In 1939, children had to go to school from the ages of five to fourteen, this was changed in the forties to fifteen.
Allandale children had a choice of which school to enrol in. There was no choice for Roman Catholic children, they all went to St. Joseph’s School at High Bonnybridge but the others could either go to Castlecary School, Greenhill School or Bonnybridge School.
If they went to Castlecary, they only stayed there for four years then transferred to Greenhill or Bonnybridge. The others who had enrolled at Greenhill or Bonnybridge could stay there for their entire schooling. This was changed in 1947 when Greenhill became a primary school only with secondary pupils completing their education at either Bonnybridge, Falkirk Technical or Denny High Schools.
To get to Falkirk or Denny, pupils had to pass a control examination. In 1939, Castlecary School had a roll of 30 pupils although this was supplemented by the arrival of evacuees from Clydebank, and after 1940 there was only one teacher, Mrs. Chalmers, who was there until she retired in 1949 when Miss Stark took over.
The school was now only an infant school and the roll was 19 pupils. Pupils attending this school had to walk there. The school closed in 1975 but is now a private nursery. Pupils travelling to Greenhill, Bonnybridge and St. Joseph’s Schools had a special bus morning and afternoon. This cost 1d per journey and, in the morning the conductress sometimes got one of the children to collect all the pennies then made out one ticket. In the afternoon, the bus driver was usually Alex Cunningham and the conductress Dodie Smith. For some obscure reason she used to take the tickets from everyone after she issued them We always felt there was an ulterior motive. Woebetide anyone coming on the bus with dirty shoes or clothes, on more than one occasion they were told to get off and walk home. When there was heavy snow and the buses couldn’t get to Allandale, the children usually walked to school, a distance of app. 3 miles. For pupils going to Denny High there was a special bus which also went on to St. Modan’s in Stirling but for travel to Falkirk Tech the journey was not so easy. They had to get the Airdrie bus at 7.50am to Castlecary then get a Bo’ness bus to Falkirk. In the afternoon they got a Glasgow bus to Longcroft then walked over Underwood Loan, across the canal locks at Underwood and on up to Allandale. In the late forties, Alexanders put on a Falkirk bus at 8.20am which made the journey much easier. Free bus travel was introduced about 1948 for pupils who had to travel more than three miles to school and this was much appreciated by the parents.
Some of the Greenhill teachers names were Mrs. Thomson, Miss Anderson, Miss Batchelor, Miss Irvine, Miss Gillies and the headmasters were Mr. Deans and Mr. McGregor. The janitor was Mr. Horne who went round the houses of the absentees on his bicycle each morning to check up on why they were not at school. Some of the Falkirk Tech. teachers were Miss Webb and Mr. Dick (English), Miss Barrie (Maths.), Mr. Collumbine and Mr. Allison ( Woodwork and tech. drawing ), Mr. Gillies (Art) , Mr. Woods (Swimming), Mr. Brown (P.T.), Mr. Cranston (Mechanics), Mr. Currie ( Science). The headmaster was Mr. Lockhart and headmistress was Miss McKerracher.
During the war, pupils helped at the potato harvest or, as it was called, “tattie howking” and they helped at local farms for about one shilling an hour and, if the farmer was generous, a boiling of tatties to take home at the end of the day. A lot of the farmers thought they were getting overcharged especially having to pay 10/- an hour for the teacher who accompanied the pupils. Most of the teachers helped the farmer but they didn’t have to. At Greenhill School we were sent to Denholm’s Farm (Drum Farm ? ) and to Starks of Bondomonie at Castlecary. At first Starks was quite good as he didn’t have a tractor and the digger was pulled by a horse which meant we had a long wait until it came round again. But this was changed in the afternoon when he hired a tractor which went round at about 30 miles per hour ! At Falkirk Tech. we went to farms near Doune. As part of the National Savings campaign, a large bomb ( without the explosive !!!) came round the schools and the pupils bought savings stamps and stuck them on the bomb which they were told would be dropped on Germany. Of course, the stamps did not need to be redeemed. There was also a collection of rose hips which were sent away to be made into rose hip syrup. All the windows in the school had a net material stuck to them so that the glass would not shatter if a bomb was dropped and at the end of the war this was removed and used in the craft lessons to make teapot stands.
Pupils were encouraged to save and most would take a small amount to be added into their school bank books each Monday. Then, when they had saved a £1 in their book, they would bring in their Falkirk & District Trustee Savings Bank book and this would be sent away for the £1 to be added in.
To be able to leave school at the summer holidays, your 15th birthday had to be before the 1st of September, if it was even a few days after this you had to stay on until Christmas. Most of the pupils in this category were put into the same class and quite often didn’t have a teacher. Some took a regular half day off to go to the pictures and nobody seemed to notice.
