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The quarter century from 1950 to 1975 was a period of great expansion in accommodation and of equally great change in curricula and methods of teaching. The expansion and change were not peculiar to St Andrews. They took place throughout Fife where, for most of the period, schools were under the benign control of an Education Committee which subordinated political differences to the well-being of pupils and which had as its Director of Education a man of drive and vision. The first step for the Madras College was the fulfilment of the promise made by the Education Authority when it took over from the Governors, the promise to extend and improve the buildings. The recession of the 1930s and war-time shortage of men and material had made it impossible for the Committee to begin work earlier. In the early 1950s, however, a start was made. Mr F. Pride, a local architect, was commissioned to prepare plans for a large extension on the south side, an extension which would double the number of classrooms in school. It was opened for pupils at the start of session 1955-56 in time to allow the rector, Mr MacLeod, after all the problems of a war-time school and the upheaval caused by building work, a few weeks to enjoy the new school before he retired. His successor was Dr John Thompson who came from Daniel Stewart's College. The dry rot which had been discovered in the north wing gave the architect the chance to make very useful improvements there. By replacing the east stair and landing and by raising the floor level of the classroom at the east end of the hall he was able to make a large stage at that end with two dressing rooms under it, so providing an assembly hall suitable for dramatic performances or concerts. The classrooms on the ground floor of this north wing were turned into a small library, a school office and the rector's room. In the south wing the laboratories were improved and a technical drawing room provided at the west end. The extension provided besides classrooms the first gymnasium in school, two art rooms, and a sewing room. School can be grateful to Mr Pride, the architect. He understood and sympathised with the Scottish tradition in architecture, so that all the changes made in the old school were harmonious. He was also a perfectionist who kept all the work done under his own close supervision. Even when all this building and rebuilding was complete more had to be done. Technical subjects, homecraft and primary 7 were still housed in the temporary "HORSA " hut; a decaying relic of the 1914-18 war, the black hut, housed P6 and one senior class; the dining room was another hut overcrowded at meal times, furnished with barrack-room-style collapsible benches and tables and never free of the smell of cooking. On the wall where the old quadrangle joins the 1955 extension the architect had the words "The old order changeth" engraved. The phrase was true architecturally but not socially or academically. Former pupils of the 1930s coming into school in the late 1950s found that little except the building had changed. Girls still entered and left school by the west door and boys at the east door. During the morning interval boys still walked clockwise round the cloisters and girls anti-clockwise. The bun van came to the gravelled part of school every morning at eleven. Dress had changed little if at all. Boys still wore shorts till they were fourteen or fifteen. Girls went bare-legged and ankle-socked. Navy blue gaberdine coats were worn in wet or cold weather. All wore uniform and made a brave show to the town on Founder's Day, which Mr MacLeod had revived as a festival day, when the whole school with gowned and hooded staff went in procession to Holy Trinity church for the commemorative service. The Leaving Certificate examinations, Highers and Lowers, were still held in March for pupils in V and VI and His Majesty's inspectors still came in summer to examine candidates orally. The results were still read out to the assembled candidates by the rector after morning assembly near the end of the summer term, an assembly at which on these occasions the prayer was the one which ends: "Finally we commend to Thy fatherly goodness all those who are anyway afflicted in mind, body or estate; that it, may please Thee to comfort and relieve them according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings and a happy issue out of all their afflictions". One custom would have seemed strange to the returning F. P. As a supplement to their meagre war-time diet pupils of all ages had been given one third of a pint of milk a day which they drank with a straw out of a glass bottle. The crates of milk were put at the bottom of the west stair and on one wall Mr Smith, the janitor, had fixed a bottle-top remover of his own devising. At the morning interval pupils drew their ration. Too often empty bottles were secreted round the quad and full bottles hidden in the library for later consumption especially by VI who still browsed round the quad in sunny weather. School was still intellectually selective. This was the hey-day of psychometrics when educationists held almost as a tenet of faith that they could prognosticate the educational potential of children by tests given in primary six and seven. In Fife the testing was thorough. It involved two "intelligence" tests, tests in arithmetic and English, an English essay, and teachers' estimates. When they were all completed and marks scaled the pupil's "Adjusted Average" was arrived at. Some were allocated to senior high schools, the majority to junior high schools according to this "Adjusted Average". The system had some advantages: pupils in primary seven were encouraged to work; they learned how to spell, punctuate and write grammatically; and they acquired some dexterity with number. The great defect was that the testing was divisive. About one quarter of an age group was deemed to be suitable for senior high school work, though in St Andrews about one third of an age group came into the Madras College. This divisiveness was the cause of much bitterness especially to parents whose children had had their primary schooling in the Madras primary school and who found that at twelve these children were separated some moving into the senior Madras others going to the Burgh school. The bitterness was increased in Burgh School parents when they contrasted what seemed the lavish new accommodation in the Madras College with the Edwardian conditions in the Burgh School. For their first three years in the Madras College pupils had no choice of subjects. The usual intake was of four classes. Two of these, made up of pupils with the highest adjusted averages, studied English, Mathematics, Latin, French (German after 1956) and science with some small measure of history, geography, art, music, physical education and religion. The other class had no Latin. Instead pupils were given time for technical subjects or homecraft. Finally one class in each year until the early 6Os was made up of pupils for whom there was no room in the Burgh School. They learned no foreign language and were expected to leave at fifteen. (It is an interesting comment on the rigidity of the system that, in theory, no pupil could be moved from this class into a higher one without the written authority of the Director of Education). For pupils going into IV some choice of subjects was possible: Greek or French could replace science; history, geography, music, art, commercial subjects could become main subjects. But choice was limited till the introduction of the S.C.E. '0' grade examinations, and the increase in the school roll, made possible a much wider choice, and a choice to be made the end of II not III. Other school building in St Andrews made more room available in school. Until 1957 all primary school children in St Andrews, apart from those in the Madras College primary department, were under the charge of the headmaster of the Burgh School and were housed in the West Infant school in St Mary's Place, in the Fishers' school on the Kirk Brae, or in the Burgh School. The opening of Langlands school in that year left the first two of these buildings vacant. The opportunity was taken to move six of the classes of the primary department into the West Infant school where they still remained under the eye of Dr Bell , for his bust stands above the original entrance to that school. (The building of the school was made possible by a grant of £500 from the Bell fund in 1842). The building was scarcely adequate. One of the rooms was dangerously small for the number of pupils it held; the rooms in the older part had windows placed so high that no one could see out; the lavatories were perpetually damp; and, above all, the heating system was inefficient, seldom managing to raise classroom temperature above 55º on cold mornings. The Education Committee did little to improve the building, partly because members saw that another new primary school would soon be needed in St Andrews, partly, one can guess, because some members were unwilling to spend money on a fee-paying school. Yet in spite of these and other defects in the building six ladies worked harmoniously together, with the minimum of rectorial oversight, to give pupils a sound basic education till 1971 when the primary school, with the agreement of the Trustees of the Endowment, was swallowed up in the new Canongate school. The departure of most of the primary school from the South Street building set free the detached west building. It had been partitioned to make four primary classrooms. The partitions were removed and the two rooms used for senior classes, one as a biology laboratory, the other as a commercial subjects room. But more room was required to meet future needs, for the growth of the town, the high post-war birthrate and the tendency of pupils to remain longer at school was steadily increasing the roll. To meet the need and so complete the 1955 extension the Education Committee carried out another large building project. The huts on the south side of school were demolished and temporary Medway huts erected in front of school to clear the way for big changes. The new building provided new laboratories and classrooms, technical and homecraft rooms, a spacious dining hall and kitchen, and a big assembly hall. At the same time major changes were made in the old building. The south side ceased to be used for teaching; the east part became the stage for the new assembly hall; the west part a staffroom, and the middle part rooms used for various welfare and administrative purposes. On the north side the old assembly hall became the library, so releasing the old library for the janitor, the stage became again classrooms for classics, and the lower dressing room a tuckshop. The height of the remaining classrooms round the quadrangle was reduced by false ceilings and the floors tiled, so removing from school the smell of "Dustmo", a sawdust based substance used as a dust allayer when the cleaners swept the wooden floors, a smell which hitherto had been the characteristic smell of early morning school. By 1965 the work was finished, the hutted classrooms removed and the grass sown in front of school. There was one loss in all this. The presence of so much building activity in and round the cloisters, the need to move by the shortest route between periods from 1955 classroom to hutted classroom in front of school ended the circumambulation of the quad and the use of separate entrances. One final addition to the teaching space came when the last tenant, Mr J. L. Hodge, left Madras House West. Apart from a short period between 1894 and 1907 when the Governors let it to an outsider the house had been occupied by masters since its erection. It was too big and too old-fashioned in its internal fittings to be attractive for the servantless world of the 1960s. Instrumental music had flourished in school in this post-war period. The rooms in the Madras House West with their thick walls and under-floor deafening seemed perfectly suited to act as instrumental teaching rooms. A few minor alterations were necessary. These the Education Committee authorised and so made possible by 1967 the teaching of most of the instruments of the orchestra within, and after, normal school hours. School was now, it seemed, ready to meet the educational needs of the rest of the century at least, but no longer as a selective high school. |