Auchenharvie Academy: Opening Day 1971

[down south]

Here's a picture of Auchenharvie Academy as it looked at around the time it first opened:

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And here are some of the pupils pictured on the day it opened, 26th August 1971 :

The new catchment areas confused some.Two unlucky pupils turned up on the first day fully kitted out for Auchenharvie, only to be told they should be at Ardrossan Academy instead. It was hoped that a transfer could be arranged for them. Knowing as I do now about Saltcoats being divided between Stevenston and Ardrossan parishes, I suspect that old border line was also what was used to divide the areas for the two schools.

The school replaced the old Stevenston Higher Grade school, and along with the new intake most of the pupils had transferred from there, along with their head teacher Mr Charles Wilson.

In A&S Herald reports he expressed himself quite pleased with the school itself : " For once it can be said that a school was built on time ".

But there were a few other problems, like serious staff shortages. The Mathematics department had the worst problems, being two teachers short ; "if we lost another it would be unable to function ". Modern languages, history and music were also short of one teacher each, and " I am impossibly short of commercial teachers; there is only one and no likelihood of getting another ". Teacher shortages in the secondary sector were a common problem in those days, as I know from my own school Ardrossan Academy.

The other big problem was to do with the position of the school on a fast, 40mph limit, main road. I'm not sure if there was even a bus lay-by then , but as far as I know there was no pedestrian crossing let alone lights; and no pavement on the opposite side of the road, where there was not the landscaped park area of today but still the smelly, seagull-infested local rubbish coup.

Buses were dropping off pupils on both sides, and also some parents' cars ( mention of those surprises me;children coming to school by car was much,much rarer then than today ). Pupils meanwhile were trying to cross the road in large numbers, not all of them using the crossing warden. It was all creating a dangerous traffic hazard. " This is a major headache for me and for the police. I am working closely with them in an attempt to resolve the problems ".

Susan