Downie Thomson reported four teachers and a roll of 104 pupils, who went on to North Berwick at secondary stage as they mostly still did by 2000. The headmaster Dick Ross lived next door in the schoolhouse; he still lived there in venerable retirement although by then it was a private house. By the end of the 1990s the school had a recently completed extension by East Lothian Council and all the teachers travelled in to work, the head teacher Ronnie Grieve from Dunbar and others from Haddington and elsewhere. There were three teachers plus a variety of visiting assistants and specialists with a school roll of 45 and a nursery class of 14.
There were seldom fewer than six or eight cars parked outside the school and those were only the staff vehicles. The parental ‘school run’ cars dropped off and picked up at the start and end of the day. There was still a school bus service provided by East Lothian council but the mobile car society had affected Athelstaneford like everywhere else.