A bit about the Hostel system

In the 1940s the Sutherland County Council Education Committee initiated a new approach to Junior Secondary education in north west Sutherland by opening hostels in Dornoch, East Sutherland. Their aim was to enable pupils to attend one of the two secondary schools in Dornoch or Golspie. This was a system of state-run Boarding Schools in effect. Pupils from most of the County lived too far away to travel. They boarded during term time and got home in the school holidays. All of the public schools in the five parishes in question were changed into primary schools at this point. Until then, at least one school in each parish was designated to have a ‘secondary’ department. Pupils from the ‘side schools’ in that district came to that school if they sought to sit the exam for the Leaving Certificate or aimed to take ‘higher’ classes with a view to advancing into a university education. Before the Hostel system was created, some children were sent into lodgings in east Sutherland in order to attend secondary school if their parents were able to arrange that. Farr High School was gradulally upgraded during the 1970s and 1980s back to being a full six year secondary school. This meant that pupils in Tongue and Farr regained the option of local secondary schooling a decade or so before Eddrachilles and Durness.

Work over the previous year has explored the Hostel based school system from 1950s until the 1990s through archive research and oral history interviewing. In the 1990s, local secondary schools were created and equipped in west coast locations and the Hostel based system was discontinued. This represented a huge change in the way of life for villages and townships which had seen all the children leave at 12 years old for generation after generation. Most of those children never returned to live at home.

Many people found the Hostel system to be a damaging experience. To this day there are those who will not travel back to Dornoch or Golspie on account of that. Some parents chose to move away and never return in order to avoid sending their children away to Hostel. As each pupil got older, they tended to find their way more easily. The first two years at Hostel were particularly tough. For others, particularly those from very isolated locations, being with other people of the same age, being able to play football, loiter in Boots The Chemist hankering after eyeliner or simply making friends for life ended up being a really positive experience. The Hostellers look out for each other to the end of their days. The improved access to out of school activities was greatly appreciated. In some cases, where household means were meagre and the family large, some interviewees said that Hostel gave them decent meals and the chance to grow up to have choices. No matter what their experience – hellish or happy – the Hostellers felt that once they left school they were better equipped than others of their age to manage money, share living space and live anywhere in pursuit of work, apprenticeships or further study. Here we can only give a tiny taster of The Hostellers memories.