FORTY years after Scotland Street School closed, organisers are hoping to attract a record number of former pupils to its annual reunion, which takes place this Saturday (October 19) from 12 until 3pm.

Last year’s event attracted more than 60 people, making it one of the largest since they began in 2006.

Now organisers Margaret Moore, artist and filmmaker, and former pupil Ruth Sills, are hoping to hear from even more pupils who attended the Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed school between the late 1920s and 1979.

Highlights of the event will include a screening of Margaret’s documentary film Scotland Street School Remembers, which brings to life a hundred years of memories; music from young piper Emily Northcote; and fantastic displays of old photographs and school equipment, from the dreaded strap and dunce’s hat to reading books and playground toys.

Museum ‘headmistress’ Lesley Robertson will perform her popular WWII recreation classrooms and staff member Malcolm Northcote will demonstrate playground toys and games from the museum’s collection.

Lesley’s popular Govan Allsorts Choir will also sing playground songs - followed by the traditional reunion group photograph.

Margaret said: “We had a tremendous turnout for last year’s Mackintosh 150 year reunion and this year we’re hoping to encourage even more former pupils to come along and meet old friends and new over a cuppa.

“Everyone has a great time going down memory lane browsing over old school photos and listening to songs from through the decades.”

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The School Board of Glasgow commissioned Charles Rennie Mackintosh to design Scotland Street School in the early 1900s. The building, celebrated for its stone carving, metalwork, impressive tiled Drill Hall and leaded glass stairwell towers, opened in 1906 when employment around the Clyde was at its peak. It closed in 1979 and reopened as Scotland Street School Museum in 1990.

Scotland Street School Remembers is the third instalment of Margaret’s wider Still Sounds project charting the social history of the school and surrounding community at home, work and war during the last century.

Still Sounds began in 2013 with a sound and print installation at the school featuring interviews with former pupils who spoke of school, family life and work in Glasgow’s shipyards.

In 2014, Margaret opened Still Sounds: The Great War, a gritty documentary, giving a unique insight into the life of Glaswegian soldiers at war as remembered by their children and grandchildren, again all former pupils at Scotland Street School.

Alex McKinlay attended Scotland Street School from 1935 to 1936.

He recalled: “In the early years, discipline was strict. We learned reading, writing and arithmetic whilst the strap and the dunce’s cap were still in use.”

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Jim Mulholland, a pupil from 1952 to 1958, said: “I vividly remember the Queen’s visit to Glasgow and seeing the car carrying her and Prince Philip driving along Paisley Road West. Everyone in the school was presented with a round tin of sweeties.”

Bill Everitt started at the school just after the Second World War.

“Rationing was still in place - I remember my granny making big pots of home-made soup,” he said. “The school lunches were very good. We used to get a ticket which cost half a crown a week and it was stamped each day. One day, Canadian apples were delivered to the school. The delicious smell filled the building.”

Share your schoolday memories and photos with us by emailing ann.fotheringham@heraldandtimes.co.uk