page_title: Thurso
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Thurso / Education
caption_attribution_description: English: Pennyland House. A view looking south from the A9 towards Pennyland House, birthplace of Sir William Alexander Smith, founder of the Boys Brigade.
context_page_description: Thurso is a town and former burgh on the north coast of the Highland council area of Scotland. Situated in the historical area of Caithness, it is the northernmost town on the British mainland.
  It lies at the junction of the north–south A9 road and the west–east A836 road, connected to Bridge of Forss in the west and Castletown in the east. The 34-mile River Thurso flows through the town and into Thurso Bay and the Pentland Firth. The river estuary serves as a small harbour. At the 2011 Census, Thurso had a population of 7,933. The larger Thurso civil parish including the town and the surrounding countryside had a population of 9,112.
  Thurso functioned as an important Norse port, and later traded with ports throughout northern Europe until the 19th century.
  A thriving fishing centre, Thurso also had a reputation for its linen-cloth and tanning activities. As of 2015 the Dounreay Nuclear Research Establishment, although mostly decommissioned at the end of the 20th century, employs a significant number of the local population. The Category-A listed ruined Old St Peter's Church is one of the oldest churches in Scotland, dating to at least 1125.
context_section_description: The main campus of North Highland College, formerly Thurso College, is one of several partner colleges which constitute the University of the Highlands & Islands. It offers several certificate, diploma and degree courses from subjects as diverse as Nuclear Decommissioning, Hairdressing, Gamekeeping and Golf Management. Adjacent to the UHI is Thurso High School, the most northerly secondary school on the British mainland, established in 1958. The town also has three primary schools, Pennyland, Miller Academy Primary and Mount Pleasant. Mount Pleasant Primary School teaches in Scottish gaelic, part of a revival of the language in Caithness. According to the 2011 census, 110 residents of the town age three and over (1.43%) speak Gaelic while 181 overall (2.35%) have some facility with the language. A Gaelic language nursery school, Cròileagan Inbhir Theòrsa, was created in the town in 1996.
  Caithness Horizons is a small museum that opened in 2008. The museum now houses panels from the control room at the Dounreay Materials Testing Reactor (DMTR), which in 1958 had become Scotland's first operation nuclear reactor.
caption: Pennyland House
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