⁵ Home economics covers the subjects of food and textile technology.

⁶ Modern studies is most closely compared to politics, or recent history.

International exchange program

Knightswood has a student exchange program with dancers from the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School in Melbourne, Australia.

Notable alumni

• William Sweeney, composer.
• Alan Rough, football goalkeeper.
• Jamie Murphy, football player.
• John Fleck, football player.

External links

• Knightswood Seconary School official page
• Dance School of Scotland official page
• Knightswood Secondary School's page on Scottish Schools Online
• Former Pupils
• Archive pictures