Looking back with Ian Scott on the history of Falkirk High School

I think one of memorial gates is still there which marks the loss of 94 former pupils of Falkirk High School in the Great War.

At that time the school was located in Rennie Street in the building completed in 1889 to replace the original ‘Grammar School’ of Falkirk in Park Street which has survived and is presently being refurbished.

Back in the 1840s Falkirk was growing in size and prosperity but things were pretty grim in the school. The schoolmaster James Burns complained bitterly that the Parish school in the Back Row (Manor Street) was in “a miserable state - damp, low-roofed, small in size and a very bad situation”.

He and his assistant were also responsible for a second building in the Pleasance and Burns described how he organised his 200 pupils there: “133 write in the following order: – 54 write on tables, 24 write on forms, kneeling on the floor: 45 stand, who have neither tables nor forms, but I endeavour to give them 15 or 20 minutes by making them change places with some of those sitting at table or lying at forms. I have sufficient forms for 130 only and there are 72 who have no seats”.

However the disgraceful situation caused an outcry and a public appeal raised £1500 and the site in Park Street was chosen for a new school. Some people objected that the location was ‘an out of the way, low and unwholesome place’ - but the project went ahead.

On May 18, 1846 the children marched from the Pleasance to their new school which soon began to offer higher education classes adopting the title of the Grammar School.

It quickly gained a reputation for excellence but that didn’t save it in 1873 when under the Education Act it was reduced to the status of an elementary school.

Once again pupils capable of higher study were forced to travel to the cities but in Falkirk the redoubtable minister of Erskine Church, James Aitchison, campaigned tirelessly for a change of heart.

In 1886 he was successful and the old Grammar School was redesignated ‘Falkirk High School’.

The success of the school brought a big increase in numbers and the building across the road which had opened in 1878 as a centre for adult study under the name the School of Arts and Science was put to use, but even that did not solve the problem.

The answer was a completely new school in Rennie Street which opened in 1889 and is the place most Falkirk bairns of my generation call Falkirk High. It was widely recognised as one of Scotland’s finest and most successful secondary schools.

When the powers that be decided to modernise many schools in the 1960s the result was a new Falkirk High in Blinkbonny Road but the Rennie Street building was not lost.

For nearly 40 years it served as a new secondary school, Woodlands High, before its final ignominious and mysterious end in a fire after the pupils had been relocated to the new Braes High School in 2000.

New houses now fill the old place and one section is named Aitchison Place, a worthy tribute to the man who fought for higher education in the town and much else besides.