Lawside Academy was a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

Dundee Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...

, Scotland. It was the northernmost state Catholic school in

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. Lawside closed in June 2008, 101 years after it opened. The school's successor is St Paul's Academy.

History

Lawside was founded as an

independent school A private school or independent school is a school not administered or funded by the government, unlike a State school, public school. Private schools are schools that are not dependent upon national or local government to finance their fina ...

for girls by the

Sisters of Mercy The Sisters of Mercy is a religious institute for women in the Catholic Church. It was founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley. In 2019, the institute had about 6,200 Religious sister, sisters worldwide, organized into a number ...

in 1907, but soon began to admit boys.Scottish Places website, ''Lawside''
/ref> The school was operated on the same site as the

convent A convent is an enclosed community of monks, nuns, friars or religious sisters. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican ...

, which was located on the lower slopes of the

Dundee Law Dundee Law is a hill in the centre of Dundee, Scotland, and is the highest point in the city. The Law is what remains of a volcanic sill, which is the result of volcanic activity around 400 million years ago. With a large war memorial at its s ...

(the word means hill); hence the name of both convent and school. With the Education (Scotland) Act of 1918, the school chose to enter the state system as the Act laid out certain guarantees for denominational schools which came under state control. Amongst the prerogatives that Lawside had were that the rector or vice-rector would come from the

if one was suitably qualified. A member of the Sisters held the position of vice-rector into the 1970s. Whilst

non-denominational A non-denominational person or organization is one that does not follow (or is not restricted to) any particular or specific religious denomination. The term has been used in the context of various faiths, including Jainism, Baháʼí Faith, Zoro ...

schools tended to provide only a weekly period of religious education, Catholic schools were permitted a period each day, something which Lawside maintained until the 1990s, when this was reduced to three 40 min periods per week, then to two 50 min periods in 2005. A bonus particularly enjoyed by students until the late 1970s was that school began an hour later on days which were major religious feasts; this was to allow students to attend morning

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

in their respective

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

churches. Until 1962, Lawside was both a

primary Primary or primaries may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Primary (band), from Australia * Primary (musician), hip hop musician and record producer from South Korea * Primary Music, Israeli record label Work ...

and

with many of its pupils attending only Lawside for the whole of their education. However, the primary intake of 1955 was to be the last, and from 1962, the school catered only for secondary level students. As the school enrollment grew, the need arose for physical expansion of the facilities. However, the convent grounds were unsuitable, and so the "Annex", a former primary school, was opened on Blackness Road. One bonus of being in the "Annex" was that it was much closer to the centre of town than the main school, and so afforded greater opportunity for lunch time wanderings. Both wings of the school moved to a new campus just off Macalpine Road in the northern part of Dundee in 1966. As was then traditional, the school was split into houses: St. Peters, St. Pauls and St. Andrews, the

patron saint A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, fa ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

; each had a housemaster and housemistress. Until the introduction of

comprehensive education Comprehensive may refer to: * Comprehensive layout, the page layout of a proposed design as initially presented by the designer to a client. *Comprehensive school A comprehensive school is a secondary school for pupils aged 11–16 or 11–18, th ...

in the 1970s, Lawside served as the only Catholic academy for a long way, with students travelling from places such as

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Forfar Forfar (; , ) is the county town of Angus, Scotland, and the administrative centre for Angus Council, with a new multi-million-pound office complex located on the outskirts of the town. As of 2021, the town had a population of 16,280. The town ...

Arbroath Arbroath () or Aberbrothock ( ) is a former royal burgh and the largest town in the Subdivisions of Scotland, council area of Angus, Scotland, Angus, Scotland, with a population of 23,902. It lies on the North Sea coast, some east-northeast of ...

and northern

Fife Fife ( , ; ; ) is a council areas of Scotland, council area and lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area in Scotland. A peninsula, it is bordered by the Firth of Tay to the north, the North Sea to the east, the Firth of Forth to the s ...

School badge

The school badge was of an unusual design, resembling a three leafed clover, which represented the

Holy Trinity The Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the Christian doctrine concerning the nature of God, which defines one God existing in three, , consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three ...

. It consisted of the crossed keys of Saint Peter surmounted by a

papal tiara The papal tiara is a crown that was worn by popes of the Catholic Church from as early as the 8th century to the mid–20th century. It was last used by Pope Paul VI in 1963, and only at the beginning of his reign. The name ''tiara'' refers t ...

. The letters "L.A." for Lawside Academy were found in the two lower circles, whilst the school motto "Laborare et Orare" ("to work and to pray") from the

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curved around the edge.

Closure

In 2002,

Dundee City Council Dundee City Council is the Local government in Scotland, local authority for Dundee City council area, Dundee City, one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. In its modern form it was created in 1996. Dundee was formerly governed by a municipal c ...

decided to merge Lawside with St Saviour's RC High School which served Catholic children from the eastern side of the city, and the appointed rector of the new school, Moria Leck, decided to call the new school St Paul's Academy. Paul is the middle name of the Right Reverend Vincent Paul Logan, the Catholic

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

of the Diocese of Dunkeld in which Dundee is located. The schools merged for the new academic year 2008-2009, one year after Lawside's centenary celebrations in 2007. The site was demolished in 2009.The Courier website, ''Former Lawside Academy Site Put On Sale'', article by Laura Devlin, published in 2023
/ref>

References

External links

Education Base UK website

Lawside Academy website

Lawside Academy's page on Scottish Schools Online
{{authority control Defunct secondary schools in Dundee Educational institutions established in 1907 Educational institutions disestablished in 2008 Defunct Catholic secondary schools in Scotland 1907 establishments in Scotland 2008 disestablishments in Scotland