It shaped the education of Kinross-shire residents for 47 years, but the old Kinross Primary School is now disappearing from view.
Staff and pupils bid a fond farewell to the old building earlier this month as they moved into a stunning new school on the same site.
Now construction teams have moved-in and the demolition is well underway, with the initial works detaching and then demolishing a link corridor between the two former school buildings.
Classrooms, corridors and offices will all come tumbling down in the New Year as the site is completely cleared.
The two-storey part of the old school is scheduled for speedy demolition between Wednesday January 3 and Saturday 6, before the school returns from the festive break on Monday January 8.
A poignant video on the school’s website shows pupils taking final classes before waving goodbye to classrooms and shutting down computers for one final time, while staff pack for the move.
The demolition work is being carried out by Stirling-based Robertson Construction.
A spokeswoman for Perth and Kinross Council said the project team hoped to complete the removal of the old school in March.
She said: “The remaining single-storey part of the old school will then be demolished and old foundations and tarmaced areas removed between January 8 and March 2.
“This will then allow the construction of a car park and drop-off area and a multi-use games area, together with the completion of the rest of the hard and soft landscaping on site.”
Popular though the old Kinross Primary had been, it had been assessed as “life-expired” by Perth and Kinross Council.
It was an example of the so-called “CLASP” design, which was once a pioneering system of prefabricated public building, but which has since been discredited.
The school had begun to suffer from serious building issues in its fifth and sixth decades in existence – with water penetration a key problem.
Now, having started term in the old school, pupils ended with a special assembly in the stunning surroundings of their state-of-the art new building.
Meanwhile, work to complete the new Tulloch Primary School in Perth is still underway but progressing well.
It too was a CLASP school and at one point it was thought the two schools might have to compete for funding to set their replacement in motion.
Fortunately, Perth and Kinross Council was successful in securing the funding required to create new homes for each.
