causea. it was not untci tne senior classes were no ionger at Strathkinness

that the problem was solved so far as Strathkinness School was concerned.

Another problem until it came to an end at the beginning of the Second

World War was the annual agricultural removal term at the end of November

and the beginning of December. As before, Mr. Stobie found that not only did

as many as twenty-nine children leave the school when their fathers went to

other places for work on the farms, but that the standard of other children

coming into the school was almost always lower than that of the pupils already

at Strathkinness. As this followed so soon after the potato-lifting period,

the masters all felt that the real work of the session did not start until after

the New Year’s holiday was over.

Over the years and with the school-leaving age having been raised to

fourteen, ‘supplementary’ including vocational classes, which the School Board

earlier had not wanted to introduce, feeling there was no need for them, were

introduced into the school to cater for the majority of children who were not

going to go on to further education after a primary education. In 1939

arrangements had been discussed for the centra!isation of advanced schooling

in St. Andrews, but in the meantime the school was told to carry on as before.

In 1942 when the school re-opened after the summer holidays, two pupils

went to Madras in St. Andrews and five pupils in the second year of post-

primary schooling were transferred to the Burgh School in St. Andrews. With

a faIl in the number of pupils the number of teachers was reduced from four

to three. In 1944 all pupils over primary school age — eleven or twelve years

old —- were transferred to the Burgh School, and Strathkinness School then

became a Primary School with no responsibility for vocational education.

As had the First World War, the Second World War had a profound effect

on the school. In 1939 the school roll was temporarily enlarged by thirty-

three children from Edinburgh who had been evacuated to Strathkinness.

Many of these children had hardly ever visited the ‘country’ let alone lived in

it. At least twice, on one occasion during a school inspection by an H.M.l.,

the school was closed briefly by an air-raid warning. And for almost the first

time since the early 1900s, Mrs. Younger did not present the school prizes

in person ‘owing to war conditions’. One of the tasks undertaken by Mr.

Stobie, and his daughter Katharine who was a teacher at Strathkinness School

at this time, was a regular overhaul of the gas masks and the replacement of

those outgrown by pupils. In 1946 it was reported that during that autumn

the school children had collected 280 lbs. of rose hips for rose hip syrup, a

major source during and just after the war of vitamin C; in the First World

War The Citizen had reported that the school children of Strathkinness had

collected 398 eggs to be sent to a depot in Leith for distribution to wounded

soldiers.

78