The story of how this school came about is a fascinating one. It gives us very particular insight into how families in the Naver area gradually and very actively asserted their right to access to elementary education for their children in the wake of the 1872 Education Act.

 

On account of ‘the Crofters Wars’ – a struggle over land rights – the 1880s are known as an historic period in the Highlands when ordinary people were increasingly well informed about the law, their rights, the fight for the right to vote for the many to whom it was still denied and new means of organising and mounting rural protest. In the example of Skelpick Side School what we see is that same awareness a decade earlier amongst the shepherd families on the Skelpick Farm and Estate. The new elected School Boards were made up of the ministers from the Free Church and the Church of Scotland alongside the landlord, or more usually, his representative The Factor for Sutherland Estates and others of a similar social position in possession or rental of the large farms and estates in the area. It is therefore no small matter, as an employee in tied housing, to repeatedly petition the Farr School Board for a school house and teacher as the Skelpick Shepherds did. In due course they also petitioned The Scotch Education Department, in Whitehall, London – who then also wrote to the Farr School Board enquiring after an account of the state of play. This of course is a good way to apply further pressure and attention to the School Board locally since they are accountable for their delivery and part of their funds to The Scotch Education Department.

Actual delivery of schooling in Skelpick was carried out, over the generations, in a variety of premises, including The tack Room at The Farm at one point. The side school which we can see there today ran on into the 1940s. Margaret Mackay, who is pictured in front of it, attended this school. Here we provide a few quotes from The Farr School Board Minute Book indicating a little about the progress they were making on improving school provision in the parish in their early years – and giving an insight into how the Skelpick shepherds began to assert their rights.

 

Farr School Board Minute, 16th May 1876

 

A petition from the Shepherds on Skelpick Farm was laid before the Board praying the Board to make some provision for having their children educated as the distance from the Farr Parish School was, they consider, too great – the Board having talked this matter over now resolve to postpone this decision until a future meeting, as the question is one of considerable difficulty, and at the same time important in both an educational and pecuniary aspect.

Note from researcher: By 1878 The Farr School Board have improved access to elementary schooling in the parish to a considerable degree by building new schoolhouses in Strathy and Kirtomy and such. There had been much discussion about the fact that the first attempt at a larger school in Kirtomy Schoolhouse was a wooden building. There is persistent mention in the Minutes of this leaking and being, in general, rather unsatisfactory. For a time the Board try to improve the lot of the scholars in the strath of Naver area through having summer schooling at a specific school and providing an itinerant teacher for the winter months. This teacher went house to house, staying with families because the weather and the short days made it impossible for the children to walk the required distances to school.