St Kentigern's Academy

St. Kentigern's Academy is a Roman Catholic, comprehensive school in Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland. The school focuses on catholic viewpoints, but still has appropriate emphasis on academical and intellectual achievement.

The school was built in 1973 and refurbished in 1995/6. An extensive refurbishment of the school was completed in September 2009.

Press coverage

In 2009, there was a formal opening of a £19 million refurbishment and extension to the school - invited guests included Cardinal Keith O'Brien and Susan Boyle, who was a former pupil.^[1]

In 2012, a group of pupils made a video to highlight the high rate of poverty amongst children in the UK, and submitted it to competition for Unicef. As well as winning the competition, they were also awarded a Rotary Young Citizens Award.^[2][3]

In 2017 a 16 year-old student was instructed by the Head Teacher, Mr Sharkey, to remove an LGBT Pride badge from his uniform on the basis that it "Promoted homosexuality". However, West Lothian Council later denied these claims stating "Pupils at St Kentigern’s are asked to remove all non-school related badges from their uniforms".^[4]

The school also suffered a stabbing in 2017, where a 13 year-old slashed a 14 year-old in the canteen, which had around 200 people in it at the time. The weapon was believed to be a kitchen knife. Charges were pressed on the 13 year-old perpetrator and a report would be sent to the procurator fiscal^[5]

References