A very influential option for education for boys was provided by The Sutherland Technical School which opened in 1904 and operated until 1968. In the 1950s, ‘The Tech’ began to admit girls for courses such as typing and secretarial but they were not boarders.

 

This school was the idea of Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, and was a pioneering experiment in technical, craft and academic education. The building was specially designed and its building and operation were paid for by the Duke of Sutherland, the Duke of Portland (Caithness) and Andrew Carnegie, by then owner of Skibo Castle near Dornoch. Duchess Millicent’s education project enjoyed support and advice from the Scotch Education Board, Professor R Meldola FRS of the City and Guild of London Technical College, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Professor Magnus Maclean, Glasgow, and the Right Honourable R. B. Haldane, KG, MP, amongst others. In her explanation about the motivations for this school at the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone in September 1903 Duchess Millicent declares:

 

“To aspire to be sons of Empire – to learn to think imperially – by the nature of things at the present time, grows to be the platform advice of half our orators.

 

And within proper limits, good advice it certainly is, provided that the youth of the country can be educated to follow it.

 

The old days of “a shilling in your pocket and luck go with you, my boy,” are past; a man needs the full equipment of education if he is to hold his own in the neck-to-neck race between peoples and policies today.

 

The hardest thing to combat is the well worn assertion made by new countries suckled on new systems, that Great Britain is digging her own grave. That she is puzzled by the additions and subtractions of new systems and ideas goes without saying; but to be puzzled is not to be outwitted. It rests with our sons and daughters, the coming generation – those that in this period of difficult if interesting transition we must educate – to prove the fact to the world.”

 

The losses experienced during The Boer War had caused debate and concern about the fitness of British young men to serve and to fight. Baden-Powell created The Boy Scouts Association in 1908 as a result of his experiences and concerns about the future of the Empire. One reaction to that debate was a new focus on technical and athletic education. This school provided academic and technical education for crofters’ sons from Sutherland and Caithness. Their fees were paid through a Bursary system for which they had to qualify via their elementary school. The Sutherland Technical School was run as a boarding school and had four dormitories each accommodating twenty boys. It was located at Drummuie in Golspie, east Sutherland.