Chapter 3: Growing Up
Chapter 3: Growing Up
Introduction
In Growing Up, we introduce ourselves (Bernard, Cherry and Rob), our families and our schools through three personal, individual accounts of the main influences on our formation and development as future teachers and educators. We are Billy’s contemporaries and grew in the same post-war world and our opportunities stemmed from the same education system. But in so many other ways, our experience and orientation to life and work were completely different. This chapter aims to understand this difference and the reasons for it and to account for the idealism and passion that eventually made us into teachers and reformers, inspired by an apparently simple story about Billy Casper, who missed out on the education and opportunities that opened for us. We set our growing up narratives in the historical context of the time and conclude with a discussion of the circumstances and individual characteristics that disposed us to become teachers and made us so receptive to our reading of Kestrel for a Knave.
We were post-war babies, born with much of Europe lying in ruins, the British economy virtually bankrupt and war-time rationing set to run until 1954, when restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat and bacon were finally lifted. Everything was in short supply, especially housing, and most cities were pockmarked with bomb damage and bombsites. School buildings were in poor shape and there were insufficient places for the baby-boomers to come. But the mood was not hopeless. Britain was second only to the United States in its share of world trade in manufactured goods; and there was near full employment as the war economy adjusted to peace. There were widespread demands for a better life as well as a growing confidence that economic planning and state intervention would reduce and eventually prevent the hardship and injustice experienced by many during the 1930s.[i]
Growing up in this post-war landscape presented our families with challenges and opportunities that shaped our formation as people and ultimately as teachers and educational leaders. We were much influenced by our parents and their friends who lived and fought their way through a grim and destructive war. Now they longed for a better, fairer but normal life for themselves and their families. They were determined to have real influence and control over their lives and to make decisions that were intended to improve our quality of life, both socially and vocationally, as we grew up.
We were the first in our families to know sixth form and university life; our educational experiences influenced our ambition to become teachers. Through these experiences we came to see ourselves as pathfinders, determined to achieve equality of opportunity for all. We identify the values, ideas and emerging principles that began to shape our lives and careers and predisposed us to be inspired by KES.
The Post-War Years (1945-1965)
The Labour government, elected in 1945, nationalised major industries and created the welfare state that continued to develop until the 1980s. This ‘cradle to the grave’ health and welfare service was proposed by the 1942 Beveridge Report[ii] that aimed to slay the five giants of want, ignorance, squalor, idleness and disease. It was helped to succeed by a period of sustained economic growth and nearly full employment through the 1950s and into 1960s. This led to labour shortages and encouraged governments to recruit from overseas, especially from the Caribbean. Despite good intentions, economic advance was uneven across all social groups. Low income and low status families were the least likely to see the benefit of increasing national prosperity[iii].
Public attitudes and social policy were transformed by the war, and the pressure for the state to play a more active role in people’s lives continued through the period[iv]. An increasingly diverse and prosperous population began to question many traditional assumptions and beliefs. In the 1960s this led to the reform of laws relating to capital punishment, homosexuality, abortion, and women’s employment rights, including equal pay[v]. Young people’s rising incomes and increased leisure helped the arrival of a teenage pop scene in the 1950s and provoked worry about the loss of older patterns of working class music and entertainment[vi]. On the world stage, the end of Empire and the arrival of the cold war engendered new anxieties and new uncertainties.
These developments provide the background for Billy Casper’s schooling and our own. Influenced by demands for ‘secondary education for all’, the 1944 Education Act[vii] retained grammar schools, replaced elementary schools with secondary moderns, introduced technical schools and abolished fee paying. However, only 279 technical schools were ever created[viii]. But children who showed promise could transfer from secondary modern schools to grammar schools later on.
The school leaving age was raised to 15 in 1947 with further provision for extending the leaving age to 16, when practicable. The local education authorities had a duty to provide school meals and free milk and allowed nursery schools and further education programmes to be set up through community colleges. Cambridgeshire and Leicestershire were pioneers in this respect. These changes, along with rapidly increasing pupil numbers, required large-scale building developments, the cost of which highlighted the difficulty of building the three types of school envisaged by the 1944 Education Act.
The government became increasingly out of touch with people’s rising aspirations. They failed to recognize the limitations, experienced by many families, of secondary modern schools. Grammar schools were more generously funded than secondary moderns and offered a pathway, through their sixth forms, to higher education but this was unavailable to those who failed the scholarship examination, known as the eleven plus. There were insufficient places at the grammar and technical schools for all deserving pupils and there was a developing public awareness that the selective system wasted talent by consigning children to unambitious secondary modern schools. On the basis of a decision made just after a child was aged ten, eighty percent of British children were denied access to academic education. Aspiring parents were less and less willing to accept their children’s exclusion from the main route to qualifications and better jobs.
This encouraged experiments with multi-lateral, bi-lateral and comprehensive formats and by the mid-1950s purpose-built comprehensive schools in London co-existed with established local grammar schools. Kidbrooke opened in 1954, Eltham Green in 1956 and Holland Park in 1958. Bernard (at Eltham Green) and Rob (at Impington, then a bilateral school) belonged to the first generation to attend non-selective schools and owed their opportunity to pioneering local authorities. The comprehensive school movement was now underway and was driven by both local Labour and Conservative leaders, often more committed to all-ability schools than their national leaders, who were slow to recognise the obvious limitations of selective education.
Selection was driven by intelligence testing, an important component of the eleven plus examination. It was based on the notion of fixed or innate ability. Psychologists like Cyril Burt[ix] believed children’s potential could be predicted by test results at eleven, with a chosen few suitable for higher academic studies like languages and science, while the remainder were better adapted to basic skills. But it was also shown that coaching and maturity could improve young people’s ability beyond that predicted by the eleven plus. This raised questions about whether children should be selected so early in their lives.
The selection process at age eleven was also problematic for primary schools that felt obliged to teach for success in the test at the expense of other aspects of the curriculum. The Plowden Report[x] marked a very significant change of direction for primary education. It praised child-centred approaches to learning and told readers that selection ‘made parents and children anxious’ and secondary moderns ‘had to contend with a sense of failure in their pupils’[xi].
The report appeared as the debate about secondary reorganization intensified and contributed to perceptions that premature selection, based on notions of ability that was fixed and innate, were mistaken and unfair. Primary voices joined the chorus of parents and teachers demanding a better deal for their children, regardless of ability.
Encouraged by campaigning groups around the country, many alert politicians became determined to end the injustice inflicted on children. This injustice, noted in the two key reports[xii] of the period, often reflected social divisions, with working class children much less likely to be selected for grammar school and also less likely to do well there.
Experts, policy-makers and politicians increasingly asked whether the country could afford to waste the talent of so many young people. The pressure for comprehensive reorganisation was building. The Labour government, elected in 1964, declared an intention to end selection at age eleven and eliminate separatism in secondary education. Circular 10/65[xiii] requested local education authorities to prepare and submit plans for reorganising on comprehensive lines.
Personal Memoirs
Growing up in South London – Bernard’s story
I started at Kidbrooke Park Junior Mixed Infants School in September 1951 and was distressed by separation from home and the crowd of strange new children. My tears eventually subsided as my day unfolded and I spotted fun activities, like writing on a slate. Back home, I lined up my teddies to call the register. This was their first day at school too. Despite these tribulations, I loved school and decided to become a teacher.
Arriving in the juniors, I was declared left-handed by my new teacher who dismissed me to the class below. I wanted to talk about this decision but was too nervous to speak. Soon we were preparing for the eleven plus, with a remorseless focus on reading, writing and arithmetic. By the end of the first year juniors I attained the dizzy heights of 28th in a ‘B’ stream class of 45 children.
In the second year I began to progress, although singing provided a humiliating setback. I was classified as a ‘grunter’ and excluded from lessons and school performances. Gradually I began to acquire ‘the knack’ of reading and started on classical children’s fiction, which opened my horizons beyond my south London existence.
The lessons intended to get us through the 11+ left little impression. The time was filled with repetitive exercises that did not nourish my eager mind. There was no history or geography, no drama or music. The looming examination was seen as a ‘do or die’ challenge that would determine our fate. Mother bought a book called First Aid in English and we did test papers. I found the intelligence test questions difficult, puzzles for me based on invisible logic. But despite everything, I climbed through the ranks to 3rd place in the B class.
My parents talked about sending me to private school if I didn’t pass the eleven plus, such was the reputation of the local secondary moderns. This troubled me, so I was hugely relieved to be one of the few who had passed but my father was not impressed with the promise of a grammar school education. He supported comprehensive education for everyone and decided to send me to the new Eltham Green (EGS) co-educational comprehensive. Mother was apprehensive. She feared me developing a vulgar working class accent. She also worried that peer pressure would influence me and destroy her dream of my going to university. But in the end, it was EGS for me.
EGS was formed from the merger of three secondary moderns. The headmaster, R H Davies, always wore a gown as he swept through morning assembly. He’d moved south from Sheffield City Grammar School to open this new comprehensive the previous year. He was always gracious and spoke quietly.
To me, this huge school consisted of congested stairs, crowded lifts and turbulent playgrounds. Early on, I was nervous in the playground and social areas and making friends was hard. On my first day, a rough-seeming youth knocked the cap from my head. I resolved not to emulate my tormentors or to lapse into the safety of silence. But I also longed for comradeship and to be accepted as one of the crowd.
The fifteen teaching groups in my year were streamed by ability, creating low ability disruptive groups where only hard-bitten teachers could avoid disorder. We were called by our surnames and uniform was emphasised. The ‘A’ stream followed an academic curriculum that included Latin. There were Speech Days, a madrigal choir and major musical productions. Top sets were assured they were ‘la crème de la crème’. Bright girls and boys were drawn to the young Oxbridge graduates who chose to join the early days of comprehensive education.
The common life of the school brought you into close contact with people from diverse backgrounds, whether you liked it or not. Some children were visibly less well cared for than others. Some students had raw edges that could lead them into trouble and many of my peers had to start earning aged fifteen. Sixth form numbers were small.
I became doubtful about streaming and worried about tumbling over the cliff edge into a humiliatingly low form. This prompted empathy and a desire to understand the misfortunes of others, less well supported by their parents and less prepared for reading, writing and talking. Nevertheless, some children from lower streams achieved great things. I learned to respect people who found their way through the maze, despite unpromising beginnings and to dislike the way children were sorted into status-based cells designed to match their needs.
At EGS I encountered privilege and disadvantage in equal measure and learned that home background was an important influence on future trajectories. My own happy school career did not blind me to parallel lives that coexisted with mine. I belonged to a minuscule minority that found its way to university and beyond but could not forget that social conditions favoured some of us but trapped many others in unrelenting adversity.
Looking back, I now think that the teachers adopted mainly didactic and sometimes domineering strategies that closed down the scope for noise and misbehaviour. Students from poor or dysfunctional homes were often written off as hopeless cases, expected to achieve very little. But I had a wonderful time at EGS. I was full of ideas about how schools should be developed and reformed.
I discovered history in 1957 when the teacher asked questions about early man. I found history lessons a better place for writing and discussion than English. History was an intrinsically interesting subject and my main pleasure in reading and writing about it came from speculating why people behave as they do.
When I was twelve my father gave me a portable typewriter and a Teach Yourself Typing book. My love affair with typing began. I typed anything and everything and became competent and fast within a year. In my cold bedroom I was delighted with the idea of myself as an author struggling in an upstairs garret. My earliest published article appeared in the school magazine during my second year at EGS. A teacher founded the paper with the help of a group of senior pupils. Intrinsic interest led me to write articles and help with magazine production, but there was another motive. Membership meant you were privileged, a trusty who could go to the teacher’s room rather than face the wind and cold at break and lunchtime.
I loved my parents but fought fierce battles with my mother, usually about bedtime and homework, and sometimes found my father stern and demanding. Their sustained intelligence, argumentativeness and open-mindedness must explain a lot about me. I was in love with the exciting life at school and the new possibilities opened for me by young, often left-wing teachers, from ancient universities.
I was in the top class for every subject and we were entered for as many of the Ordinary Level General Certificate of Education[xiv] subjects as possible at a young age. This did not always lead to success for me. Eventually I chose English, history and geography for Advance Level GCE (‘A’ level) and was delighted to leave the rest of the curriculum behind, especially science and mathematics. I remember the dullness of lessons in the lower sixth, with teachers spending weeks on end reading aloud from difficult texts. We were supposed to listen and make notes but I found this almost impossible. I developed a sense of intellectual isolation that co-existed with energetic involvement in the social and cultural life around me. I became a prefect, ran the EGS chess club, arranging all the matches, played hockey for the school and edited Vox, the school newspaper.
I was not enjoying my ‘A’ level subjects and found it difficult to get down to serious study. I wanted to be a teacher, sure enough, but was doubtful about my likely grades. What about training college? Until the spring and summer of 1963, I was at risk of losing my way. Then, at the suggestion of my English teacher, I signed up for a residential course in Manchester. Almost overnight, the Critical Quarterly conference made me a more determined, better-informed student and provided new ways to make sense of literature. It also introduced me to contemporaries who equalled or surpassed my ability to argue and debate ideas.
We began to discuss life after school. We looked at university and college prospectuses and my history teacher suggested that I should try for Cambridge. Boosted by a new goal, my work became more ambitious. The Cambridge Entrance Examinations, taken in the school dental room in November 1964, marked the end of my learning at EGS. Afterwards I walked home, drained and sad.
Eventually though, and to my immense surprise, I was called to an interview at Gonville & Caius College. Not long after, I was awarded an exhibition to read modern history.
Growing up in rural Norfolk - Cherry’s story
I see myself as a very anxious 10-year-old, standing nervously next to my headteacher as he assesses my school garden. My report will hold a mark for how well I have kept my garden. My father was a passionate and outstanding gardener so it is no surprise that I was awarded 10 out of 10 for my work. The plants came from his garden and I was tutored in how to look after them. This was one of only two occasions when my father had any direct input into my schooling.
In my early years, probably until secondary school at age eleven, home was a very happy place. Even on very limited resources, my parents were good homemakers. The house was orderly, calm and welcoming. The hub of life was the warm living room. We were almost self-sufficient as my father grew all the vegetables and reared animals. In material terms we were poor and once the family came along my father went to work on the land because it paid more. His work ethic was extraordinary, holding down up to three separate jobs. My mother knitted and sewed and frequently worked into the early hours to complete orders for local shops. Poverty is relative and we did not see ourselves as poor. There were many families much less well off.
It was commonplace to play on the pavements and in the streets so we spent a great deal of time outdoors playing games in mixed groups. I could bowl as well as the boys and in the summer we went swimming in the local lake. We had rickety bikes and also built trolleys and raced those.
Amongst all this I always felt happy and ‘tucked in’. This is my favourite feeling from childhood. I can recall my mum often holding us close, tucking in my vest and shirt and feeling warm and properly ‘put together’. It was a free and happy childhood, and primary school only added to the glow.
I went to Necton Voluntary Aided (VA)[xv] Primary School in 1957. I could not have been happier; there was colour and life, with order and harmony. At home we had to climb up on to big chairs for meals or to do some drawing. Here they had chairs the size of the children and everyone had their own chair and desk. I loved it from the start. Rote learning of tables was wonderful as I had a very good memory. Learning to read and write was straightforward and I caught on fast. I was not particularly good at drawing but I enjoyed those extensive periods of calm and concentration. I can still recall the pungent smell of the flowers we drew. Mrs Taylor was fair but fierce and I loved it. There were so many books at school. I have no memory of anyone ever reading to me at home. My parents were struggling hard to provide the necessary things for their large family and there was no time for such things as reading together.
There were approximately 75 pupils in the school and three teachers. Obviously, we all knew each other as we knew most of the families in the village. This clearly must have added to our sense of wellbeing and security at the time.
There was an incremental shift in pressure as we moved up the school with more tests, especially in spelling and mental arithmetic. I remember there was a good deal of chanting times tables and vocalising your learning but little in the way of any written tests. For the few of us chosen to take the eleven plus the whole process accelerated with daily practice with the special workbooks for the test. No work went home and therefore I was able to enjoy lessons and then go home to the boisterous play and loud banter of my brothers. They were funny, warm, protective and, at times, quite lawless. So the primary years presented no anguish. I loved the routines, the orderliness, the learning styles, the personal investment, my friends and my success there. I flourished because home and school complemented each other and allowed me to enjoy both domains without anxiety, embarrassment or shame.
Whilst delighted to have succeeded in the eleven plus and to be the only one in my family to have passed, I was sad to think I was going to be separated from my friends and from my village life; all the other pupils from my school would be joining Swaffham Secondary Modern School.
East Dereham High School for Girls was a small, two-form entry, 11-18 grammar school for about 350 pupils. However, to me, it seemed like the big world with ‘serious’ dedicated work spaces which smelt of the subject. It was hard to feel grown-up there, though, with the older girls teasing and mocking you for wearing your ‘grow into’ uniform two sizes too big. They fought to steal your beret and pull its bobble off. I was anxious about having to admit that mine had been so ‘initiated’, especially after mum had spent many hours sewing on school badges and name labels. My parents were exceptionally pleased and proud and raised whatever funds were required to meet the uniform and equipment demands.
Although not very aware politically, I had a real sense of dynamic change. This was a time of wonderful anticipation against a backdrop of significant political and social events. I remember things like the Beatles, the Profumo affair, The Great Train Robbery and the Kennedy assassinations so clearly.
From being the big fish in the little village pond, it took a while to find my feet in secondary school. I was now in a class where two-thirds of the girls were from business and professional families and they always quickly put their hands up with the right answers. This was a new awakening as I became aware of class and different cultures. Nevertheless, this was the time of great ‘levellers’ with the birth and rise of the teenager, accompanied by the amazing pop culture of the 1960s. In my early years at high school I cut quite a dash with my Mary Quant asymmetrical haircut and false eyelashes.
Fortunately, though, I was bright and could manage most subjects with ease. I enjoyed the days at school and the very orderly routines that went along with it. As I felt more comfortable with school life, home life was becoming harder. Most of my brothers were headstrong teenagers, who wanted to be out with their mates in coffee bars and pubs. These were unsettled times that my parents were not prepared for and did not know how to manage. The bungalow we had moved to was a much larger place but still seemed cramped with all these strapping lads there.
I had now met one of my biggest challenges. How do I participate in family life and enjoy the banter, yet also get my homework done to a standard that would match the understanding I demonstrated at school?
At the end of the third year you could choose from a limited range of optional subjects and, as I was already committed to two languages (French and Spanish), this meant that I was allowed to give up all three sciences (physics, chemistry and biology). For me, the sciences required real work whereas my recall in modern languages, history, geography and English literature meant that I did not have to work hard in those subjects to get by. This suited me well as I fell in with the girls deemed to be ‘the rogues’ who lived on the edge of grammar school life. We really engaged with the ‘60s rock culture and going out to meet boys. Revision for examinations was relegated to ‘what-can-you-get-away-with’ and so I made choices for some very bad reasons. No one helped me at a time when I needed someone to show me that it was possible to be ‘cool’ and do well in your school work.
Rote learning was central to our education. Spelling and vocabulary tests were a weekly feature of English and modern languages lessons and we regularly learned poems for English homework. At GCE ‘O’ level we were trained to support our points in English literature essays by quoting text we had memorised. I loved this - and can still remember the whole last paragraph of Great Expectations. Your success in the examination system then depended very heavily on recall and very specific detail. Every point had to be correct and you were trained extensively on irregular verbsbecause you knew they would be in the examination papers, specifically to trip up the unsuspecting student. This style of learning suited me fine.
The challenge and conflict between home and school became more marked as the years went by. There were several problems, especially studying in a cold room in a boisterous household, the inability of my parents to assist and understand my predicament, the increasing demands of school work and the huge drive to be part of the local rock and pop lifestyle which inevitably involved boyfriends. Gradually, because of the latter, schoolwork began to suffer.
I cannot remember why or how I separated myself off from my friends and decided to re-apply myself but I managed to get eight mainly good grade ‘O’ level GCEs and enter the sixth form. I kicked myself, of course, for not applying myself earlier; I could have done so much better. However, I was now on the journey towards higher education. I think the main reasons for the turnaround were the need for an ordered and structured life combined with the positive influence of the deputy head who had confidence in me and promoted advanced level study. Most of my friends who left school at sixteen went to work in banks, the Norwich Union insurance offices or the Tax Office. Clerical work did not appeal to me.
Life in the sixth form was relaxed, creative and focused. We were the movers and shakers with our own common room, our own plays, pantomimes and sketches. We took responsibility for many assemblies and even covering for absent teachers. Home had changed considerably with only four of us now present. The new bungalow had central heating and I had a large warm room with a desk. There was a Saturday job and a boyfriend. I could never keep the proportions of these things in harmony and fell short of expectations at school on more than one occasion but I grew socially, intellectually and in maturity. These were happy and creative times. I flourished in extra-curricular drama and grew in confidence accordingly.
We all studied three ‘A’ levels and General Studies; my subjects were English, French, and Spanish. The teachers helped me stay focused and encouraged me to apply for higher education. Certainly no one in my wider family had gone to university and I cannot think of anyone in our village who went to university before me.
In those days, teachers taught in ways that suited them. We knew how to read them and bobbed and weaved around it all. I doubt if they were held to account over outcomes; it seemed to be our job to meet the offers we were given from universities. We had no technological aids and chalk dust settled on every surface. We listened and questioned, practised and challenged ourselves. Teachers set copious homework and they marked it promptly and returned it. I am grateful for that; in this simple way, assessment and feedback were strong.
Although the school had many disadvantages, it was helpful to me to be taught in fairly homogeneous groups where there were strong levels of literacy and numeracy and where lessons progressed at a swift pace. We were taught to be good listeners who could sustain interest and we were trained to be copious note-takers since there were no handouts. We were introduced to challenging texts at an early age and it worked for me. I encountered many wonderful texts without the requirement to write essays about them. Play readings in class were one of my favourite activities. There was a natural progression from this to developing our own club in the sixth form, just for reading plays aloud in our lunch breaks.
Overall, life in the sixth form seemed a good preparation for university (University of East Anglia at Norwich).
Growing up in Suffolk and Cambridge – Rob’s story
I treasure memories of a warm and engaged home life. I loved being read to and watching, sometimes helping, dad as he used tools to make things. For me, words and language were akin to screwdrivers and fret saws. They were tools for getting things done or made. I was inquisitive, talkative, demanding and keen to experiment, sometimes dangerously, with anything interesting. I loved playing with my friends but found no joy in ball games. Expeditions by coach or train were eagerly anticipated but church on a Sunday, less so. Thanks to mum, by the time I started school, I could write my name and read a bit.
My first day at school was great. I was very pleased with myself and proud. I hadn’t cried and, unlike many, I could tie my shoelaces and button my own flies. The school was virtually new, part of our post-war council estate in Bury St Edmunds. There were 51 boys and girls in our class. I rapidly progressed to sit in the 13th desk. That seemed good to me. We just took ranking for granted.
Details of teaching and learning are lost to my memory and I made good progress. What seemed easy to me, others found hard. I learned to read fluently, mastered full-blown cursive writing and could manage my sums. Painting lessons were great and PE and singing were dreaded.
I was short sighted and had to wear glasses. Predictably I was teased. Afraid but resolute, I honed my verbal skills and became able to give as good as I got. This was essential. Others used their fists but I couldn’t and wouldn’t because we’d been brought up to be against all forms of violence.
There is a flood of other memories that contributed to my development. We were taken to the cinema and the pantomime. Mum used her nursing books to explain things like the digestive system and the skeleton. My response was to turn these into drawings of mechanical things such as robots. Technology and engineering fascinated me. I became obsessed with how cars worked. I found the answer in an old encyclopaedia hidden at the back of our bookcase.
In 1958 Dad got a new job in Cambridge and we were set to move. My secure little world and my reasonable position in the kid hierarchy suddenly came tumbling down. I was both excited and scared.
My parents bought a house in Cambridge and I was consigned to the dreary St Philips Church of England (C of E)[xvi] Boys Junior School and this was traumatic. The classrooms had been adapted from massive rooms, each with several tiers. The desks were old-fashioned contraptions combining seat and desk. Writing was done with pens dipped into ink. I’d never seen anything like this before and the boys were, on the whole, scruffy, smelly and badly dressed.
I was soon picked out as bright and transferred to another class. I gradually made friends with a few other like-minded boys. Over the years that followed I came to love that school and felt very much a part of it.
The teachers were friendly, hearty souls, blessed with a real interest in my circle of friends. The head was austere and authoritarian but he took a real interest in my intellectual development and overall well-being. We worked hard at keeping on the right side of him as now and again boys would be seen leaving his room repressing tears and clutching their obviously painful backsides. No other teacher ever laid a hand or a cane on a boy and the atmosphere was genial.
Each class teacher brought something new to our learning. I had a stab at gardening and playing the violin. We were taken to the Royal Agricultural Show. We took part in school plays and I loved acting. One teacher’s downfall, for me, was the introduction of football. Oh, how I hated PE and games, I just couldn’t see the point. Another took us swimming, another skill I failed at. But I did win a city essay competition on preparing for nuclear war. I was part of an elite group that was taken out of class for coaching for the elevenplus. Here the head rehearsed us in intelligence tests and complicated sums. We also helped prepare the school milk and rang the school bell.
School learning was only part of development for me. Hidden away at home was another even more interesting agenda. Dad was busy renovating the house with skilled help. I watched assiduously how all this was done and it stimulated my practical instincts.
Each Saturday I would rush to the library to change my four books. Favourites would include anything to do with railways and space travel. I acquired a torch and could read under the covers at night. Science entered my life, not through school where it wasn’t taught - the general issues of ‘how’ and ‘why’ fuelled my eager mind. Whenever I could scratch together the money I would buy a book on science. This led to a microscope and a chemistry set as Christmas presents.
I began to realise that rote learning was a huge difficulty. I could remember anything that was diagrammatic, but learning and recalling factual knowledge was problematic. The main difficulty was the multiplication tables with which I struggled and struggled. Ideas and concepts were grasped with ease. Skills (excluding sport and music) were mastered straightforwardly. Linguistic arguments were my forte but rote learning facts was beyond me and still is.
My sister was allocated a place in the new grammar stream at a school with a growing reputation called Impington Village College (IVC). She regaled us with happy stories and explained that the 650 children encompassed all abilities and came from all sorts of backgrounds, rural and urban. Mum eulogised this egalitarian ethic and I cottoned on to this place as somewhere I’d like to be.
When the time came to fill in the preferences form for my secondary school, in the event that I pass the eleven plus, I was clear I didn’t want to go to a stuffy old grammar school for boys. I didn’t want to be part of a separatist outfit. I wanted to be with boys and girls of all types. The comprehensive ideal was in my blood already. And so IVC was the only school named on the form.
The period between 1961 and 1968, my secondary school years, was a period of great expansion for the Gwynne family. Better jobs led to a better standard of living and improving affluence. We became steadily more middle class. Gradually the quality of life and the opportunities my parents wanted for their children took shape, despite all the hard work and sacrifice this involved.
And so in September 1961 I moved to IVC, one of Henry Morris’s remarkable chain of community colleges housing a secondary school, a centre for adult education and recreational classes, youth club and a base for public services, like health. I marvelled at threading my way to lessons through old men heading to the snooker room, push chairs lined up at the clinic and earnest women heading for a talk in the lecture room.
John Brackenbury (JB), the Warden, was a remarkable man. He came to IVC with no background in secondary education. He was a sensitive and emotional gentle giant, a philosopher and a poet with a background in youth work. His key gift was unleashing energy and talent in other people. How one ‘bottles’ IVC’s unique, complex and multi-faceted organisation is a challenge that many have tackled and mostly given up on. I’m not alone in singing its praises. So many people I’ve met through life have agreed that IVC was a unique place in so many different respects.
The teachers were a special bunch. They were not only keenly interested in our well-being but they were openly friendly and did not look down on the students. We were treated with huge respect and encouraged every inch of the way towards becoming balanced individuals. JB, through his personal example, was key to this. We were expected to be enterprising and outlandish when it was appropriate.
It must be mentioned that we were led to recognise a whole school community. It did not matter whether one came from this village or that, had professional parents or unskilled parents, rich or poor. We were all treated with compassion and equality, whether we were in the grammar stream or in the ‘remove’. In a similar way, the presence of adults using the college was just a normal part of everyday life.
It is important to note that, by today’s standards, many things were not great. The overall quality of teaching was probably only just good enough. A lot of it was disorganised and chaotic, marking of work and homework was erratic. It was fairly easy to distract teachers through silly behaviour. Progress was not monitored very well and the demands placed on able students were certainly not stringent enough. But the whole atmosphere was jovial and friendly. On one occasion, a teacher was tied to a tree by older students; they demanded a ransom for charity to secure his release. It was viewed as a formative and fun moment.
The curriculum enabled an unbalanced diet. I got through GCE ‘O’ levels without a humanities subject or a foreign language. I chose a range of subjects that played to my strengths and kept me free from the burden of learning vast quantities of factual information. My choices were rationalised as being the ones appropriate for becoming a railway engineer. There was an easy-going atmosphere redolent of the rural Cambridgeshire of the time, so we were not put under huge pressure to achieve high grades or focus on the purely academic.
At both school and home during these years I began to ‘take shape’. IVC was an essential part of that shaping – more through relationships than structure. What emerged was a boy with a deep interest in technology and science, albeit with a quiet interest in enthralling fiction, play acting and religion. I had absolutely no interest in sport or music, lacking athleticism and co-ordination. I became very skilled in metalwork and technical drawing which, combined with a monopolising interest in railways, led me into model engineering and the building of live steam engines. My lathe and engineering workshop became my main mode of expression. Physics was great because I could do it by working things out – there was no need for the dreaded rote learning of facts.
At the same time, my parents were increasingly unable to offer support other than moral, emotional and loving. They were unfamiliar with the ingredients of a good education but absolutely determined that I would succeed and have a better start in life than they had.
I became something of an organisational leader (both at home and school), always at the forefront of ideas, plans and activities and this included holidays, school trips and visits that I often had a hand in organising. I enjoyed the close friendship of a small group of like-minded boys but my endeavours and desire to have a girlfriend eluded me. Instead I just got on with my various activities and enjoyed the status of opinion former and leader.
This pioneering spirit was further fuelled by being part of the first sixth form at the college. Eighteen of us began to shape the traditions of the sixth form and worked happily alongside teachers who had little or no experience of ‘A’ level teaching. The ‘great adventure’ was the motor vehicle project. Six of us bought an old van and rebuilt it on the school premises. Once refurbished, we drove it precariously across Europe, through Norway to Bergen and back. At the time this was a unique adventure, carried off to great local acclaim.
During the lower sixth I happened on a copy of the 1963 report by John Newsom – ‘Half Our Future’[xvii] which I skim read, almost in a frenzy. Here it was at last! Here was a plea for the neglected half of the education world; an accdount of what had gone wrong for my primary chums consigned to secondary modern schools. Here was the justification for what JB was doing at Impington. It was my call to arms.
My mission was now clear. I would strive to create another IVC. Thereafter I bought and devoured the Times Educational Supplement[xviii] every Friday, gobbling up the education discourse of the time and studying the job adverts at all levels in order to plot my way through. The quest was to become a community college principal very rapidly. The stepping-stones were all marked out and physics teaching would be a means to an end. Goodbye to a career in engineering and hello to a career in science education and school leadership.
Discussion
We came from loving, encouraging homes, passed the eleven plus and grew into assiduous, confident ‘A’ stream students, adopted by well-qualified teachers and headed towards sixth form and university. But we did not inhabit a glass bowl of middle class excellence. Cherry was selected for a grammar school but her village provided a continuing insight into lives other than her own, while her brothers attended secondary moderns and reported the rough and tumble of their days. Rob and Bernard attended all ability schools and were alert to the poverty and disadvantage suffered by others. We met and respected students from difficult backgrounds and recognised early on that comprehensive schools did not necessarily offer low stream children a fair chance of success.
Rob and Bernard aspired to become teachers (and heads) at a precocious age. Their pioneering schools nurtured their keen interest in education and social change. Bernard began to question streaming as an early teenager; Rob read the Newsom Report while still at school. They identified with teachers who asked them to envisage a more democratic and less divided society. Cherry was initially less concerned about school processes but her social awareness and empathy with people equipped her to understand what happened around her. We grew up in a period of fierce educational debate and could see around us the unequal treatment of young people of varied abilities and backgrounds. We were disposed to side with the underdog and to share our good fortune as successful students with classmates from less favourable circumstances.
The complementary relationship between our home and school lives is a feature of our early formation and has become an important theme in our professional lives. Our parents wanted us to have an education that escaped them and supported our aspirations without question. Cherry was very conscious of the things school could offer her that her home life could not. Rob was enabled to carry his home-based enthusiasms for technology and science into school and see his learning in these areas formalised. Bernard hoped to emulate his father’s passion for writing by getting articles into the school magazine.
We enjoyed stability as we grew up and came to recognise the importance of the safe, defined spheres in which we moved. Bernard’s easy access to central London, for example, provided him with a wide range of cultural opportunities, from bookshops, museums and the theatre to various unremarkable jobs filling the space between school and university. Cherry found village life friendly and supportive while Rob recruited Impington friends for his various exploits. We were grounded in our families and communities and derived security as well as support from friends, neighbours and local connections in politics, religion or other less high-minded activities. Reading KES, we were quick to understand the difference between Billy’s life in an isolated Yorkshire coalfield and our upbringing in the relatively prosperous south.
Throughout our schooling, we clearly recognised the impact of teachers as role models and we each have our teacher heroes. There was John Brackenbury at Impington for Rob; the deputy at Cherry’s school who introduced new possibilities and horizons; and the young teachers at EGS who stimulated Bernard to organise the chess club, edit the school newspaper and to apply for Cambridge. We saw teachers as catalysts in our lives, influences beyond the curriculum knowledge they purveyed, and began to envisage future careers emulating their role in our positive educational experiences.
[i] The United Nations Statistics records show that in 1950 USA world trade was valued at $6335m. In the sane year UK world trade value was $6085m.
[iii] ??
[iv] Todd, S. (2014)
[v] ??
[vi] Hoggart, R. (1957)
[vii] The Education Act 1944 (7 and 8 Geo 6 c. 31) made numerous major changes in the provision and governance of secondary schools in England and Wales. It is also known as the "Butler Act" after the President of the Board of Education, R. A. Butler.
[viii] ??
[ix] Burt, C. (1917)
[x] The Plowden Report is the unofficial name for the 1967 report of the Central Advisory Council For Education (England) into Primary education in England chaired by Lady Plowden. The report, entitled Children and their Primary Schools, reviewed primary education in a wholesale fashion.
[xi] Ditto
[xii] The Gurney-Dixon Report (1954) Early Leaving identified that even if children of semi-skilled and unskilled workers got into grammar schools they were more likely to leave early without gaining qualification.
The Crowther Report – Fifteen to Eighteen (1959) raised the prospect aof and case for the raising of the school leaving age.
[xiii] The Department for Education and Science (DES) produced regular policy circulars. Circular 10/65 was the tenth such document published in 1965.
[xiv] The General Certificate of Education (GCE) at Ordinary level (‘O’ level) was the predecessor to the current General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). It catered at subject level for the most able pupils only. The Advance level (‘A’ level) is still in use and is the mainstay of qualifications at age 18.
[xv] Voluntary Aided (VA) schools are run by trusts (usually the Church) and control their own affairs using public money. Voluntary Controlled (VC) schools are overseen by trusts but manged by the local authority.
[xvi] The Church of England (C of E) has nearly 5000 VA and VC schools in England and Wales.
[xvii] The Newsom Report of 1963 looked at the education of average and below average ability pupils.
[xviii] The Times Education Supplement (TES) is a weekly newspaper about education. Prior to the internet age it was the main vehicle for advertising teaching and educational appointments.
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