Founded in 1818, Dollar Academy has always been a fully coeducational school for boarders and day pupils. This session, it has 215 boys and girls in the Prep School (5-10), 168 in the Junior School (10-12), and 851 in the Senior School (12-18). There are 80 boarders, boys and girls, accommodated in four houses.

In the Senior School there are boarders, day pupils from Dollar itself, and many from surrounding towns, villages and farms. We are thus a very interesting mix. Any class is likely to include pupils whose parents are in the forces or on contracts in the Far East, the United States or in Europe or Africa, pupils from more distant parts of the UK and especially of Scotland, pupils from nearby towns like Falkirk, Stirling, Perth and Kinross, and pupils whose homes are within walking distance.

Twelve miles east of Stirling on the A91 St Andrews road, Dollar is in magnificent walking country, yet comfortably within an hour's drive of Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Highlands. Edinburgh Airport is thirty-five minutes away. Our grounds slope gradually upwards from the town of Dollar (population 4,000) against the backdrop of the Ochil Hills. The Academy's facilities include, besides the four Boarding Houses, an indoor swimming pool, a games hall, well-equipped science laboratories, a miniature range, a network of over 200 computers for teaching purposes, four art rooms, specialist business studies rooms, eight rugby pitches, four hockey pitches, and, not least, the Playfair building with its fine classical facade.

The Academy's curriculum is both traditional and modern: pupils take Standard Grade and Intermediate 2 examinations at 15 or 16 and, a year later, Scottish Highers. In Form VI, pupils may take 'A' Levels, Advanced Higher, or Higher subjects. Out of a year group of 125-130, well over 90% goes on to university courses. Teaching is organised in subject departments (of History, Mathematics, and so on) and there are eighty-five teachers in the Senior School. There are twenty teachers in the Prep and Junior School. An ambitious new building programme, launched in February 1990, has produced an Auditorium and Music Centre (The Sir Alexander Gibson Building), and a centre for Business Studies, Computing and Mathematics (The Younger Building) was completed in 1995. The Science Building (The Dewar Building) has been entirely modernised and extended. The spectacular new Maguire Building, which was completed in August 2005, houses Art, PE and Drama.

The range of sport and leisure activities is wide. The standard of organised games is very high. Rugby is especially well played and enjoyed: the 1st XV in the past decade has an enviable record, and indeed was undefeated at home from January 1999 to September 2006, a record possibly unmatched in school rugby history. In 2003, 2004 and 2005 they won the Scottish Schools Cup at Murrayfield, and were chosen as Rugby World School team of the Year, 2004. Hockey and cricket results are outstanding; the girls' hockey 1st XI has met with national success. The School has two orchestras, five choirs, a brass group and various chamber groups; there are two Jazz Orchestras in addition. The annual Choral Projects have recently comprised Haydn's Nelson Mass, Bach's Magnificat, and Mozart's Requiem, and more modern works such as Andrew Carter's Missa Brevis sung by over 300 in the splendid setting of the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling or in Linlithgow’s St Michael’s Church. The choir sang in St Paul’s Cathedral in London in September 2006 and most recently, in December 2006, in Perth Concert Hall. At the end of summer term, musicals are produced, most recently Oliver, Fiddler on the Roof, Grease, The Boyfriend, Gershwin's Crazy for You, South Pacific, Fame, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma, Copacabana, Oliver! and Journey to the Forbidden Planet in 2006. In recent years the Junior School has staged Alice, Smike, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Rats, Yanomamo, Treasure Island, Annie, Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. The CCF meets with success in its many activities, not least with its boys and girls in the Highland Cadet Tactical competitions, and in its Pipe Band (Scottish Independent Schools champions continuously from 2000, during the past seven annual competitions) which also visited Japan in 2001. The shooting team won the Ashburton Shield at Bisley in 2005, the first time in fifty-two years that a Scottish school has won the shield. Many pupils also fish or walk the hills, swim or play squash, go horse-riding or debate, ski or orienteer, dance, play chess or take First Aid or photography.

An HMIe inspection report was published in 2005; an excellent boarding report by The Care Commission and HMIe, was published in May 2006.

February 2007