The site of the first schoolhouse in the village is unknown, but it was probably near the kirk, where Menzies provided for the boys to have seats in the Durn Aisle.

Walter Ogilvie of Reidhythe gave money to George Brown, the schoolmaster, to build a new schoolhouse, and in 1678 in his will Ogilvie gave the lands of Reidhyth, Meikle, and Little Bogton to create scholarships at the school and at King's College, Aberdeen.

[2] In 1790, George Smith, a native of the village and son of a blacksmith who had become a merchant of Bombay, died[3] leaving in his will an endowment to establish a school in Fordyce for the support and education of poor boys whose name was Smith, to be overseen by the burgh magistrates of Banff, directing that the schoolmaster should be able to teach English and the main commercial languages of the time, which were French and Dutch.

[2] At the beginning of the 19th century, John Forbes (1787–1861) and James Clark (1788–1870), who both later became notable physicians, were at the Fordyce School together and walked there every day from the Findlater estate near Kilnhillock.

[4] In 1902, a report by HM Inspector of Schools said of Fordyce Academy that it was "now well established as the most important feeder of the University outside of the City of Aberdeen".

[9] Most of them, and some of the teaching staff, transferred to the Banff Academy,[10] while the junior department became the village primary school.