Farquhar Macintosh: Influential figure in Scottish education

Farquhar MacIntosh, schoolteacher: born Elgol, Ross and Cromarty 27 October 1923; Headmaster, Portree High School 1962-66; Member, Highlands and Islands Development Consultative Council 1965-82; Rector, Oban High School 1967-72; Rector, Royal High School, Edinburgh 1972-89; CBE 1982; married 1959 Margaret Inglis (two sons, two daughters); died Edinburgh 18 November 2007.

In the last 30 years, there has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in Gaelic language, song and culture. Pivotal to this unexpected turn of events was the relentless enthusiasm of one of the most influential of Scottish headmasters, Farquhar Macintosh. He cultivated friendship among the politicians of the day, in particular the enormously gifted John P. Mackintosh, the professor/politician at the intellectual spearhead of the movement for Scottish devolution.

Farquhar Macintosh was born into the crofting community and the Highland clans, at Elgol on the Isle of Skye – his mother was a MacKinnon, who inculcated in him a love of song and folklore. Leaving Portree High School, Macintosh went to Edinburgh University before volunteering for the Royal Navy, the favoured service of lads brought up in the Scottish islands. Years later, in 1972, after he had been interviewed for his most important job, that of the rectorship of the Royal High School of Edinburgh, I asked him if he had been nervous faced by the city councillors and Dr George Reith, the formidable Director of Education. "Yes, of course," came the reply. "I was nervous, but not so bloody nervous as when I was a 20-year-old with a U-boat on my ship's tail." He was commissioned into the RNVR in 1944, and later made it his business to interest likely pupils in a naval career.

At the age of 38, very young for such an appointment in those days, he became headmaster of his old school, Portree High School. In 1967, succumbing to the temptation of becoming rector of the leading school in the West Highlands, he went to Oban High School. My friend and political opponent the late Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, later MP for Argyll but principal teacher of mathematics at Oban High School, 1969-79, said,

Farquhar Macintosh was my inspirational headmaster, albeit a hard, hard taskmaster. His staff would work hard for him because we all knew that he drove himself, and was seriously interested to do the long-term best for all the pupils, of whatever talent, in his care. We were not in the least surprised when he left us to take charge of the ancient Royal High School in Edinburgh.

Macintosh had a huge influence for good on generations of pupils at a time when the Royal High School was being transferred from the merchant companies to the state education system. As one pupil of an earlier generation, the late Robin Cook MP, once put it to me, "As a former pupil I'm frequently asked to go back to the school and can only admire the way in which Macintosh has handled the transition."

Matthew MacIver, Macintosh's successor as Rector and now Chief Executive of the General Teaching Council for Scotland, recollected:

Farquhar was not the kind of Rector who would spend all his life sitting behind his desk. He was very much involved in a wider educational world, and many of us who worked with him gained much from his extensive knowledge of Scotland and Scotland's international relationships. As Rector of the Royal High School, Macintosh introduced the International Baccalaureate, the first school in Scotland to do so.

Macintosh's range of extra-curricular activities was enormous. He was chairman of the BBC Secondary Programme Committee, 1972-80, chairman of the Scottish Examination Board, 1977-90, of the Highlands and Islands Education Trust, 1988-97, and of the Governors of Jordanhill College of Education, 1970-72, as well as an active member for 16 years of the Court of Edinburgh University; there was scarcely an educational pie in which Macintosh did not have an influential finger. But I and many of his contemporaries will remember him above all as a man of huge charm, brutal directness and engaging vivacity.

In his last years, Macintosh's abiding interest was the Gaelic College at Armadale on the Isle of Skye, where he was chair of the trustees, 1991-2007. "The name of Farquhar Macintosh is synonymous with the success of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic College," Dr Norman Gillies, director of the college, says. "As chair of the trustees, he oversaw remarkable growth of the college. His was a steady hand, but he was not averse to risk-taking when the occasion demanded." The college's obvious success was a tribute to Macintosh.

Tam Dalyell