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When the new rector, Mr J. D. McPetrie, came in 1923 he found that he had come into a school which, though independent, was so heavily subsidised that its very existence depended on outside bodies - on the Scottish Education Department and on Fife Education Authority. The income on which the Governors depended to meet all the expense of school came from the following sources in the year 1921-22:
School held 123 primary pupils and 226 secondary pupils when Mr McPetrie arrived, and of these secondary pupils 174 were called "Fife Education Pupils", pupils whose education in the Madras College was paid for by the Education Authority. The 1918 Education Act had permitted Education Authorities to pay the fees of deserving pupils at independent schools in their area as a means of extending secondary education without capital expenditure. It could not be other than a temporary expedient. No elected body could continue indefinitely paying out rate-payers' money to schools over which it had no control. Lengthy negotiations between the Governors and Fife Education Authority over the future of school began soon after Mr McPetrie's appointment, negotiations which were not always without acrimony. The Authority held the stronger hand. It could, by expanding the Burgh School, provide higher education under its control and remove to the Burgh School the pupils whose fees it paid in the Madras College. The Governors realised that without a great increase in the numbers of pupils and the amount of fees they could not carry on a completely independent school. They realised, too, that more capital than they could afford would soon be necessary to extend the accommodation and improve the facilities of school. On one thing they were resolved - that Dr Bell's endowment should not be lost to the Education Authority. This battle, after litigation, they won. By 1982 agreement was reached and the terms embodied in the Scheme which was ratified by the Court of Session in that year. The terms of the Scheme were simply expressed but far-reaching in their effects. The Authority became owner of the buildings and grounds, and became responsible for the control and continuation of the college. All government grants were to be paid to it and it had to meet all the expenses from these grants and from rates. The duty of bringing accommodation up to a higher standard by providing additional classrooms devolved on it. The endowment was placed under the control of an independent body of Trustees, to be spent for the good of school in ways not open to the Authority. In fact nearly all the endowment was to be spent on bursaries. Each year there were to be three bursaries of £50 each tenable for two years in the Madras College by pupils from the fourth year of any Fife high school. There were also to be two university bursaries tenable by former pupils in the university of St Andrews, one of £100 a year (subject to a reservation in favour of the kin of the founder) and one of £76 a year. (It may be worth noting that on £100 a year a student could then live reasonably well and meet all his expenses.) Of the little that remained £100 was to be spent on general school purposes, on prizes, games, the library and so on. Fees in the secondary school were abolished but the primary department remained fee-paying till its demise. The abolition of fees, the provision of free books and the hope of early improvements and additions to the buildings sweetened the take-over. Neither party realised how long the school would have to wait for the "early" improvements and additions. The slump and long-continuing recession of the 1930s, the war and post-war shortages prevented any new building apart from temporary huts for a quarter of a century and more. In school the change in management made little difference at first. There was not then the vast, cumbrous administrative machine through which the Education Committee now works. The rector could deal directly with the Director of Education as he had dealt with the clerk to the Governors, and the Education Authority and the Education Committee which replaced it were tactful. The rector had the strength - and guile - to be able to ensure that, though he had lost the right to appoint staff, the men and women appointed by the Education Committee were those he would have appointed if he had retained the right. Indeed the years from 1923 to 1939 seem in retrospect to be a golden age when school flourished in every way, a period more than any other in the history of the school which former pupils look back on with affection and awareness that they were privileged. Numbers were still small, small enough still for all the staff to know every pupil as a person, but large enough to allow for success in many fields. There was continuity in staffing. Able teachers such as Dr I. McDonald, Miss M. Brown, Miss M. Sanderson, Mr A. Law, to name a few only, were in school for all or almost all this period, men and women who served school not under any written contract but as professional people whose profession was to serve school in every possible way. The success of school can be measured in many ways. At a time when there were no state grants for students the university bursary competition mattered greatly to senior pupils financially. To schools the successes of pupils served as indications of academic achievement. Some schools crammed pupils for the examination but cramming was unknown in Madras. It is significant of the work done in school that in Mr McPetrie's time pupils were first on the St Andrews university bursary list four times, and that there were also four Harkness scholars. Few years passed without a good number of Madras names on the bursary list. In other fields, too, there was excellence. Believing strongly that a school should be a place for the education of the whole man or woman, himself an athlete, the rector encouraged games and athletics. The rugby and hockey clubs, drawing their teams from the small number of pupils in school could compete on level terms with teams from bigger schools. Indeed in session 1937-38 the first XV could boast that for the first time since 1910 the club had won all its matches. The school magazines of the time yearly record the vigorous life of the other school clubs, of golf, swimming and of tennis as well as revival of the F. P. rugby and hockey clubs. School had no playing field of its own and no pavilion. The excellent field at Station Park was rented and could not, therefore, be a site for a permanent building. It seemed that a fitting way to celebrate the centenary of the school would be to acquire land and build on it a suitable pavilion. As a preliminary to the 1933 centenary celebrations, then, a great fund-raising effort was made in 1930 with a huge bazaar in school as its centre. Some £800 - the equivalent of perhaps £16,000 in the money of the 1980s - was raised by the exertions of a Centenary Committee. More was still needed. The money had to remain in the hands of the committee until another fund-raising effort in the 1950s made it possible to begin building. The centenary celebrations when they came in 1933, after a year's delay caused by the economic crises, were happy occasions with dances for present and former pupils, a grand reunion and a service in Holy Trinity church followed by a procession back to school where a short service of rededication was held. The school magazines are records of activity in many fields. They record the doings of the Literary and Debating Society in which almost every senior seems to have taken part. They record the growth of music under Mr Easson and the beginnings of an orchestra. They record the dramatic productions which, in spite of makeshift stage and haphazard lighting, became more sophisticated as time passed. To encourage pupils to participate enthusiastically in as many activities as possible and to work hard at school subjects, to develop every side of their personalities, the rector introduced a house system, dividing school into Argyle, Castle, Kilrymont, Blackfriars, Greyfriars and Priory houses for competitive purposes. Each year the house championship was decided on the achievements of members in school work and sport. This golden age ended in 1939. For the last two years of his rectorship Mr McPetrie had to adjust school to war. To escape the feared bombing of Edinburgh, evacuees from there were sent to St Andrews and other small towns and so swelled the numbers in school that the Baptist church hall had to be used as a classroom. Air-raid shelters were built on either side of the front of school. Classrooms were blacked out and the windows protected by wire-netting. Some of the arches in the cloisters were first sand-bagged then bricked up as a protection against bombing. The bell was silenced. Air-raid drills were practised and pupils became "respiratiferous", carrying everywhere the little cardboard boxes which held their gas-masks. Difficult though these last years had been for Mr McPetrie his successor who came in 1941 was to have more difficult years. That successor was Mr Norman MacLeod, a Lewis man, a graduate in classics of Aberdeen university and a Gaelic scholar. He came from Bell-Baxter High School where he had been classics master, the last rector to be appointed to the combined post of principal teacher of classics and rector. School owes him much. He carried it successfully through the most difficult years in its history and brought it out in good shape. How great these difficulties were it is hard for the present pupils to realise. The threat of bombing raids was always present. The warning sirens could never be ignored in case, as in 1940 and 1942 when bombs were dropped on the town, the threat became a reality. Blackout was complete. In winter pupils came to school in darkness and left in darkness. Rationing became tighter and tighter as time passed, and lasted for some commodities well into the 1950s. (School meals began as a means of making sure that pupils had at least one hot meal a day.) Much time and much energy were spent in war-work of one sort or another. Part of the ground where now the science block stands was cultivated to grow food; pupils were released in October for potato lifting; even rose-hips were collected in sacks in school to be processed elsewhere into rose-hip syrup. Above all there was anxiety and uncertainty everywhere. The end of the wars against Germany and Japan did not bring immediate relief. Blackout was no longer necessary but rationing became even stricter for a time. In the bitter winter of 1947 coal rationing kept classroom temperatures very low. When, in the early 1950s, Mr MacLeod tried to reintroduce school uniform he found that shortage of clothing coupons rather than shortage of money made his wish hard to fulfil. Overcrowding was a perpetual problem, made greater when the school-leaving age was raised to 15 in 1947. Some relief was given in 1951 when a HORSA hut was built on the east side of what is now the Assembly Hall to provide a classroom, a workshop and a domestic science room. But this relief was to prove temporary, for an outbreak of dry rot in the north wing made the hall and the classroom below unusable. Classes had to be held in the Baptist church hall and in the Volunteer hall until the long-waited extension to school could be built. The promise that plans for this extension were being prepared made the inconveniences of the early 1950s bearable. |