I’ve done a deal of packing and moving and unpacking in the last couple of years. And amid all the pains is the pleasure of the unexpected find. Unearthed this week is this school report from the 1950’s.
I remember Miss Kempster well, although I cannot say with fondness my chief memory being that of a generalized fear and the specific shame of not being able to do “joined-up” writing. That and her bright red lipstick. Until middle of that second grade year my school setting had been idyllic. Somehow teaching script had taken second place to reading and writing stories, running the school shop, visits to Rumming’s farm at lambing time, identifying wildflowers and country dancing.
Clarence Street Primary Junior School was a very different educational order – red brick Victorian built with great civic pride and resembling a fortress- desks screwed to the classroom floor, high ceilings with tall windows high on the wall to allow light but no distractions (but oh the excitement when we could see snow flakes falling up there!) and outside toilets at the bottom of a very steep asphalt playground.
We were the lucky ones. The bottom two classes in these overspill post-war years were housed in a makeshift annex. We had free milk every morning and a hot lunch every day.
There was a map of the world on the wall with the empire in red. (This empire was a good thing as it meant we had an Empire Day holiday every May.) I remember wondering whether Nigeria was in any way
connected with Nigel who sat two desks behind me and was too squeamish to eat his apple cores.
This was a place of serious learning. We were being prepared for the big tests of the 11plus – the test that would sort us into the sheep and goats and determine our educational destiny.
This was a generally favorable report. My progressive early years had obviously prepared me well for the traditional system and in that rigidly stratified system I ranked well in that top class of six such classes scoring 130 and a half points out of 145. Such pleasing exactitude.
I was excellent in Spelling, careless in Arithmetic and not so good in Needlework and Scripture (it was a very full curriculum). My punctuality and conduct were excellent. I had not yet learned to deal with the misery of school by disruptive means.
Two things stand out for me. First the number in that class – 48. All arrayed in rows with those scoring top at the front of the first row and all the way to the bottom child in the back corner. Forty eight small children, one room, one teacher. No wonder Miss Kemspster ruled with the blackboard pointer.
And the second is to be reminded that at age 8 at least I had not yet learned what I could not do. Seems to me that the years that followed were all about finding out that I was not good at one thing after another- music, art, mathematics, Latin, French, physics, chemistry, biology and all the rest. I was an avid reader so that go me through English and as history mostly consisted of memorization and copying down dictation as the teacher read from the textbook I continued to do well.
There’s a saying that teachers are guided by either a desire to replicate their own school experiences or a determination to do quite the reverse.
This brings back so many memories!
Clarence Street was certainly a grim building, originally built as two schools, boys upstairs and girls below, each with separate entrances, and each with the same layout — a central hall with classrooms along each side.
At the time, in the mid 50s, Swindon’s child population was expanding at an incredible rate, with “overspill” from London combining with the impact of the baby boom. New housing estates had been build but not yet the new schools, so Clarence Street had to take the strain. Class sizes were certainly in the mid 40s, and two were at each end of the upstairs hall, with no proper partitioning. Others were in a disused secondary school (Euclid Street) and I think, by the time I left, there were seven classes in the top year. This wasn’t by any means a record for Swindon; later my mum taught in an infants school on one of the new estates where they had to have temporary classrooms to accomodate 12 classes in each year!
The teachers were memorable. Apart from Miss Kempster and Mr Perkins, I remember my second year teacher, Miss Snell, sending a note home to my mother saying, “Bryan says he can’t read the blackboard. Please have his eyes tested so I know how to deal with him.” I’ve worn glasses ever since!
Mr Hodges was incredibly enthusiastic; very special, and later referred to as a ‘local legend’. (see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19980330/ai_n14144303 and http://archive.salisburyjournal.co.uk/2007/9/12/338812.html ) I was never in his class but greatly enjoyed the “Pets Club” that he ran. We had animals in a shed next to the toilets at the bottom of the playground, he organised all sorts of trips and it was in a pets club meeting that I was first taught the ‘facts of life’!
On the other hand, the music teacher, Miss Atwell, was never a favourite with the boys. All I remember about the headteacher, Mr. Hart, was his distinctive car, a grey Triumph Mayflower.
In the end, I don’t think the experience did us any harm. After various secondary schools, I guess most of our “top” class moved away from Swindon when we went on to university.
I was so surprised to find this about my old school! I went to Clarence Street but I left to go to Lawn when that opened as my family moved to the new estate. I agree it was not always a happy place to be although I had Mr Hedges and he had a pet club and also Mr Perkins. I especially remember the toilets at the bottom of the playground. Very scary and full of spiders.