High School of Dundee

The High School of Dundee is a private, co-educational, day school in Dundee, Scotland, which provides nursery, primary and secondary education to just over one thousand pupils. Its foundation has been dated to 1239, and it is the only private school in Dundee.

The school's rector is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.

The school has been registered as a charity in Scotland since July 1897.

The school has origins in the Grammar School of Dundee founded by the abbot and monks of Lindores Abbey after they were granted a charter by Gregory, Bishop of Brechin, in the early 1220s to "plant schools wherever they please in the burgh". Their rights were confirmed by a papal bull conferred by Pope Gregory IX on 14 February 1239. It is from this bull that the school's Latin motto "Prestante Domino", translated as "Under the Leadership of God", is taken. Little information survives about the early grammar school: it would have taught a Latin curriculum to boys from Dundee and the surrounding area. In 1434, the teaching methods of the Master, Gilbert Knight, were challenged by John, Bishop of Brechin, who conferred Laurence Lownan as the new Master in Knight's place.

Dundee was a hotbed of the Reformation, and St Mary's Church had, according to John Knox, the first truly reformed congregation in Scotland. The school itself was the earliest reformed school in the country, having adopted the new religion in 1554 under the master, Thomas Makgibbon, with the assistance of the (by-now Protestant) Dundee Town Council. However, John, the Abbot of Lindores, stepped in to take control of the school which his predecessors had founded, replacing Makgibbon nominally with the Vicar of St. Mary's, John Rolland, who was given the power to appoint substitutes; this he did, his substitutes opening schools in opposition to the Grammar School, poaching its pupils. In the ensuing furore the Town Council, which approved of Makgibbon's methods, intervened to prevent rival schools.

Among other early masters was John Fethy, who left Scotland for Wittenberg from Dundee, having come into contact with Lutheran influences. He returned to Scotland around 1532 "the first organist that ever brought to Scotland the curious new fingering", that is, playing the organ with five fingers. Early scholars included Hector Boece, historian and first principal of the University of Aberdeen; William Wallace; and James, John and Robert Wedderburn, authors of The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, one of the most important literary works of the Scottish Reformation. After the Reformation, the Grammar School came under the auspices of Dundee Town Council. Greek was added to the curriculum shortly after 1562, under the Master Alexander Hepburn, who would author Grammaticae Artis Rudimenta Breviter et Dilucide Explicata, a Latin primer, in Dundee, and become bishop of Ross in 1574. Mary, Queen of Scots, also made an annual grant to the school in 1563, from the revenues of the church.

The school moved into its first permanent home in 1589, a building in St Clement's Lane demolished to make way for the City Square in the 1930s. Among the masters here were Andrew Duncan, an academic and Presbyterian minister, and David Lindsay, later Bishop of Edinburgh, who crowned Charles I at Holyrood. Pupils were still expected to speak only Latin – to ensure which, their schoolmates were to act as "clandestine captors". Boys entered at the age of eight, and stayed for seven years (two years longer than in other Scottish schools: in 1773, this was reduced to the customary five) at which point the boy could proceed to university. A boy had probably only two teachers in all this time: each of the three assistants, known as doctors, taught one class for three years, after which the rector would teach for two years.

The English School was founded by the burgh council in 1702, and was the successor to the pre-Reformation "Song School": it acted as a sort of elementary school for both sexes. It stood in School Wynd, by the city churches, near to the present site of the Mercat Cross. The Grammar School shared a building with it from 1789, though the two remained separate.