The 'Good Old Schooldays' of just forty or fifty years ago were rather different from the present - as some of Coll's older residents remember:-

"There was a Mr McTaggart, teacher at the East End, and if you did anything wrong he'd punish you by making you walk all the way to the village for his bottle of whisky."

"We went to school till we were fourteen and then it was into work. No question about it."

"One day we caught a lot of little crabs and let them run all over the school room floor. We got the strap for that."

"We learned as far as algebra and then we stopped. "

"If you went over the wall at the back in the field at Greasbull we got the strap..."

"We went off in the dark mornings with a couple of scones and a slice of cheese and we had to learn a verse of the Bible every night and say it by heart next day."

"We went to school from ten o'clock till four and took big biscuits in a bag for our lunch."

"If we went past the mill at Acha after school we'd try and steal a handful of oatmeal. But we'd get the strap if we were caught."