Back to school for a moving lesson in life and old times

HE has obviously been keeping a beady eye on me from his window, for the deputy head is on me like a leopard on a goat. ‘A word,’ he murmurs icily. ‘Keep that… thing in your pocket and don’t use it again. We have a non-smoking policy here, it covers the entire grounds.’

I nod solemnly, banish all thoughts of vaping till bright Edinburgh afternoon, and count myself lucky not to have been given 100 lines. There are advantages to being 50, and it is 32 years since I last plodded into James Gillespie’s High School as a pupil.

Today – and especially if you are male, for the school was from 1929 to 1973 a selective, girls-only ‘Corporation Grammar’ – letting it be known that you are a former pupil still invites giggles, raised eyebrows, and the inevitable query: were you one of the crème de la crème? And are you now in your prime?

That’s because one of those girls, Muriel Camberg, grew up to be acclaimed novelist Dame Muriel Spark, who drew heavily on her Gillespie’s days for her most famous tale, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I always explain calmly that the school became a co-educational comprehensive from August 1973; that it was 1980 before I arrived and, by then, one was no longer required to pose nude for the art master or run away to fight for Franco in Spain.

Today, this fine October morning 36 years later, Gillespie’s is determinedly en fête. After three years of very difficult conditions for staff and pupils, the school has been completely rebuilt; the tired, crumbling blocks of the old 1966 campus razed to the ground. Today it is to be officially reopened, with much music and theatre.

Back then, the new buildings – under an unfortunate cloud, for it was on October, 21, 1966, the same morning as Aberfan – were graciously declared open by the Queen Mother. Today, the business falls to John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education.

I guess that’s inflation for you. My chief duty is to wait upon my old headmistress, Dr Patricia Thomas, whom we greet reverently when she pooters up the drive in her little car, and then escort to the staffroom. In her 90th year, she is a pillar of the University of the Third Age, attends classes, gives lectures, sits on a host of committees, does charity work and on the occasional evening off plays fanatical bridge.

GOODNESS knows how she found the time this morning to come. But it’s typical of a school with a liberal and distinctly internationalist outlook, which has always been about lifelong learning. The abiding ethos is ‘work hard, and you’ll do well’.

Spark herself fondly recalled, of her 1930s schooling here: classmates Hindi and Jewish, Catholic and Episcopalian. Today, 48 official languages are spoken within the school community. Gillespie’s is, besides, the reception secondary for Edinburgh’s Gaelic-medium primary and its catchment area includes Edinburgh University, the Castle, the Royal Mile and even the Scottish parliament.

It now has a more relaxed environment than I remember. Pupils no longer sport maroon blazers and seniors are difficult to distinguish from informally dressed young staff. No one screams or shouts. The children are almost embarrassingly polite and, in four years of regular visits – I have been writing the school’s history – I have not once overheard foul language.

Yet Gillespie’s was last year declared the best state school in Scotland by the Sunday Times and was the only Scottish secondary to make a Tatler list of Britain’s best high schools in the public sector.

Earlier this month it even received a back-handed compli- ment from Olympic gold and silver medallist Callum Skinner who, as a boy of 12, was granted £250 by the James Gillespie’s Trust to support training expenses for his track-cycling enthusiasm.

Skinner, who will be opening the school’s new fitness suite next week, was raised by two gay dads and has a gay younger brother. In an interview with GT magazine he spoke warmly of his time here.

‘I was always quite careful about who I told about my dad being gay,’ the cyclist said. ‘But I was quite lucky with my friendship group and my school. There was another kid with lesbian parents and it was a bit of a bohemian, hippy, no-one-haduniform, head-teacher’s-yourbest-friend kind of school.’

Things have tightened ever so slightly under the new head teacher, Donald J Macdonald, a genial Hebridean of Minch-grey eyes who is always immaculately suited and on no account to be trifled with.

But he is an affable presence in the school corridors, gently investigating the odd toy fight or pausing for quick Gaelic conversation with one pupil or another; and delighted today that all three of his predecessors have joined him for this high day.

And Skinner is not alone in his affection for the old pile. A corridor in the new sports block already boasts framed, autographed tops from such recent leavers as table tennis ace Craig Howieson, footballer Conrad Balatoni and Scots rugby star Damien Hoyland.

I find myself scarcely able to keep up with Dr Thomas as at last we make for the hall and a half-hour of music, readings and drama before Mr Swinney unveils a plaque and cuts a ribbon. I shyly introduce my old headmistress and the genial minister can scarcely believe his luck. ‘Did he often trouble you?’ he demands. ‘Had you frequently to carpet him in your study?’

DR Thomas cannot resist the cue. She rolls eyes and sighs like a dowager. ‘Oooh... I couldn’t possibly say.’ I mumble something about undone maths homework – an unfortunate misunderstanding in March 1982 – and the Cabinet Secretary’s joy is complete.

James Gillespie (1726-1797) was an amiable Edinburgh tobacco merchant with an enormous nose and who, though of poor birth, made an immense fortune in snuff. At his death he left a fortune to found a hospital and a school for poor boys.

The school has been run by the local authority since 1908 and, though Founder’s Day has not been celebrated since 1984 – the school grew increasingly jumpy about tobacco and the associated slave trade – it is to be revived next May.

The children regale us with hilarious sketches, warm solos, a hard-edged mini-drama and Gaelic song. Mr Macdonald makes a gracious speech, paying tribute to his three living predecessors, all with us today.

He is not least ‘so humbled by the indefatigable energy of Dr Thomas, in charge from 1975 to 1991, who in so many respects was years ahead of her time. Indeed, in its essentials, she all but invented Curriculum for Excellence three decades early.

‘Introducing programmes of work experience and employability skills so brilliant they were studied nationally. Launching Mandarin and Urdu as school subjects. And her insistence, from the very start, that junior boys and girls all did the same practical subjects together – woodwork, cooking, technical and sewing – which, in the Scotland of 1975, was sensational.’

Dr Thomas, much moved, inclines her head. There is a particularly lovely moment when choir and orchestra line up to sing the school song and such aged alumni as want to join in are invited on stage to do so.

Afterwards, outside, we mingle in October sunlight as the ribbon is cut, as cameras whirr, as the Head and his predecessors stand in a dignified little group and Mr Swinney bobs briefly in their midst.

And then we hasten back inside, for there are scones.

John MacLeod’s Faithful and Brave – A Celebration of James Gillespie’s High School, will be published next month.

You can email John MacLeod at john.macleod@dailymail.co.uk