I started off in Ardrossan Academy as a pupil in the sixties, when you had to pass the 'qually' to get in. In those days, the school looked very different. It consisted of the current main building; an old 'primary block', a selection of concrete huts and a wooden building referred to as the 'old dining hall.' With the exception of the main building, these were all demolished in the late sixties when 'A' and 'B' block appeared, jewels of architecture that they are. Long gone too are the old brick bike sheds/smoking parlours and the outside lavatories.

The quality of teaching in the sixties was variable: it could be truly inspirational but it could also be awful. The awful teaching tended to be shored up by routine and vigorous use of the belt. It was not a golden age, for many pupils.

My teaching career started in 1975. My wife and I lived and taught in Campbeltown. Those were great times: Campbeltown was thriving. It had important fishing and farming industries, some factories and distilleries. There was employment, then, for those who wanted to resist the pull of Glasgow and the central belt. We visited it again recently: it has hit hard times in more recent years.

I taught in Kilmarnock for ten years after that, as APT and PT, in markedly different schools: Grange Academy and James Hamilton Academy ['The Jimmy.'] The Jimmy was a great school. Its catchment area featured quite a narrow range of potential attainment, but it had a united, crusading staff, keen to support the underdog and to make things better. Kilmarnock kids are much the same as Three Towns ones: mouthy and cheerful in general, with some very clever ones in the mix, and many who need extra support.

I came [back] to Ardrossan Academy in 1989 as PT English, a 'sideways' move to a larger department. I was one of a group of Staff Tutors for S Grade English for a spell, touring Ayrshire schools in an ancient and wheezy Fiat 128, to spread the good news of curriculum change. Curriculum for Excellence was not even a glint in a politician's eye in those days.

I became Acting AHT quite quickly after that and have been proud to be in school management here ever since. I have worked with some tremendous teachers over the years and am happy to say that pupils at Ardrossan Academy and elsewhere enjoy a far richer and wider educational experience now, than many did in the sixties.

Alastair Todd