The handful of passers-by on Glasgow’s Holland Street last week must have wondered why a crowd of 60-something blokes were getting their picture taken outside the abandoned old Strathclyde Regional Council HQ.

It was not a day out for council pensioners, but a reunion of the High School of Glasgow’s class of 1976, or in my case the primary school of 1974, to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of one of the city’s best-known selective schools, the start of what has become a relentless assault on some of Scotland’s finest educational establishments.

The High School lived on to celebrate its 900th anniversary two years ago, but as a fully independent school in new buildings at the Anniesland playing fields sold by Glasgow Corporation to the former pupils’ association. It’s quite moving to see the war memorials which were once set in the walls of the “Arches” in Elmbank Street in their new-ish home for the first time.

After the regional councils were abolished in 1996, Glasgow Council struggled to find a use for the five blocks and they have been left in a terrible state. Unlike Edinburgh’s old Royal High School which Edinburgh Council at least kept wind and water tight, Glasgow Council has spent hee-haw on their upkeep in recent years, and at vast expense the Scotsman Hotel group, owned by Glasgow businessman Stefan King, is now converting them into a hotel – the Glasgow Scotsman − serviced apartments and an events venue. It’s one of those small world things that when we Primary Seven kids were turfed out in 1974, about half a dozen of us ended up in the same class at Hutchesons’ Grammar School as Stefan.

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