Former Dundee teacher Eileen Haggarty, who devoted her career to realising the potential in pupils, has died aged 75.
She was the first generation of her family to go to senior secondary school, something she considered not a boast but an injustice.
When she graduated from university, having received a grant from the National Union of Mineworkers, she went to work in Scotland’s new comprehensive schools and resolved to make them a success.
It was said Eileen often recognised more potential in pupils than they recognised themselves.
Her later years were spent teaching at Lawside Academy and St Paul’s Academy in Dundee but her roots were in an Airdrie mining community.
At a time when educational opportunities for miners were limited, an “aristocracy of labour” developed which saw working men discuss literature and enjoy opera and music.
Her parents were Jimmy Bollen, an engineer at Bedlay Colliery and his wife Jean Blake, a french polisher who later worked at the Boots cosmetics factory in Airdrie.
Eileen, her brother Thomas and sister Janie all progressed to senior secondary and then to university, also becoming teachers.
She traced her passion for learning to the education denied to her father who had to leave school to work in the coal mines. He lost a lung after being hit by a coal buggy and worked on the surface for the rest of his career.
At Glasgow University between 1966 and 1970, Eileen excelled in Latin, English and sociology and, after post-graduate training, took up her first teaching post at St Leonard’s Secondary in Easterhouse, Glasgow.
Before long she was offered a promoted post as principal teacher of English at St Maurice’s High School, Cumbernauld.
In 1976, she married fellow teacher, George Haggarty.
The couple set up home in Cumbernauld and had three of a family Laura, Mhairi, Amy, and, later, granddaughter Hannah.
In 1986, the family moved to Edinburgh when George took up the post of depute headteacher at Holy Rood High School, following in the footsteps of family friend, Jim Freeman, who had become rector of Lawside Academy, Dundee.
Strong faith
When her husband was appointed headteacher at St John’s High School, the family moved to Dundee and Eileen began teaching at Lawside Academy.
When the school merged with St Saviour’s to form St Paul’s Academy, Eileen taught at the new school until her retiral in 2009.
A woman of strong faith, Eileen was active in St Bride’s, Monifieth. They had the great pleasure of being with Canon Romeo Coia in Kyoto in Japan in 2004.
In retirement, the couple also enjoyed many holidays abroad to places including Spain, Turkey, Greece and Switzerland.
In the New Year Honours of 2021, Eileen was named as a Medallist of the Order of the British Empire for her services to education, and to the community of Dundee during the pandemic.
You can read the family’s announcement here.
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