Top sports award for Falkirk school

The school was presented with sportscotland’s Gold School Sport Award by the national agency’s chief executive, Stewart Harris, on Friday, February 22.

Funded by the National Lottery programme, the initiative is designed to encourage schools to continuously improve sport and how it’s taught to youngsters.

The accreditation also promotes sporting links between schools and their surrounding communities.

Braes High School is one of only two secondary schools in the Falkirk district to achieve the prestigious accolade –the other being Larbert High School.

PE teacher Lauren Tapley said: “Over the past three years Braes High has worked towards achieving this award and are extremely proud.

“In order to support our application we started a sports council allowing us to receive feedback from pupils on the activities they would like to see on offer.

“The sport’s council are also responsible for planning and hosting our annual sport’s awards ceremony which recognises our pupil’s achievements in and out of school for performance and coaching.

“This year we were fortunate enough to have guest speaker Olympic Bronze medallist Eilidh Doyle attend.

“As a school we are keen to provide opportunities for all pupils to participate in and benefit from involvement in sport and activity and, as a result, each year we have seen an increase in the number of clubs we are able to offer to pupils and positive trends in pupil participation.

“We were only able to achieve this award through the commitment of our pupils who attend clubs, performances and competitions and also our staff and senior pupils who volunteer their time to deliver clubs before, during and after school.

“We hope that we will continue to develop and expand the number of sporting opportunities we provide for pupils within our school cluster.”