Chapter 4: Becoming Teachers

 Chapter 4: Becoming Teachers

 

Introduction

We prepared to become teachers and entered the classroom during the most active period in the reorganisation of British schools on comprehensive lines. Our individual memoirs of this phase describe our time at university and trace the early stages of our careers through PGCE placements (Cherry and Rob) and academic research (Bernard), then reflect on our work as new recruits in first appointments. We saw ourselves as the vanguard of a reforming wave. 

 

We belonged to the post-war generation that came of age in the 1960s when the defining mood was towards inclusive, democratic, socially aware ideas and the institutions needed to secure equal opportunities and encouragement for every child. Momentum was gathering as new comprehensive schools, new universities and the expansion of further education increased opportunity and reduced institutional barriers to students’ progress. 

 

We envisaged careers as teachers, with a mission to improve secondary education so young people could enjoy possibilities and experiences unknown to their parents. We believed in all-ability education where there would be no sheep and no goats, only students whose welfare and progress were of the highest importance.

 

Caroline Benn, co-founder of the Campaign for Comprehensive Education, and Professor Brian Simon at Leicester University, published their report on progress towards a national system of all-ability schools in 1970, with the symbolic title Half Way There[i]. The Conservatives, returned to office in that year, removed the compulsion for local authorities to reorganise but Margaret Thatcher, the new Secretary of State, ended up approving more comprehensive schemes than anyone else. By the mid-1970s, reform was nearing completion, though some local authorities (e.g. Kent, Lincolnshire, Tameside) retained selection and grammar schools.

 

Rob bought and devoured the Times Educational Supplement every Friday, absorbing the educational discourse of the time and studying job advertisements to plot his way through the ranks. He went on to teach physics but was inspired by John Brackenbury, the warden[ii] at Impington, and set himself the goal of becoming a community college principal by the age of thirty-five. But teaching disadvantaged children proved more difficult than he anticipated. 

 

As a result of his time at Eltham Green, one of the first comprehensives in London, Bernard became a campaigner for all-ability, co-educational schooling. Like Rob, he was eager to become a head and shape the future by working to create a genuinely comprehensive curriculum and pedagogy. But he was diverted by academic research at York University. As a result, he began his teaching career in a selective grammar school and was scorned by friends who thought he was betraying his principles.

 

Cherry grew up in a relatively poor, rural area of Norfolk and was unusual in her family and village in passing the eleven plus and attending a small girls’ grammar school. She loved the ‘indulgence’ of education for education’s sake and the stimulating course structure at university. But she was less direct in her career planning than Rob and Bernard. The idea of teaching began during the third year of her degree course, spent working at a Lycée[iii] in France and grew when she took a course in teaching English as a foreign language. 

 

The Setting for Change (1965 - 1979)

During this period, the post-war economic boom was waning as prices began to rise, productivity failed to improve and the balance of payments became a serious problem. These factors, combined with ever-rising expectations and a significant growth in union power, resulted in increasing unrest. Tensions began to develop between governments (of both parties) and unions, leading to strikes. The miners’ strike, now deeply ingrained in the collective memory of the early 1970s, led to the three-day week and power cuts.  To add to these many problems, there was also serious civil unrest in Northern Ireland and an agonising debate about whether or not the UK should join the European Common Market, later to become the European Union. Also, spurred on by youthful rebellion in West Germany (Berlin in particular), British students began to engage in protests ranging from concern about the Vietnam War to how universities should become more democratic. With students occupying the Sorbonne and battles on the streets of Paris in 1968, social revolution seemed briefly possible.

 

This was the background for an increasingly negative reaction to comprehensive and progressive education. Black Paper 1[iv], was the first of five widely publicised collections of anti-comprehensive, anti-progressive articles published between 1969 and 1977. The papers began as a reaction to student protests but soon became an assault on the supposed collapse of education and standards. 

 

Fledgling, recently reorganised comprehensives found themselves struggling with many of the problems they inherited from the secondary modern schools, and became targets for right-wing critics who loathed the progressive climate of the 1960s. Rhodes Boyson, a secondary head and later MP, claimed there were ‘three crises: standards are static or falling; many bright children are functioning below their mental age; and an increasing segment of the population is unable to cope with everyday life because of illiteracy.’[v]

 

Campaigners for progressive education and many teachers had a different perspective. They saw the end of selection as the way to achieve social progress for deprived working-class children. They wanted to emphasise the role of personal growth and democratic citizenship in education for everyone. A few passionate headteachers fiercely and fearlessly pushed forward new methods of teaching and new democratic approaches to running schools. Some comprehensives, like Countesthorpe in Leicestershire and the Sutton Centre in Mansfield, epitomised a new and eventually short-lived vision of democratic, progressive education.

 

As young teachers in comprehensive schools, however, we were more concerned with behavioural issues that stemmed from streaming and the limited opportunities for less successful and less advantaged children to achieve satisfactory qualifications. We were intrigued by progressive experiments and shared the idea that children should be active in their learning, but we were also aware of the risks of radical reform and were sensitive to the changing political mood. Comprehensive reorganisation did not solve the problem of how children from less prosperous and/or difficult backgrounds should be educated. Teachers blamed rough youngsters and negligent parents for poor behaviour but sometimes adopted confrontational strategies that made matters worse. The teacher attitudes captured by KES and Lumley Secondary Modern persisted in many classrooms.

 

By the early 1970s, there were huge variations in school systems across the country and the rate of reorganisation was very uneven. Norfolk, for example remained untouched by the comprehensive campaign until much later. In this period, local authorities, teachers and parents were arguing a great deal about the shape and size of comprehensive schools but little about what went on inside them.  Key issues such as streaming, setting and curriculum were not the focus during reorganisation. The issues of size and transfer age predominated. Some protagonists argued that all-ability schools would need a large intake at age 11 or age 14 to generate viable numbers for an effective sixth form[vi]. This view assumed that a relatively small proportion of students would stay on beyond age 16. In some areas this belief led to the creation of very large comprehensive schools, with ten or more forms of entry. In others, such as Hertfordshire, five forms of entry were deemed sufficient.

 

Some systems were designed to make the best to use existing plant and preserve the revered status of local grammar schools. Alec Clegg’s[vii] ‘13-18’ model for parts of the West Riding was a pragmatic choice. The grammar school became the upper school and retained its sixth form, while the secondary modern became a feeder middle school for children aged 9 to 13. Rural areas, such as Rutland, chose to make the grammar school a sixth form college while the remaining secondary modern schools became 11-16 comprehensives, often with an added responsibility for community education. The Leicestershire plan[viii] challenged the traditional idea that children should transfer to secondary education at age 11. The county established 11-14 high schools from which students would transfer to 14-18 upper schools. The argument was that after three years of general secondary schooling, young people should choose between an academic, technical or vocational specialism.

 

Another issue appeared in the midst of these debates, the Raising of the School Leaving Age (ROSLA). In 1972 it became mandatory for all children to stay at school until age 16. Some argued this made good educational sense; some argued it was an expedient solution to the growing problem of unemployment[ix]. At a stroke a substantial number of children had to be provided with an extra year of education. Rob, as noted later, observed the problems this caused during his first teaching post and saw how it led to the development of new and sometimes ill-considered curriculum developments. But it also resulted in the beginnings of a real debate on the comprehensive curriculum; on new approaches to pastoral care; and on the development of a common examination system.

 

Britain’s economic problems steadily worsened through the 1970s and necessitated heavy cuts in public expenditure.  This led to a change from an emphasis on taxation and public spending towards controlling the money supply and cutting the budget. It had important repercussions as schooling was increasingly criticised for failing to provide the skilled labour the economy required. A long process began in which educational goals were increasingly defined in terms of skills and training for the workplace. Schooling was expected to become more utilitarian in the hope of securing improved productivity and higher growth rates.

 

By the time the Conservatives came to office in 1979, state schools were identified as a significant obstacle to a more skilled and effective workforce. The new government was only too keen to connect a disappointing economic performance with systemic ‘educational failure’ – a slight on comprehensive schools[x]. This developing climate was to have profound implications for our future as we became middle leaders and deputy heads and found ourselves negotiating circumstances very different from those we experienced in our early days.

 

Personal Memoirs

 

Bernard’s Story

‘You’re made,’ exclaimed my delighted father on hearing that I had a place at Cambridge, his egalitarian beliefs now in some doubt. My parents played no part in my choice of subject, college or course but they supported me immensely and were exhilarated by my success.

 

I was the first student from EGS to go to Cambridge and I was the first person in my family ever to win a place at university. Once at Cambridge, however, no one remarked on my comprehensive origins. When I went up in 1965 I blended in with everyone else and made lifelong friends with a mixture of people from diverse backgrounds.

 

Initially, I was socially and intellectually bewildered by Cambridge. At one level, I embraced the middle class rituals and quickly adopted the terminology of lunch, tea, dinner and supper; was almost flattered by participating in grand feasts and reading newspapers in the Junior Common Room. I missed my family very much and typed hundreds of letters home describing these new experiences, half to impress them and half to distance myself from aristocratic pretension.

 

Cambridge was self-congratulatory to an extraordinary degree and I was uncertain of my role and ability to succeed in such a place. This was the discreet appeal of the bourgeoisie, and I was charmed and repelled at the same time. My identity was reinforced at one level and challenged at another, as I needed to find my own social space, beyond my parents’ experience, but also without losing my roots in their world. I was less charmed, however, by the academic programme. We had to write one essay a week; we chose whether to attend any lectures from a vast printed catalogue and we had an hour with an academic specialist (graduate student or established don) at which essays were read and discussion took place. 

 

At the end of my first year, I just survived the exams and received a warning. I really had not adjusted to new demands and unstructured time. The second year was better. I met my future wife on holiday in Greece and proposed to her a few months later. She was exactly what I needed, a totally reliable friend and partner who revived my common sense and helped restore the domestic happiness stripped away from me by immersion in a boarding school type place. It helped that my second year supervisors were more congenial and better teachers. Although I visited Ann in York every other weekend, we worked hard together and I learned how to organise everything towards the writing of examination answers.

 

In my final year, I had a room of my own. This further reduced the impact of the male boarding school ethos on my existence and behaviour. With my private and domestic arrangements moving towards security, I coped better with Cambridge and felt more at ease. Ann introduced me to her teachers in the education department. Harry Rée, the professor in charge, embodied values and roles that attracted me. He had been a headmaster and was progressive, liberal and pro-comprehensive. Our simple plan was that Ann should find a teaching job in or around York while I’d apply for a place on the university’s Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) course.

 

I wish sometimes that I’d stuck with that plan. But my degree was better than expected and I won an award to study for a doctorate at York University. I decided to look at the birth and growth of the Labour Party in the West Riding of Yorkshire and explored Ramsay MacDonald’s efforts to steer his party away from revolution towards an educational project that would transform British society. Life as a post-graduate student was lonely and my supervisor showed little interest in my attempts to master the writing of a doctoral thesis. Frustrated, I diverted my energy into education and worked with the Schools Council General Studies Project (GSP)[xii] at the university.

 

I met with teachers and lecturers to talk about education; discovered resource-based learning; wrote and printed teaching materials; embarked on a football management project and was encouraged to become a headmaster as soon as possible to implement the GSP’s radical ideas. All my school experiences prepared me to be interested in and stimulated by this environment. We were inventing a new pedagogy to loosen the grip of didactic teaching so that children could debate and discuss as they learned. Ann’s Nuffield Science[xiii]textbooks introduced me to investigative, experimental methods that seemed to have great potential for humanities lessons.

 

Towards the end of my time at York, the GSP director told me about a vacancy for a history teacher at the Haberdashers’ Aske’s School in North London. He was clear that a PGCE was not necessary for a good honours graduate and that I should apply straight away. I agonised on the morality of working in a selective school but did not hesitate for long. The idea of beginning at Haberdashers’ was appealing, especially as I had no personal knowledge of grammar and private education. My friends disagreed and gave me a hard time. What was a comprehensive schoolboy and socialist thinking about, selling his soul to wealthy north Londoners? But the plan proved sound. I was to see very bright students in action and greatly improve my understanding of the full range and variety of the school system.

 

I secured the post, moved to London with Ann and arrived at the Haberdashers’ Aske’s School at Elstree in September 1971 for my first day as a history teacher. I was new, untrained and unprepared, I had almost no material, few notes, no overhead transparencies, no worksheets – I had a timetable but no idea what lessons lay ahead.

 

The head of the history greeted me with a sardonic expression and rebuked me for wearing a fisherman’s sweater, knitted by Ann to keep me warm while motorcycling to school. The senior master took the new men aside to brief us but I was more concerned about the history syllabus. There was nothing in writing and the head of department was very busy. There was another unpleasant surprise that term when I travelled to York for my doctoral viva. The thesis was referred for major amendments. In love with teaching, I had no interest in returning to doctoral work so accepted masters degree instead. This seemed to be the end of my academic career.

 

The concentration of brilliant students was remarkable. There were about 150 pupils in each year group and 40 of these won Oxbridge places every year. My first timetable involved teaching four different sixth form groups, including seventh term historians preparing to win exhibitions and scholarships. I was also assigned junior forms, including one in the prep school, coached hockey (there was an all-weather surface) and otherwise plunged myself into school activities, including the staff play. Teachers were waitress-served lunch in a separate dining hall and enjoyed unexpected treats such as jugged hare. At Christmas there was a concert for everyone at St. Martin’s in the Fields and the head entertained the staff afterwards at Lyons Corner Shop. 

 

After my seven-year self-imposed absence from school, I was overjoyed to be back and was in love with teaching and all the new people I met. I lived in a state of almost continuous excitement, thrilled by the discovery that I could think and speak on my feet and busk a way through the huge gaps in my historical knowledge, even with highly intelligent and discerning students. However hard I worked and prepared my lessons, the script would run out and adrenalin would pump as I improvised some activity to keep them busy. My bag was always full of long essays and incredibly neat exercise books. I wrote hurriedly in the margins to give individual advice and guidance, impossible in class.

 

The boys were confident and sometimes challenging so I often struggled to keep ahead. On one occasion I was reading aloud from my European history notes and became aware of discontent, stupid noises and pieces of paper tossed from boy to boy. I flung my book and notes in the air, leapt to my feet and ranted at them. There was shock and silence. ‘I’m not doing this unless you behave yourselves.’ This was an appallingly foolish bluff but it worked, a rare occasion when shouting served a purpose. On another occasion I sensed a scuffle erupting behind me. The classroom opened on to a corridor and was separated from it by large glass panels. Two boys were fighting. I jumped up, strode through the door, separated the miscreants, issued a stern rebuke and returned to my place where I resumed my discourse. The class was hugely amused. ‘How did you do that sir?’ they asked, amazed that I had remembered the second half of the interrupted sentence.

 

The main evidence of the history department’s progressive intent was the history game. The previous head of department had devoted the entire first term of the third year (now year 9) to a long diplomatic game based on the Congress of Vienna. The class divided into delegations and had to negotiate their way to peace, like Metternich, Talleyrand and the rest. I saw the potential for improvements – why not a map? Why not cards with goals and objectives for each country? Deadlines – would they work? I collaborated with a PGCE student to work up a revised version of the game; and approached Longman about commissioning more games, including The Canal Game, The General Strike and The Scramble for Africa.

 

I could see scope to develop the idea further. We were recreating history and simulating the possibilities that were open to historical participants. We did not provide students with history’s fait accompli but encouraged them to speculate about what might have happened and why real life went the way it did. With another teacher I applied the same ideas to other areas of the syllabus. We put two classes together by pulling back the partition between the rooms and embarked on a comparison of the respective histories of the then Soviet Union and the United States, encouraging speculation and debate and limiting the information we ladled into the lessons.

 

I prepared my own teaching materials and published many of them, including the Longman History Games. In time I published articles in Teaching History and in the Times Educational Supplement. The pattern of my teaching career was set – I identified myself as a practitioner researcher and as a published writer on educational themes, nearly all relating to comprehensive education. Education and history came together – I didn’t choose between them – and I was eager to theorise and write about my experiences. 

 

I was promoted to become Arts Careers master after two terms and in September 1973 was appointed head of history at a Hertfordshire all-ability school on the edge of Welwyn Garden City. 

 

Cherry’s Story

Gaining a place in European Studies at the new University of East Anglia (UEA) in 1970 opened the door to privileged years of reading and discussing texts with like-minded people. They were also years of student unrest - a significant sit-in at the university in the spring of 1971 – and a struggle to find confidence and a sense of self-worth in a new and very middle class setting. It involved the initiation into Deans’ sherry parties, looking ‘cool’ in loon pants and sheepskin coats and struggling to manage the days in productive ways. 

 

UEA was very creative and exciting educationally. The structure of the courses; the very able young academics, newly recruited from Oxbridge; and the small teaching cohorts in seminars led to a pioneering atmosphere. Initially very excited, and believing myself ready to be separated from home and family, I was overawed by the confident and very articulate students in my seminars. It was easy to look the part, much more difficult to feel equal to all these bright youngsters from middle class homes that offered far greater breadth than mine, especially in the Arts. I was studying Comparative Literature with French honours and at this stage I had never even been to France. 

 

However, I threw myself into the youth culture of the day and the party life of the residences on campus where, in the first year, Carole King and Crosby, Stills and Nash echoed from every block. I joined the sit in, the examination boycott as well as the Barclays boycott; I don’t think I understood for a moment the full rationale for all those actions. Fortunately for me, I was not that different from many other students. It takes a long time and several knocks to make the transition from closely-supported ‘A’ level teaching to independent learning at university. My work improved by the end of the second year and I felt more confident to meet the challenge of a year abroad on my own. 

 

My personal tutor recommended an additional course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) for those of us who chose to spend our year abroad as language assistants in high schools. UEA ran a TEFL course in tandem with the Bell School of Languages; this was really good preparation for work as a language assistant. I was allocated a place at the lycée in the town of Issoire, south of Clermont Ferrand. I knew no one there and none of my friends were anywhere near. The intake at the 11-18 mixed lycée included mostly day pupils but there were also many boarders owing to the harsh winter weather in a very mountainous, rural area. 

 

I left England for the Auvergne in late September 1972 feeling lonelier than I had ever experienced; the first few days at university were nothing in comparison. My spoken French was shaky, I knew no one and did not know what to expect. I was lodged in a small but bright bedsitting room with its own bathroom. Apart from the concierge, there was no one on site except me at the weekends. Gradually I became integrated into the school and the small town. The ’menu de jour’ in local cafés meant quality, home-cooked food at the time and opportunities to socialise. I was amazed to note that the French smoked anywhere and at any time, including between meal courses. As with other aspects of French culture, I decided to join them. 

 

Overcoming the weekend loneliness took a while but my French and my confidence steadily grew and, unwittingly, I was beginning to enjoy being a teacher/assistante in the French school. However, I needed to return to university and complete my undergraduate years. Career decisions had to be postponed until after my degree. I returned to UEA with much more confidence and maturity and rose more easily to the intellectual challenge of my classes, greatly helped by my by now very fluent French. There is no doubt that the TEFL course and the experience in the French lycée had a very marked impact on my later decision to train to become a secondary school teacher. 

 

The preparation of lessons combined with the art of encouraging people to listen to you - a performance which exploits the whole repertoire of rhetoric and body language - suited me perfectly. I was part actress manqué, part social worthy and part intelligent planner. And the work came with a large portion of responsibility to which I was happy to rise. I knew in my last year at university that I wanted to combine teaching with travel and learning new languages. I had no thoughts at that stage of teaching within the English education system but instead I would use teaching to enlarge my experiences of life and acquisition of new skills.

 

After graduation I joined the civil service but found it was not for me. I applied to Keswick Hall College of Education for a PGCE course. I started in September 1976, met a superb cohort of fellow trainees, loved working with them, and was challenged by two very different teaching practices, one in my ‘alma mater’ in East Dereham and the other in a secondary modern school in Bowthorpe, Norwich.

 

It felt awesome to be granted admission to the hallowed interior of the staffroom at my old school. I had arrived. This was adulthood and being on first name terms with some of my former teachers was amazing! This could have been a stuffy and stultifying experience but my mentor and head of department was warm, clever, witty and a superb teacher. She was generous with her time, tips and excellent feedback.

 

My second teaching practice offered another formidable mentor but this time less warm, less generous with her time but nevertheless very exacting. I learned some useful tips for class control, albeit rarely applied after this teaching practice. I learned that dictation was the preferred form of control if young people would not listen and engage in lessons. Dictation is a useful, and educationally useless, addition to the repertoire of strategies for gaining control in the secondary classroom.

 

I can still recall two boys in my fifth year (now year 11) English class who undermined my professional competence at every turn during my first year of teaching. Like many ‘naive’ beginners, I believed I had a rapport with young people and if they continually misbehaved it was because no one had taken the trouble to get to know them better and understand them. Baiting Miss Rowe became their preferred sport for the year and they excelled.

 

Fortunately, my work with other classes and my enjoyment of the whole of school life encouraged me to pursue teaching as a career. My first post was a difficult one although it was in a mixed grammar school in Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk. I was appointed to teach French at all levels and English as a second subject. It seemed ideal. However, I learned early on that the culture in a school is extremely important and determines the wellbeing of both staff and students. Discipline depended on how loud you could shout accompanied by much poking, prodding and ear-twisting, best done in a public place to increase the humiliation of the offender and showcase the skills of the disciplinarian. The head of French was gentle and ineffectual, as was the remote head teacher. An efficient, narrow and egocentric senior teacher and a cohort of cynical heads of year effectively ran the school. They managed students in a loud and stridently aggressive manner. This was not an easy place to work in unless you emulated that style of managing students. Despite this, there were some fine and wonderful teachers there, one of whom, Chris, I later married.

 

We moved to St Neots in Cambridgeshire in 1978. Chris, by then my husband, had gained a post as 2nd in a large English department. I was appointed to teach English there. What a blessing! I loved teaching English and I loved Longsands, an established and successful comprehensive. I loved the different ways English teaching opened up the worlds of young people to include their issues, their anxieties and their enthusiasms. And this was a domain in which I was entirely comfortable and felt inspired. The change of subject was right and the school was definitely right. Longsands was a mixed comprehensive school of 1,800 pupils with a very large staff. It was a truly mixed comprehensive and this, combined with good leadership and management, made it a very exciting school at the time. We had a welcome pack and a series of induction programmes, unheard of in Norfolk at the time. Above all, we had a very bright and interesting head of English. He was my first experience of a really creative subject leader. He could be difficult and not easy to work with but I still have a huge respect for the way he led this very large department and what I learned from him about teaching and pupil groupings.

 

English was taught in mixed-ability groups from entry to the school. However, the way the groups were organisedwas slightly different to other subjects. The first two years (7 and 8) were fully mixed-ability and then, in year 9, two high-performing sets were created and the rest of the year group remained in mixed groups. Regular ‘reshuffling of the pack’ was undertaken to re-mix the groups. This aimed to take into account different stages of maturation and allowed pupils to acclimatise and flourish in their own time and at their own pace. This process enabled teachers to both spot and nurture talent, cajoling and coaxing accordingly. From this I learned the power and importance of social and academic grouping which has to be tweaked and manipulated as required. The English department had the best results in the school, worked closely as a team and invested care and creativity in its pupil groupings.

 

The power of a story and imaginative literature in the classroom was the main reason I switched from teaching French to English. From the most able to those struggling to read and write with some fluency, it was possible to engage all students in a powerful narrative. And there were so many! As a newly trained teacher, with a fair knowledge of the classics of English literature, my delight at discovering the wealth of good, modern literature (including Kestrel for a Knave) for young people was genuine and enduring. For me the days of learning lengthy quotations by heart and regurgitating plot and story lines were over. Instead, pupils were actively encouraged to explore their personal responses as long as they could be substantiated from the text.

 

In addition to teaching, I set up a Lower School Debating Society, managed the school bookshop and directed the school production for two years. In such a large a school, with a strong sixth form, this was hard work but well-rewarded. The pleasure of working with talented and enthusiastic youngsters from across the school strengthened my affiliation and commitment. Likewise, the school production brought together everything that was positive about school life and I loved being involved. It developed talents and confidence in young people, stretching them to the full. I saw students working closely with generous and talented members of staff from all subjects as they built new relationships in the community. 

 

While the transition to this large comprehensive school was smooth and fulfilling, there were pockets of difficulty and incidents of poor student behavior. I found the support systems helpful and supportive, both at head of department and head of year level. Just before the end of my first term a young man answered my persistent questioning with a stream of expletives about English and what one could do with it. This was very public and very audible so I referred him to his head of year. Later, the year head showed me his diary. An entry simply read: ‘Cane Smythe’. Things were done differently then. The young man was never any trouble after that but I became convinced that there were other ways of eliciting his regret and future co-operation. Caning was a crude and humiliating response for all those involved.

 

I am not sure when I became interested in advancing my career. There was never a plan or a specific ambition. It was more a case of ‘I think I could do that’ or ‘I think I would like to have a go at that’. I did indeed, have a go, and soon became a manager. This time it was in a very different school.

 

Rob’s Story

On leaving school in 1968, I had an idealised and romantic view of teaching, based on a naïve belief that I could inspire and motivate students. I saw myself as a reforming and inspirational school leader bringing equality of opportunity to all, along with a warm and enriching, civilised, school life - based on a love for all people. I was a visionary in waiting. 

 

This idealism and naivety propped me up during my undergraduate years at Hull University where I read physics. After a considerable period of loneliness and bewilderment, I did make friends and had a good time enjoying the wider, formative and fun based aspects of university life. On reflection, I think we were cocooned and ‘safe’ at Impington in its bucolic and comfortable setting and I was ill prepared for the rough and tumble of a northern university and, indeed, intellectual rigour.

 

Undergraduate students seemed to get in the way of the physics department’s academic research and this was exacerbated once the department was selected as a recipient of moon dust for X-ray diffraction analysis. Teaching consisted of courses of between ten and twenty one hour lectures, which were usually regurgitations of a textbook we were expected to buy and were written by the course lecturer. We attended lectures for about eight to nine hours a week but no one cared or noticed whether we bothered to turn up. All we could do during these fast-paced lectures was to furiously copy down what was appearing on the chalkboard. There was no opportunity to ask questions or seek clarification. After each lecture the only thing to do was to retreat to the library, get out a fountain pen and neatly copy up the notes and place them in a smart ring binder. 

 

There was never any opportunity in tutorials for discussion or to check understanding, develop ideas or practice worked examples. All we could do was struggle to learn complex physics in readiness for regurgitation during exams. And, of course, the language was mathematics and if you lost the plot early on in the development of a theory, you’d lost it altogether and no one cared.

 

The anguish and hellishness of studying physics in this way, compared to the vibrancy of my school lessons, was ameliorated by the happiness and fulfillment I found through my involvement in Hull University Fell Walking and Rambling Club (HUFRC). It was this feature of my three years that stands out as joyful, fulfilling and formative. I joined the club because I liked going for walks. Every other Sunday a coach laden with fifty anoraked and booted students would set out for the moors or dales. Once a term the ensemble would go for a weekend in wilder territory. A committee ran the club very efficiently and the annual election of President was a major event.

 

A vacancy for an assistant secretary arose and I was elected against stiff opposition. A year later I became secretary and a year after I was elected President of the largest club in the Union. The club was amazing and diverse and it was a real joy to become its leader. It was by far the most valuable experience of being an undergraduate. I was pleased to graduate in 1971 and leave university physics behind me but sad to say farewell to my friends and HUFRC. The physics course had not dented my enthusiasm to become an exemplary teacher of a subject I liked very much – no student of mine should have to put up with what I experienced.

 

After graduating, I found myself liberated and fulfilled in the progressive atmosphere of Leicester University School of Education where I went to do my PGCE. I simply loved being where education was talked about and considered through various lenses.  The radical views of Professor Brian Simon were in contrast to the in-depth tutorials on Nuffield science. I wrote a dissertation called Modern Heads for Modern Schools.  Even then I couldn’t wait to get under the skin of what it meant to be a school leader in the coming era of reform and change. 

 

Somewhere amongst all this heady stuff we had to do two teaching practices.  My first was at Lutterworth Upper School, one of Leicestershire’s flagship 14-18 comprehensive schools. Two things came from that experience.  The first was how dull the physics teaching was, not helped by a rigid approach to streaming. The second was the surprising realisation that adolescents in general were nothing like the friends I had grown up with. I just didn’t understand what on earth was going on in their minds and in their culture. Young people were nothing like what I thought they should be.  

 

For the second practice, I told my tutor that I wanted to go to a city secondary modern school and I ended up at Leicester’s toughest, worst and most demoralised school: Wycliffe Secondary Modern. It was dreadful. If all the pupils had attended there would not have been enough chairs to sit them on. The grand and optimistic 1950’s building was run down and bare. The head was a bully and a tyrant – we could see into his office from an upper corridor and watch the brutal thrashings. This was the world of Mr Gryce in KES revisited. 

 

Strangely though, I began to enjoy my teaching and observed (and copied) some very good and caring teachers in action. I asked one how he achieved such fine class control. He told me that all you had to do was feign a hangover, because the pupils knew how to behave when their dad had a hangover. In my fantasies I began to build a picture of how I would reform and transform Wycliffe so that it would become another Impington and me another Brackenbury.  Little did I know then that I would later return to Wycliffe, as the Principal, to do just that.

 

The deputy head I had known at Impington had been appointed as Head of Hemsworth High School in the South Yorkshire coalfields. Huge amounts of money were being spent on the old grammar school buildings but resistance to going comprehensive was fierce (from both teachers and parents) in this entrenched mining community where the grammar school was the passport to mine management rather than mine labouring. Not so for Geoff Boycott who honed his cricket skills on the grammar school’s playing fields.  However, Hemsworth met its match in the new head and come 1972 a ruthless transition had happened and a fairly radical (no option choices) curriculum along with mixed ability teaching had been put in place. The advert for a second in charge of physics was therefore just too tempting and I travelled north for the interview and was offered the job and the allowance that went with it. I simply could not believe my good fortune - superb job, superb science department overlooking the playing fields with slag heap beyond, progressive school, connection with Impington and pioneering headmaster. I was on my way.

 

Despite this success I felt intimidated, out of my comfort zone, away from my safe East Anglian origins. I was very confident about being part of the comprehensive school crusade but less sure of my ability to be a good school teacher. And, if I’m honest, this was not the first time these doubts had hit me hard.

 

Day one had me drooling over my good fortune. I had my own laboratory, genial colleagues and a well-balanced timetable. I stood there feeling very proud and in walked the head. He shook my hand, wished me well and said he was always there for me if needed and disappeared. I don’t think I encountered him again for several months. The head of science who was also the senior physicist was altogether different - a gentle giant and my mentor. We became good friends and colleagues.

 

His confidence in me was probably unwarranted, especially as I was entrusted with the new lower sixth ‘A’ level physics group. Here were fifteen highly intelligent students who between them held a trip wire for me at every twist and turn. They kept me on my toes and I spent endless hours preparing and rehearsing my lessons. The really bright ones sat on the back row and they would disarmingly look sideways at each other if they thought I’d got it wrong. My joy after two years of teaching this earnest bunch was that they all achieved one of the top three grades. They were a substantial part of my apprenticeship.

 

As were my tutor group. They disgorged themselves into my lab on day one, determined to be disruptive. They had just come up from middle school and were a mixed assortment of characters ranging from the delightful to the ruffian. Gradually the group settled and I developed a rapport with them. They left the fifth year on the same day as I left Hemsworth, three years later. There were speeches and they presented me with a Parker ballpoint pen that I still have. Apparently, a shop lifting expedition had procured it!

 

As the school adapted to ROSLA, I was tasked with setting up a mode 3[xiv] CSE course in applied science. In our ‘no choices’ curriculum everyone had to do GCE physical science and GCE biological science. We wisely thought that the physical science GCE course would be inappropriate for many of the pupils and so I designed and implemented a two-year wholly practical course, based on modules or circuses. Before long no less than seven teachers were teaching it and 140 pupils per year were doing it. 

 

Although he was fairly aloof, the head’s infrequent advice was always wise. Once, he and I talked about the difference between students at Impington and Hemsworth. I suppose I thought that young people from the mining towns were hard and uncouth. He countered by saying, ‘don’t forget that whoever they are and wherever they come from they all share the same human feelings and sensitivities.’

 

This point was confirmed by my encounter with one student. He was a truculent and difficult teenager. The last straw was when he called me a ‘sweaty four eyed pig’. I think it was the ‘sweaty’ bit that got to me so I demanded he be punished. The head of upper school, a locally renowned rugby player, winked at me and said he would cane him once but I was to witness. The stroke was duly administered with resounding force. In accordance with practice, the boy tearfully said thank you and withdrew. He was no further trouble to me but many years later I read that he had been decorated for bravery as a Royal Marine in the Falklands war. I now think that I was the coward – I couldn’t have achieved what he did in the war. I doubt if the corporal punishment was formative for him, although it may have helped me to feel better about what he’d done. From that day on I became a firm opponent of corporal punishment.

 

During my three years at Hemsworth, I gradually developed my teaching skills and learned how best to develop constructive relationships with young people. I began to understand at first hand the problems disadvantage brings and why educators should strive to overcome inequality. The school gave me plenty of scope to be innovative and creative. I mostly enjoyed what I was teaching and who I was teaching but began to want to engage in school life beyond the lab and the science department.

 

My fell walking days at Hull motivated me to get seriously involved in outdoor pursuits. I organised from scratch and led two residential courses each for fifty students in the Lake District. I wondered whether I should carve my future in outdoor pursuits. Running residential courses at a centre in the Lakes seemed like a wonderful way to engage with and educate young people, but it was not to be.

 

Come the third year at Hemsworth, I was restless and ready for a move. I’d learned a lot and made many mistakes. I wanted to build on this and be better next time around. So promotion and a more tranquil life were sought. I now hankered for an existence, away from the sharp exigencies of the coalmines.  I applied for and got the post of head of physics at St John’s School, Cyprus – one of the dozen or so British Forces comprehensive schools around the world. 

 

Discussion 

We left school as successful students, idealistic young people eager for new experiences and strongly influenced by changing aspirations and expectations in British society. Inspired by their time at prototype comprehensives, Bernard and Rob had already decided to become headteachers and imagined themselves as education reformers while Cherry learned to love reading and discussing texts and was unsure of her future destination. Their dreams were postponed as they struggled in different ways to establish themselves in new environments.

 

Cherry chose an innovative course in European Studies at the new University of East Anglia and was motivated by creative and exciting approaches. But like Bernard at Cambridge, she was uncertain in a new and very middle class environment. Initially lonely, Rob and Bernard were disappointed by long, dull lectures at their traditional universities and began to imagine more stimulating methods for teaching their subjects. Cherry discovered teaching as a possibility while working at a French lycée as part of her UEA degree. Rob found new opportunities for his leadership skills in the fell walking club while Cherry gained new confidence as an actress manqué in France.

 

Early contacts with the classroom as PGCE students or probationary teachers tested our early idealism, sometimes to the limit. Rob discovered that ‘adolescents in general were nothing like the friends I had grown up with’ and felt that he did not understand how their minds worked. On one teaching practice, the headteacher was a bully and tyrant in the mould of Mr Gryce in KES. Cherry battled with two fifth formers ‘at every turn’ and disliked a school culture in her first post that reminded her of scenes from the film. Senior staff (not the head) enforced discipline by shouting and much ‘poking, prodding and ear twisting’. Bernard was driven to fling his book and notes in the air and rant at misbehaving sixth formers. Cherry and Robert asked senior colleagues to discipline boys for misbehaviour but ended up as witnesses, appalled by the futile brutality of the punishment. This was not how to create a positive learning culture. But gradually we learned the craft of the classroom.

 

We were quick to understand the negative effects of streaming and setting on student attitudes and soon lobbied for lessons in our respective subjects to be organised on mixed ability lines. At Longsands, Cherry taught in an English department where pupil grouping was carefully adjusted to avoid the bottom set mentality. She was also involved in pioneering new approaches to the subject, with Mr Farthing’s early example in mind. Cherry believed that the days of learning by rote were over and ‘actively encouraged (pupils) to explore their personal responses’. Rob was concerned with curriculum design issues that had been neglected in the rush to reorganise the school system and was given responsibility for a practically-based, CSE mode III science examination. The absence of a common 16+ examination was emerging as a serious concern, much sharpened by the Raising of the School Leaving Age in 1972. The young school leavers were given an extra year of education but the courses available were inadequate. Bernard was equally determined to get students thinking about history and embraced history games and simulations. Ideas about resource-based learning at the GSP Project in York helped him move forward quickly to publish history games with Longman. 

 

Active involvement in extra-curricular activities, from sports and plays to magazines and outdoor pursuits, taught us the importance of the relationships that could be forged with students beyond the classroom. We were learning our trade and gaining confidence and at the same time helped nudge our schools towards important changes in pedagogy, the curriculum and assessment. Despite the hostile, negative attitudes expressed in the Black Papers and the popular press, we believed history was on our side.

 

 

 

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[i] Benn, C. and Simon, B. (1970) 

[ii] The ‘Warden’ of a Village College was the executive head of the whole college.

[iii] A Lycee is the French equivalent of a grammar school.

[iv] The first Black Paper, Fight for Education, was published in 1969 and was edited by Brian Cox and A Dyson

[v] Boyson, R (19xx)

[vi] Staying on rates, post 16, were such that a school would need a large intake at age 11 to produce what was deemed as a viable sixth form with sufficient students to enable all tradititional subjects to be offered at ‘A’ level

[vii] Sir Alec Clegg (1909-1986) was the pioneering and innovative Chief Education Officer for the West Riding of Yorkshire. He introduced comprehensive schools, involving middle schools, into the region.

[viii] The Leicestershire Plan for secondary education was an early conversion to comprehensive schools. It created small 11-14 high schools feeding into very large 14-18 upper schools.

[ix] Woodin, T., McCulloch, G., & Cowan, S. (2013). Secondary Education and the Raising of the School-Leaving Age: Coming of Age? London: Palgrave Macmillan.

[x] LAWSON,  N. (1993) The View from No. 11: memoirs of a Tory radical,  pp. 603, 609 and 610

(London, Corgi Books).

[xi] The Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) enables graduates to become qualified teachers. It is usually a one year university course involving theoretical studies and teaching practice.

[xii] The Schools Council was a government-funded body which initiated and supported the development of curriculum ideas and teaching materials. The General Studies Project (GSP) was an initiative designed to support sixth form liberal studies.

[xiii]Under the auspices of the Nuffield Foundation, the Nuffield Science Teaching Projectgave rise to a new, more practical and enquiry based, approach to science teaching. It was prominent during the 1960s and 1970s.

[xiv] Mode 3 was a version of CSE where teachers designed, implemented and assessed courses, often in non-academic subjects such as applied science.