Calderwood Primary School

Calderwood Primary School

• SEED Number: 8457026

After 22 years as headof Calderwood Lodge, Scotland’s only Jewish school, Dianna Wolfson retires this week. She takes Eleanor Caldwell on a tour of her school.

Friday afternoon at Calderwood Lodge Jewish Primary School in Glasgow is always a special time. For 12 pupils in Primary 7 it was even more special because at 5.15am the following Monday, they would be setting off on a week-long trip to Israel. For them, Glasgow was going to Israel, while for the eight left at home, Israel was coming to Glasgow.

The children going to Israel with two of their Hebrew teachers were ready to see the sights in Jerusalem, learn more about their faith, visit both the north and south of the country, meet their pen friends and have fun. Those in Glasgow were set to embrace Israel at home, with activities including a visit to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at Kelvingrove and a chance to try some Israeli (chalah) baking.

Calderwood Lodge is the only Jewish school in Scotland. Housed in a magnificent villa overlooking Newlands Park on the south side of Glasgow, the primary school was founded in 1962 by the Glasgow Jewish community and the British Zionist Federation.

It was taken over in 1982 by Strathclyde Region, moved to Glasgow City Council in 1996 and since last year has been administered by East Renfrewshire. After “an uninterrupted relationship” with Calderwood Lodge since 1963, first as a parent and for the last 22 years as headteacher, Dianna Wolfson retires at the end of this term...

“I’m proud to say that many of our pupils are achieving a National Certificate Module 1 in Hebrew by the end of Primary 7,” Mrs Wolfson says. “Many of the children also belong to Jewish youth groups or have strong family links, and go to Israel for the summer, which improves their command of the language greatly.”

Hebrew study continues alongside French, which children begin to learn in P6 as part of the national scheme for modern languages in the primary school. She says that the visiting teacher of French was “absolutely thrilled” with the standard of French in the school.

Not all members of staff at Calderwood Lodge are Jewish. Depute head Maureen Blacklaw, for example, says that she did not seek out Calderwood for any particular reason: “I really liked the school when I visited it and was delighted to have been offered the post. I just feel I’ve been embraced by the faith.”

P23 teacher Dinah Tennent followed in her mother’s footsteps in becoming a teacher at the school. “As a non-Jewish person,” she says, “I’ve learned so much about my own religion through learning about Judaism. I can now really see where Christ comes from. I greatly admire the absolute commitment the children in the school have to their faith.”

Nor are all the pupils Jewish. Approximately 10 per cent come from other faiths including Catholic, Protestant and Muslim. “I don’t like quoting numbers like this, because the non-Jewish children are just part of the whole school community,” Mrs Wolfson says.

“They all come on board with the school’s own Jewish-based programme of religious and moral teaching. Parents of other faiths are often looking for a school that appreciates the value of religion and they find this quite a caring school,“she says. “After all, a lot of Jewish values are shared with Islam and Christianity. We’re all decent people who can look beyond the simple differences in ways of worship.”

The children who come to Calderwood are drawn from the 6,500-strong Jewish community in greater Glasgow. How much the children’s experience of being at a Jewish school influences their observance of the faith in later life varies, Mrs Wolfson says.

“We can do so much in school, but it really depends on lifestyle in the home. In families where there is perhaps not such a strong religious ethos (possibly where one parent is not Jewish), I think the school offers the children an equilibrium. On leaving Calderwood, there are inevitably some children who are leaving behind a lot of Jewish observance.”...

This year, Israel’s 50th anniversary has provided an extra celebration. In addition to activities on the day itself, P7 pupils have done a project and prepared a database about Glasgow people, particularly those with associations with Calderwood Lodge, who have gone to live in Israel. The school has put on a special celebratory end-of-term production, which included a traditional Israeli line dance. A “Happy Birthday Israel” banner in Hebrew takes pride of place in the school hall...

On the walls of the entrance hall, the familiar school mission statement, “To encourage the children to work to their full potential in a happy, stimulating, caring, (Jewish) environment with an effective home and school partnership”, is lined up beside Calderwood Lodge’s own distinctive mission statement in Hebrew from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”.

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