Govan Parish School Board - Times Past
Posted on 24 August 2022
In partnership with the Glasgow Times, our archivists are exploring Glasgow's fascinating history. This week, Barbara Neilson writes about the Govan Parish School Board.
As a child, I always wondered why it said Govan Parish School Board on the side of my Partick primary. I was hazy on Glasgow’s geography at that point but even I knew that Govan was across the river! And I’m not the only one who’s wondered why. We’ve had many visitors to the archive searchroom who have asked the same question of other schools in the city.
Years passed before I discovered the answer. It goes back to the Education (Scotland) Act 1872, when Govan Parish School Board was one of almost a thousand school boards created by the Act. The boards were of varying sizes and could include several districts. They didn’t necessarily follow existing burgh or district boundaries. A Partick School Board was never created. The responsibility fell instead to the Govan Parish School Board to cover, not only the burgh of Govan but also its extensive parish which crossed the Clyde to include areas in the west.
Also like Glasgow, the Govan Parish School Board had fifteen board members who were triennially elected to manage the buildings, teachers and curricula. Among their number was the philanthropist Lady Dinah Elizabeth Pearce who helped to establish the Fresh-Air Fortnight for sick children. By 1896 the Board itself maintained a roster of over 500 staff which later included John Maclean, the socialist activist and anti-war campaigner. Yet, his teaching career at Lorne Street Public School came to a premature end in 1915. After Maclean’s first arrest and imprisonment for sedition, the Govan Parish School Board dismissed him from its service.
Whenever I pass my old primary now, I no longer wonder at the name Govan Parish School Board. But it is wonderful to me that, if you look around, you’ll find other school buildings throughout Glasgow still bearing that name. It’s a visible remnant, along with the buildings themselves, of an educational administrative system which has now been gone for over a century.
Whenever I pass my old primary now, I no longer wonder at the name Govan Parish School Board. But it is wonderful to me that, if you look around, you’ll find other school buildings throughout Glasgow still bearing that name. It’s a visible remnant, along with the buildings themselves, of an educational administrative system which has now been gone for over a century.