From it’s opening in 1876 the school also had a primary department – indeed the 1872 Education Act made schooling compulsory only between the ages of 5 and 13, so about a year after what we would regard as primary school age today. Those going on to ‘Higher Grade’ studies (and later Secondary classes) were in the minority.
In order to alleviate overcrowding in the school on Niddrie Road (now Duddingston Park), at 2 pm on Friday 28th February 1958 the Primary Department moved en bloc to the newly completed Duddingston Primary School on Duddingston Road (it also took in pupils from the existing Duddingston School near the site of the mills). So at the start of the 1958-59 academic year our school for the first time, literally, became ‘Portobello Secondary School’.
The headmaster records in the school log that this ‘panoramic photograph’ of the Primary Department was taken on 23rd May, 1958.
All credit to the more than 360 pupils, 9 staff and the photographer who captured this memorable image which appeared in the 1958 issue of ‘The Tower’, the school magazine.
The End of the Primary Department
On the 28th February, 1958, the Primary Department of Portobello School became part of a new school with its own headmaster and organisation. This new school was called Duddingston Primary School and was situated in Duddingston Road. Thus Portobello School became for the first time in its history a purely secondary school.
There were a number of reasons why the Primary Department had to move to a new school. The surrounding district had begun to develop and new housing began to make increasing demands on school accommodation.
A previous rise in the birth rate had increased the number of pupils of secondary school age and as pupils were tending to stay on longer at school, the number of pupils in classes 4, 5 and 6 was increasing year by year. A link remained, however, between the new primary school and the old school, in so far as pupils from the primary school were sent to Portobello school for their secondary education.
With credit to Ian Small.
