The History of Plockton High School
Plockton High School – a short history
Àrd Sgoil a’ Phluic – eachdraidh goirid
The origins of the High School go back to the Education Act of 1872. This required every Scottish parish to provide a school to be funded, regulated and inspected by the State, staffed with qualified teachers for all children, initially up to the age of 13. Once these Government Public Schools had been opened the charity and subscription schools run by the Kirk Session, the Free Church or Gaelic societies were promptly closed, including, locally, a dozen funded by the Edinburgh-based Association for the Religious Improvement of the Highlands. Plockton Public School, as it was then known, was to be administered by a School Board, elected from local ratepayers, answerable to the Scotch (sic) Education Department way down in London. This local Board of worthies appointed the teachers (unmarried women at an inferior salary), enforced pupil attendance through Compulsory Officers, instituted health inspections including head checks for nits, while carrying out its legal duty to provide for all handicapped children. Once a year the Board would accompany the State-appointed School Inspector on his visit and, depending on the Inspector’s report, had the powers to dock the dominie’s stipend. Parents continued to pay a small fee (until 1890), though provision was made for support for the poorest.
Plockton village gained its own state school in the late 1870s, built to the design of the architect Alexander Ross of Dingwall and which today forms part of the Primary School. The first designated Rector was a young Glasgow University graduate John Sorley who was to remain in post until 1920. But by the late 1950s the old school building in the village no longer met the requirements for secondary education. In 1956 the school was fortunate to secure the appointment of Sorley MacLean, the renown Gaelic poet who, apart from drafting his poem Hallaig in a High School jotter, supervised the move up the hill to the present site in 1964, a building architecturally very much to the style of many post-war Highland schools and now fast disappearing.
The new school incorporated a hostel for an expanded catchment area drawing pupils from the parishes of Lochcarron, Applecross, Lochalsh and Glen Elg, and later from south Skye. Significant developments were to follow under the rectorship of Duncan Ferguson (1992-2013) including in 2000 the foundation of the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music complete with its own staff, dedicated practice rooms and sound studios. Further major rebuilding took place in 2006 with the opening of an all-weather pitch for the school and wider community and, in 2010, with Heritage Lottery funding, a workshop for traditional boat building for the school’s Am Bata initiative. A year later a sustainable wood-chip fired central heating system came into use to be followed by a major modernising of the now aging school fabric, to incorporate the Sorley MacLean Centre (Togalach Shomhairle). Today, after some 140 years, Plockton High with its 300 pupils has established itself firmly as one of the leading schools in the Highlands, a reputation hard earned through its consistently high academic achievements and ever-widening range of opportunities offered, in and outwith the classroom, to the pupils of this area.
Dr George Hendry