Alison Laidlaw

Teacher

Born: 6 February, 1909, in Edinburgh.

Died: 7 April, 2007, in Edinburgh, aged 98.

ALISON Laidlaw was the sort of teacher every parent wanted for their child and in whose class every child wanted to be. Always "Miss Laidlaw", or "Ladybird", because she was so ladylike and polite, she was a primary teacher at James Gillespie's School for Girls, in the heart of Edinburgh, for almost all her teaching career. But her life-long relationship with the school, home to Miss Jean Brodie and her creator, Muriel Spark, began years before.

At the age of five, in the year the First World War broke out, her mother walked her from the Marchmont apartment where Miss Laidlaw lived all her life, to the large school across the road. Being English, her mother didn't understand the school system in Scotland, Miss Laidlaw always said. So she took her daughter to the school gate, gave her a push and left her to trot across the playground on her own.

Miss Laidlaw was at school and was simply "expected to get on with it". But she was to do much more.

She won the class prizes in 1915 and 1916, aged just six and seven, and clearly became a special pupil. Her memories of those early days were of Zeppelins over Edinburgh, watched nervously from behind thick damask curtains. She was evacuated to Fife, where she stayed for most of the war until she was brought home as her father was ill.

After completing her education at Gillespie's, she went to Edinburgh University, and then to Moray House to do her teacher training. For the next few years, she worked for the education authority as a supply teacher, until being taken on permanently at Gillespie's, delighted to be back at her old school.

She lived through two wars, becoming a firefighter in the second, but all the time watched over Gillespie's as year after year of young ladies progressed through the school. She always looked back with pride, satisfaction and not a little humour at her time as a teacher there. As well as her primary class, she taught country dancing and was the swimming instructor.

Years later, she admitted she could barely keep her head above water for ten strokes.

Independent and with a lively mind right up to the end of her life, she was a woman ahead of her time. Forced to look after her invalid mother after her father died when she was in her 20s, she was always forward-looking and optimistic, and refused, even in her 90s, to regret the passing of "the good old days".

A child in the age of the suffragettes, she saw as she grew up that the role of women was changing, and she refused to fit the mould of the submissive female. She tried to instil the same qualities of determination in her pupils, once saying, when asked what subject she taught: "I taught survival."

Blessed with an irrepressible sense of fun, she is remembered to have signed one pupil's end-of-year autograph book as "Marlene Dietrich".

One former pupil said: "I remember Miss Laidlaw as kind and elegant. I was interested to learn that she had a first name; to us she was always Miss Laidlaw or Ladybird."

Miss Laidlaw retired from Gillespie's shortly before it became a fully co-ed comprehensive in the early 1970s, but she never lost contact, helping, for instance, with charity work to fund students' field trips.

Miss Laidlaw's passion for her school matched her passion for life. A keen golfer who enjoyed playing Bruntsfield Links, she was vibrant to the end, retaining a wide circle of friends who loved her for her sense of humour and lively conversation.

Shortly before her death, Gillespie's was awarded nearly 50,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund for an oral history project, with the aim of capturing the personal stories of past pupils and staff, and local residents. Miss Laidlaw was approached and was delighted to share her memories with current students.

Once her story became known, 12 of her former pupils, from as long ago as 1945 and as far away as the south of France and Canada, came forward to make contact again. They found her, although frail, still very much their beloved Miss Laidlaw, charming, elegant and just a little mischievous. She told one ex-pupil she liked to watch the horse racing on the television in the afternoons and was not beyond a small flutter. "But she made me promise not to tell too many people, or her reputation might be damaged," she said.

Her story takes pride of place among the growing collection being collected by James Gillespie's, and the school trust is grateful to have had the chance of recording the memories of this wonderful woman. The trustees are determined she will become one of the central stories in a national oral history museum of Scotland it hopes to build at James Gillespie's - a development that would have delighted her.