The Scottish Amateur Rowing Association has a clear stretch of water ahead of it. The sport’s governing body will open its first national rowing academy at Strathclyde Park near Motherwell next month, with a full-time national development officer and a national coach ready to steer the course.

Callum MacDonald, aged 39, a lawyer who worked in the west of Scotland for the past 15 years, has been put in charge of the sport’s development. It may seem an unusual career change but Mr MacDonald has rowed since his school days, at Strathclyde University and has been a member of the Clydesdale Rowing Club in Glasgow for the past eight years. He is passionate about the sport.

“Top of my remit is youth development,” he says. “The situation in schools has changed since I was first taught to row by a volunteer teacher in the 1970s.

“Rowing has suffered like a lot of school sports, but now, at last, we seem to be getting there. I will look at the schools structures now in place and at the broader remit of coach education and the development of university rowing.”

There are some encouraging schools developments throughout the country, although all appear to operate independently of each other. Two private schools in Edinburgh dominate the scene. George Watson’s College recently appointed a full-time rowing master, Jim Ferguson. The school has such a sophisticated set-up that 40 pupils took part in a training camp in Belgium. George Heriot’s also has a strong set-up.

In the north-east, the Aberdeen Schools Rowing Association has 60 members, drawn from primary and secondary schools throughout the region as well as further education colleges and university juniors. It competes successfully in events in Britain and abroad.

The association was established in 1973 by Robert Newton and Bryan Steel, teachers in charge of Aberdeen Grammar and Hazlehead Academy rowing clubs respectively. Although it receives no local authority funding, it acts as a service provider for Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen city councils.

“There is a thriving set-up in Aberdeen,” says Mr MacDonald. “Five-times Olympic champion Steve Redgrave recently opened their new boathouse and the Aberdeen club has funding from Aberdeen Asset Management. It shows how strong the sport is in that area.”

In Dumfries, there is a thriving schools set-up through the Nithsdale Rowing Club. “The club has a lot of good young rowers and much of its success is through strong coaching from Gordon Blandford, who is a volunteer,” says Mr MacDonald.

“There is strong support from the local authority and a lot of schoolchildren attend, and whereas in the 1970s Dumfries Academy and St Joseph’s College entered events separately, they now enter through the club.

“So, there is good work going on in different areas, but my hope is that within three years, George Watson’s, George Heriot’s, ASRA and Nithsdale will have serious competition at schools events.”

Another area Mr MacDonald will look at is Glasgow. In the past, secondary schools such as Holyrood, John Boscoe’s, St Mungo’s and Whitehill all competed on the Clyde and it has not been the preserve of solely private schools such as Hutchesons’ Grammar and St Aloysius’ College. Mr MacDonald would ideally like to see a Glasgow development officer appointed to help promote rowing. The city council has 12 sports specific development officers but none for rowing.

North and South Lanarkshire are two further authorities he hopes to work with, not least because of the impressive new academy facility at Strathclyde Park, which includes an indoor training tank.

“It is a fantastic facility and one of the first things I will be trying to find out from the councils is how many primary and secondary schools are within 10 minutes of it,” says Mr MacDonald.

“I also hope the academy could be residential, so that schools like George Watson’s do not need to go to Belgium for suitable training facilities.”

There are few paid coaches in the sport in Scotland and that is another issue he hopes to address.

It is likely to take Mr MacDonald several months to pull all the strands together and broaden the base for schools rowing so that most areas of the country have access to the sport.

Iain Somerside, director of the new national rowing academy, says: “This is a fresh start for the sport. We now have a development officer and a high performance coach, John McArthur, who will deal with the elite rowers.”

But he admits: “The schools set-up needs to be better. Like all school sports, we need to do a lot of work at that level. We have a good club network and it’s a case of getting the schools to the clubs to the water.”

British rowing may inspire some developments. The funding the SARA receives from Sportscotland is a drop in the ocean compared to what the Amateur Rowing Association in England receives. “The ARA in England has 50-60 employees and is seen as on a par with swimming and athletics,” says Mr MacDonald.

“They have just started a talent identification funding programme for the 2012 Olympics.

“There is funding in place for clubs but one of the stipulations is that they have to offer facilities to schools which have not rowed before. That is a great way of getting more schoolchildren involved in the sport.”