tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88524099970494790402024-02-07T06:22:01.964+00:00Sec ModA place for people to share their memories and experiences of attending Secondary Modern Schools in Britain from 1944 to the early 1970s. Just click on 'comments' after any of the posts to leave your own memories and we'll post it up as soon as possible.Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-56785685855586394452022-08-27T11:04:00.000+01:002022-08-27T11:04:06.922+01:00Secondary Modern Boy <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDHDt-UrfRFnvWDA1cllD4vCJJMYurUrSbjIY6ErRp9p98PPCve_lVW6eot3dBLk4svw0uo4EzZMBjPOqafU5C4OwhF4bsxcZYWeP7Z1f4G0KrWuMwMmznQOW9P7lYV_ZPfpZGObMgikKiXW2bg5CJxcN832kWb-8efErRAJSxKdXWszSNbHoYJSg7" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img data-original-height="332" data-original-width="936" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDHDt-UrfRFnvWDA1cllD4vCJJMYurUrSbjIY6ErRp9p98PPCve_lVW6eot3dBLk4svw0uo4EzZMBjPOqafU5C4OwhF4bsxcZYWeP7Z1f4G0KrWuMwMmznQOW9P7lYV_ZPfpZGObMgikKiXW2bg5CJxcN832kWb-8efErRAJSxKdXWszSNbHoYJSg7=w640-h229" title="Secondary Modern Boy" width="640" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjv6xQgIcm5uZLHbuj6V1UERb8fwjEorZqmjqS12iEsRZk5u_QBAFwSC0MtcZ5WHKaU1Qm8_oJ8czoAcuBNYAPHFO44QYtnBl4C6uZyDfViXPuYabp_sS3XpY3kRvTBTkDsyzdWWmwD4rgOWRZYdcKhWFiPc8GZZ5zthY0QaJmy07zaKC3251tlDZpq" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="388" data-original-width="902" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjv6xQgIcm5uZLHbuj6V1UERb8fwjEorZqmjqS12iEsRZk5u_QBAFwSC0MtcZ5WHKaU1Qm8_oJ8czoAcuBNYAPHFO44QYtnBl4C6uZyDfViXPuYabp_sS3XpY3kRvTBTkDsyzdWWmwD4rgOWRZYdcKhWFiPc8GZZ5zthY0QaJmy07zaKC3251tlDZpq=w640-h276" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-75574591940844648572018-06-22T09:22:00.000+01:002018-06-22T09:22:31.343+01:00"A very un-special relationship"<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">First some background : I was at my second primary school as we had moved following my father’s promotion. It left me, as soon as I opened my mouth, as an out of place northern lad in a southern school. Further, I was in the bottom ‘C’ grade though one teacher did tell me that he had suggested to the headmaster to move me up to ‘B’ grade, however, the headmaster and I had a very un-special relationship.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"> </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Studying for the 11+ : One morning the class was told that we had to go to the Hall. This left me wondering as it was not time for Assembly or PE. <i>It turned out to be to sit the 11+</i>. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">The exam left me confused with questions involving, if I recall correctly, references to mice, mouse and elephants. Presumably, the ‘intelligence’ part of the exam. Not surprising, I failed with the news of my failure coming via a letter to my parents.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">The secondary school was much tougher on discipline. With the cane in regular use and the school ‘crawling’ with prefects ready to inform on any misdemeanours. School was firm but fair with no problems with bullying.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">A further promotion for my father resulted in another change of school. The new school seemed to major on indiscipline and indifference. No corporal punishment but rampant bullying. Their expectations seemed to match my own that of no great expectations.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Against my wishes, my father made me stay on to take CSE’s. By now I kept a very low profile at school trying to keep out of sight and out of mind of both teachers and bullies. </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">After the exams, I was called to the Deputy Head’s office, a man I had only ever seen at assemblies. A call to the head’s office was something which given my past history, left me somewhat concerned. He informed me I had achieved 4 CSE Grade 1, a first for a boy at the school which I would say, says rather more about the school than me. He rambled on about being misjudged and the school letting me down or some such. I didn’t take a great deal of notice at the time. I was not in trouble again and more importantly, I was leaving school. Hallelujah!</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Did my primary school headmaster misjudge me in part because of my strong northern accent and set my course? Who or what decided that I was ‘C’ grade material and therefore 11+ notification was not required, let alone any prep? Presumably, we were all expected to fail and no doubt met those expectations.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">What you did not realise at the time was that a secondary school education led to a job(s). Whereas, for a career you needed to go to a grammar school and then to university. What we did think was that the grammar school was where the ‘posh’ boys went.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Richard.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Copyright of the Author. Not to be reproduced without permission.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, "Segoe UI", "Segoe WP", Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><br /></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-43018149718228362652018-05-31T13:49:00.000+01:002018-05-31T13:49:29.756+01:00"None of you will get there" <span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">I was always regarded as slow at Primary school. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">We were put into rows according to how bright we were. I was always in the last or last but one row. I remember how it always seemed that the posh kids were in the higher rows.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">I went to a Lancashire Seconday Modern in the mid 70s. My parents put it down as first choice of school rather than a Grammar, when I asked them why, my mum simply said "that's where you are going". They had never known anyone who had gone to a Grammar. I thought that their choice was odd until I was about 14 and I told Paul (one of my best friends, who was also excellent at maths) and he said. "My parents did the same". It was just totally outside of their experience to send their children to a Grammar. They had no idea of the curriculum there, and it was probably for the best. I would have been really uncomfortable there.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">I was slow in learning to read at Primary, but at the age of about 8 or 9 something clicked and I read everything I could get my hands on. In the summer holidays I would sometimes read a book a day from the library (now closed). I've long suspected that I might be slightly dyslexic, I remember a biology teacher saying "you're just one of those people who can't spell".</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">Another teacher explained the qualifications system from CSEs to University degrees but, he added, "none of you will get there". <i>I could never have told anyone at the time that I would eventually want to go to university, but I felt it as a real blow.</i></span><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">It was a tough school, racism and homophobia was part of the accepted fabric of the place- as it was of society and the time generally. I was in the A steam and usually towards the top of it. When O levels came along I asked for extra chemistry lessons (to support the biology I was so keen on) and I managed to gather a clutch of boys interested. However I was soon later hit by a van in a traffic accident and missed most of the work coming up to exams.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">I left with a CSE grade 1 (equal to an O level) in English Literature (the lessons weren't much good, but I'd read the books on the curriculum list from the school library). I also got O levels in biology and history. My favourite subjects then and now. It wasn't much in the way of qualifications, but most of my friends had just a few low grade CSEs.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">I went onto various factory jobs and two years as a dustman, while I took additional O levels, A levels and some OU courses, before getting into University.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">Anonymous. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; caret-color: rgb(39, 39, 39); color: #272727; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">Copyright of the Author. Not to be reproduced without permission.</span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-16071140095507469192017-09-20T13:33:00.000+01:002017-11-11T11:22:18.663+00:00How Being Open About Sec Mod Schooling is a Scary Option<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">I made my initial post here about my sec mod school experiences in 2014. I said then that I rarely mentioned my secondary schooling in 'company'. This is largely because now nearly all my current friends & contacts of a similar age went to grammar or public school. Many will mention school experiences. I generally opt to say very little.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">Not long ago we were with some friends made in very recent years. They are a very fine couple in many respects and he was (and is still) highly respected and successful in his professional life.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">He went to a grammar school and his education there was mentioned. He said how fortunate he had been to go to his school and how very lucky he had been not to attend <i>'that place up the road'</i>. He would have attended school in the late 1950s-early 60s and is older than me.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">I cannot remember the exact wording but he was obviously referring to the local secondary modern school. Somehow, this time, I could not keep quiet and I said, briskly, 'what terrible things did you think would happen to you there?' , followed by 'I went to one of those schools, but I never talk about it'. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">His very surprised response was 'why not'? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">Somehow we never finished the conversation, other things took over. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">I guess I was annoyed and pleased in equal amounts that the exchange ended. What I realised, though, was that the group I live within now simply assume that we all attended grammar or private schools. My work and life have caused me to belong to a particular cohort.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">My husband remarked later that it was unlikely that this person would have been as successful in his career had he not attended grammar school. This is true. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">However, I feel I want to challenge him again about that lost conversation - but I doubt it will happen. The embarrassment and stigma are too deeply embedded.</span><br />
<br style="color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, 'Segoe UI', 'Segoe WP', Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 15px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">Julia </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "tahoma" , "arial" , sans-serif , serif , "emojifont"; font-size: 15px;">Copyright of the Author. Not to be reproduced without permission.</span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-28967827855673711912017-04-20T09:24:00.002+01:002017-04-20T09:24:59.797+01:00"My Place" at the Grammar School <br style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, 'Segoe UI', 'Segoe WP', Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I attended a village primary school in Essex. The headmaster's daughter was in my class and we were best friends. In the run up to the 11 plus test I remember her telling me that her dad had been giving her lots of tests to do at home and she was irritated because it took time away from her other interests. The rest of us only did one practice run and then sat the test. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I was later told that I had achieved the highest mark and had won the place to go to grammar school. The headmaster called my parents in and explained to them that the school was a long way from where we lived and that they might not be able to manage the transport costs, and might therefore prefer to send me to the local secondary modern which was being converted into a comprehensive school that year. They agreed and I went to the local school. You can guess who got 'my place' at the grammar school. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">I did well at my comprehensive school, got 3 grade A levels, went to University and eventually obtained a doctorate. I never saw my 'best friend' from primary school again, but I know she is now a successful medical doctor. I'd like to meet her one day and discuss what happened; neither of us was really aware at the time of the significance of this sequence of events, I expect. I'm still struggling with what my story means both in my life and in terms of the education system in this country but now that grammars are being discussed again, I think it is important to revisit how the system might be used to disadvantage working class children in the future. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anonymous </span></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-12859046116982397412017-03-11T11:29:00.000+00:002017-03-11T11:29:02.578+00:00Post Traumatic Secondary Modern Disorder<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">My
mother taught me to read before I started school, so I could manage little
Ladybird books and form crude letters on paper by the time term started in
September 1972. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;">In
the days before modern curricula, primary schools in the early 1970s were a
beautiful, psychadelic mash of art, song, and nature walks. We wrote sums in
chalk on slate squares. We labelled the parts of a flower in our drawing books,
and wrote about Saint George in slim, feint ruled books. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;">I loved our little Victorian
red-bricked rural school with sixty children from outlying villages. I pleaded
to go when I had measles and a fever of 102 degrees, and commando-crawled to
the back door in my nightdress to catch the school bus. My Dad had to restrain
me. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;">On the infrequent occasions I pass that little
school now, I’m gullet-struck with sorrow. Whether this is nostalgia, or
because the building has stood empty for a decade, I am uncertain. Most likely,
it is because of what happened next.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
summer of 1977 was full of colour: the merciless festooning of halls, lamp-posts,
pets, anything, with patriotic bunting, and exotic teenagers on TV with fluorescent
hair and safety pins. Our bright chatter at school, between recounting episodes
of Six Million Dollar Man and lyrics from Abba songs, was punctuated with talk
about the test we had to take to determine which ‘big’ school we would attend
the following year. I was a good kid, a bright kid, and paid no attention
another test- we were always having tests, and at ten I, as any child should,
knew no fear. None of us truly understood the import of one afternoon spent
answering questions in a booklet. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;">I
didn’t realise the result of that test had the capability to drain the colour
out of my world for many years to come.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some
time during 1978, life as I knew it came to a halt. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;"><i>I
failed the Eleven Plus.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The significance of certain words began to
press on my mind. I recalled how the Secondary Modern was referred to as ‘a bit
rough’,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but this didn’t concern me as
much as the use of ‘pass’ and ‘fail’. Pass and fail were as prominent and
insistent as Jubilee bunting. It was clear that for me, and the other children
who didn’t achieve a high enough mark, that we were off -cuts. Chump chops.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">During
the summer holidays I became introspective, anxious, ashamed. I decelerated
from happy, breezy, funny Bev to moody, angry Bev and stayed that way for the
next five years. My husband and family would probably say it’s been more like
forty. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;">There
was no induction, or Welcome Day, or pastoral care; no friendly, shepherding
seniors. We stepped down from the ‘cattle wagon’ – a bus with wooden-slatted
benches running lengthways down what was effectively an oblong metal box on
wheels- to jeers and cat-calls from the older children.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
funnelled through the main doors into the dilapidated building, a stew of
horror with an undernote of simmering violence, and stood in the main hall
while the headmaster hollered at us from a lectern and teachers at the side of
the hall physically assaulted pupils for seemingly no reason- although they
must have been talking, or fidgeting, or some other unacceptable misdemeanor. I
looked around at us, assembled in our black uniforms, funereally cast against
the maroon-blazered successes of the Grammar School, wondered what terrible
thing it was we’d done wrong. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is
it possible for an eleven year old to be depressed? By the second year, I was
showing signs of giving up. I no longer felt motivated to do any work. I felt
anxious much of the time. I only wanted to eat crisps and chocolate. I swore
like a navvy. I couldn’t be bothered to wash. I spent evenings in bed thinking
about death and if we were all to die anyway, what was the point in anything? </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;">Rather
than crawling across the floor with a fever to get to school, I shrank beneath
the blankets with undefined malaise and my mother wrote notes to school to
explain that I was ‘run down’. I stayed at home and taught myself to play the
guitar, and thrashed along to Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;">‘There
is no future / And England’s dreaming,’ I sang along with John Lydon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
consistent message at school was discouragement. The tenor – anger. Nearly
every teacher (apart from ‘Happy Harry’ who taught religious education and was
what we’d call these days ‘pleasantly confused’) had overtly said we were
failures, a bunch of miscreants, unemployable,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>stupid, good-for-nothng, hopeless, not worth educating. Physical and
verbal violence was a daily occurrence- teachers to kids,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>kids to teachers, kids to kids. I walked past
the Woodwork block one day to find the whole class and their teacher, Mr Taylor,
pressed to the windows, watching me. I had bright orange hair, crimped and
backcombed like Siouxsie Sioux. Mr Taylor opened the window and addressed me,
in front of his class of boys : ‘<i>Oi! Look at yourself. You fucking freak</i>’. Can
you imagine what would happen to that man now, for saying that to a pupil? </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 250%;">If
you couldn’t look after yourself, you were doomed, so the school had a
reputation for brutality. It took no account of size, age, or gender. You could
expect to be ‘twatted’ with alarming frequency. Some teachers even encouraged
inter-pupil scrapping.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">By
the age of 15 we had careers guidance with an austere Northumbrian called ‘Naggy’
Norman.. I asked if I could go to Art College. Naggy’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>advice was ‘you need O levels to get into
college, and you’re not going to get them here, so you’ll have to think about
something else. Maybe Gymphlex?’ Gymphlex was the sportswear factory down the
road. Word had it that Naggy had a secret tunnel from beneath the school to the
factory floor, and was paid recruiting commission. My friend Ange confided
ambitions to be a radiographer. Naggy despoiled this with laughter and more
pressing suggestions of Gymphlex. For every girl,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the advice was Gymphlex, and tacitly, marry
and have kids. For the boys, army or land work. Computers came in during my
last year at school. Only the boys were allowed to use them, but what did it
matter? We were none of us good for higher ambitions; we were herded like
cattle to the abbatoir- choiceless Patsies being taught to lower our
expectations. By the age of 14, Secondary Modern had broken my spirit, and
those of my peers, clean in two. <i>I began primary school as a happy, bright, bookish
little girl, and left Secondary Modern a depressed, dispirited failure. I
couldn’t be bothered taking CSEs. They
meant nothing, and I elected to leave before the exams. I couldn’t take another
day. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">One
night in 2008 I watched a Channel Four programme called ‘Law of the
Playground’, where celebrities fondly recounted their memories of school. Robert
Webb (comedian, half of Mitchell & Webb, alumni of Robinson College,
Cambridge, Footlights, Labour Party supporter)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>talking about his experiences at <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grammar
School. The Grammar School in the same town as my Secondary Modern. ‘There was
no competition between the two schools,’ he says, ‘but you KEPT THE FUCK AWAY
from those kids – until they became lorry drivers, or something’. And that
dismissal, in the name of comedy, laid bare the prevailing attitude, by someone
who purports to be a socialist : <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>superiority,
public condemnation of our violence, stupidity, and lack of ambition. And my
reaction? Well, I just defaulted to my training and took to Twitter to offer
him a twatting at the Grammar School gates.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
put a lot of effort into rebuilding myself over the years following school. I
spent two years on the dole, then got myself into Technical College for O and A
levels in a revelatory atmosphere of encouragement and respect. The old, old
feelings of adoring learning came back. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘Have
you ever thought of University?’ said my English tutor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘Me?
University?’ I replied. ‘It’s not for people like me. Is it?’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘It’s
very much for people like you’, she said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">She
managed to unpick the tight knots of uncertainty and broken confidence, and
killed the demons raised by Secondary Modern education. Three years later I
sent her a card thanking her for her kindness and no small part in the honours
degree I’d gained (2:1) in English from the University of Liverpool. She sent
me back a William Morris card declaring that she had unstinting faith in me,
and that I, like many others, had survived an educational ordeal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>Beverley Butcher</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Copyright of the Author. Not to be reproduced without permission</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 250%;">
<br /></div>
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Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-56144452163588544252016-10-11T20:12:00.000+01:002016-10-11T20:12:58.226+01:00You Don't Fail as a Child <div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">My experience of the
grammar school/ secondary modern is possibly anomalous in comparison to the
usual memories posted, but my education was indelibly affected by the 11-plus. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Let me explain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Most of my primary
schooling took place in Oxfordshire in the early and mid-1970s; I attended
various primary schools, as we moved a few times due to my father’s work, and
my secondary education took place in a comprehensive school from 1980 to 1985. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">However, in 1976,
dad’s work took us to Buckinghamshire for 4 years, an area that retained, and
still has, the grammar school system. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From what I remember, I thoroughly enjoyed the
first 3 years at the primary school I attended, which were a whirl of field
trips, rounders, afternoons spent drawing or writing poetry or making pots and
being creative. There were certainly no literacy or numeracy hours, and I don’t
really remember a specific structure to the school day, although I suppose
there was. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Nevertheless, whilst we were busy having fun and learning, there was
talk amongst all of us 7 to 9-year-old children about the fabled 11 plus exam-
the exam that could make or break us- so we heard in whispered conversations
from those who had older siblings. </span>Yet, to a large
extent, these tales were no scarier than ghost stories; we had no experience of
it, so although we knew something important was going to happen, it didn’t
really worry us too much. That was until one day
in 1979. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can’t remember the day, but I do remember that after one morning
playtime, the whole year group, which consisted of 2 classes, were taken into
one of the large, prefabricated terrapin classrooms and we were told to find
somewhere to sit, and then wait in silence. No-one knew what was going on. The
two teachers stood at the front of the classroom and we sat in silence for what
seemed like an age.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">This ended abruptly when
the door was flung open and the headmaster strode in. I won’t divulge his name,
or the school. Excepting this experience, I would still argue that the school
was a fantastic one. And I honestly believe that the headmaster was not a bad
person. He did use corporal punishment occasionally, but this was the 1970s- it
was another era. He could be very strict at times, but I genuinely believe that
he treated all of us as if we were his own children. I remember seeing him
bursting with pride at every school event; I remember him crying uncontrollably
in an assembly when he broke the news to us that one of the pupils had been
killed by a car the previous day. I believe this as an adult looking back on my
education- but I know what happened in that classroom scarred me- and I know
that it scarred my subsequent education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">For the next hour or
so was a humiliating ritual of ridicule and torture. We didn’t write- but we
sat in horror and waited, trembling, for our turn as the headmaster barked,
yelled, and shouted a variety of confusing and terrifying questions. When the
finger pointed at you, you waited in agony. What would you be asked to do?
Shout the alphabet backwards in less than 5 seconds? Name the 17<sup>th</sup>
letter of the alphabet within a second? Mentally unscramble an anagram in less
than 5 seconds? Complete long division or long multiplication sums- mentally-
in an excruciatingly short amount of time? And if you couldn’t? You were yelled
at, shouted at, ridiculed, made to stand on a chair, made to come to the front
where the question would be yelled at you again and again, in front of the
whole year group, until you could finally whisper an answer, usually given
whilst tears were streaming down your cheeks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">For weeks we didn’t
know why we had to face this. But it was genuinely horrific. School went from a
place of joy and fun, to a place of terror. I remember trying to make myself
physically sick so that mum might take pity and keep me off for a few days. And
why did he subject us to this? Because he was training us for the 11 plus. He
wanted every child in his school to pass- because, as we were later told, if
you failed, you went to the secondary modern school down the road, the words
spat out with disgust- a place where failures went.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">And so it continued,
week after week. And I still can feel that sinking feeling of dread when we
were taken to ‘that’ classroom. </span>I was lucky. Sometime
shortly before the exam, my father had a promotion and we moved back to
Oxfordshire and I was placed into a comprehensive school. My old friends took
the exam. Parent would proudly boast of the successes… and the parents of the
children that failed? These ‘failures’ were spoken of in whispered terms. Parents
actually crossed the road so they would not have to recount their
disappointment of the failures they had the misfortune to conceive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">But I, and my parents
I suppose, were lucky. We moved. I didn’t have the humiliation of failure or
the joy of success. And was I happy? Yes. In one sense. I had ‘dodged a
bullet’. But was I really happy? No. I was terrified of school. Maybe I was
softer, weaker, less resilient than others, but I was scared. I was scared of
being in bottom classes, of being the failure. And I was scared of being in the
top classes. Of getting things wrong. One biology teacher started each lesson
with a recap of what we had learnt in the previous lesson- she gave everyone a
question and made us stand until we got one right- and, with each question, the
memories of the 11 plus came flooding back. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So how did I cope?
Badly. I ended up giving up. I was more scared of the road to success than I
was of failure, so I stopped learning. Somehow, I managed 4 O levels, and the
suggestion that I had failed school, but I managed to find a place on a YTS
scheme for £27:30 a week and I really enjoyed work. I was treated as an adult
and I thrived. My options were limited, I managed to get a trainee position in
a manufacturing workshop and spent a number of years in factory positions-
usually working weekend or nightshifts so that I could manage to make enough
money to get married, have a mortgage and children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">And for a while, I was
happy. Until I realised that that was my lot in life. There wasn’t an opportunity
to progress, not really, not with 4 O levels- especially as those who ruled and
worked above me had degrees. Again, I was lucky. My wife is clever. Like me she
left school at 16. But she had 10 O levels, and when she became disillusioned
with work, she went to night school and got A levels before going on to take a
degree and a PhD. And because she was clever, and had a reasonably well paid
job, she persuaded me that I was cleverer than I thought I was, and in 1996 I
went back into the classroom at my local college to take an Access course. I was
terrified, but, with the benefit of hindsight and maturity, kept going.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">One Access course, one
degree and one PGCE later, I went back to work, this time as an English teacher
in a secondary school.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It’s the best and
worse job in the world. I love being in the classroom. Teenagers are fantastic
people and I am lucky to work with them daily, and help them. I am also subject
to scrutiny and the pressure on exam success is ridiculous and, quite frankly,
abusive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">18 months ago, after 4
years teaching, I left. I left for many reasons, but one of them was realising,
when stood in front of thirty terrified 16 year olds, when I was yelling at
them that their attitude was poor and that they were going to fail, that I had
become my old headmaster, so I left. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Six months later, I
was back. I forgot how much I enjoyed it. I still hate the scrutiny. I hate the
politics. I hate the marking policies and the data. But I love the classroom.
And I love helping teenagers- some of them being disaffected and with awful
home lives. I know that some of them are destined to struggle in life. I know
that some of them are destined to do the most menial of jobs and it is so, so
important for them to know that this doesn’t mean they have failed. I need to
tell them that. I tell them my story and that you don’t fail as a child. Adults
fail you. Adults with their grandiose ideas, their bullying and their
pressurising tactics. Adults with their ideas that you cannot succeed in life
unless you can successfully avoid using the comma splice, adults who tell you
that you are going to be a failure unless you can use sophisticated terminology
in the analysis of a Victorian novel. Adults who are happy to categorise
children as ‘success’ or ‘failure’- as the grammar school system unfairly does-
and unfairly did, to many, many people. I’ll repeat what I’ve said a few times-
I was lucky. Even though I did not sit the exam- it changed me then- 30 odd
years ago- and it took a hell of a lot of time and hard work for me to change
me back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Richard Long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Copyright of the
Author.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not to be reproduced without
permission.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-3975381984673075972016-10-08T14:36:00.000+01:002016-10-08T14:36:16.511+01:00I failed the 11plus. Twice.<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, 'Segoe UI', 'Segoe WP', Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;">I live in Northern Ireland </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, 'Segoe UI', 'Segoe WP', Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">where we still have Secondary schools and Grammar schools and a system of selection at age 11. In fact, parents in NI have so few educational options that they now pay for their children to sit unregulated tests for the opportunity to go to Grammar schools.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: wf_segoe-ui_normal, 'Segoe UI', 'Segoe WP', Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" />
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The politicians who favour this system will cite our excellent results at the top of the academic scale. They won't say much about how we routinely fail working class students, or the well documented evidence which tells us how our system increases inequality.</div>
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I have been a teacher who has taught in Grammar schools, Secondary schools and one of the rare Integrated comprehensive schools here. I failed the 11plus. Twice. I was young for my class in school and so they thought it might be a good idea to give me another go at the test. This meant another year at Primary school repeating the same work (and I mean the EXACT same work. Nobody should have to read Greyfriars Bobby twice...) My parents were concerned with my education. I spent two summers doing 11plus practice papers. I still failed it, both times.</div>
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So, off to the secondary school for me. I wasn't bothered to be honest. My mates went to the Secondary school. My mum had gone there. Despite the double whammy fail I actually didn't feel ashamed of myself. All of us failers noticed how the ones who passed were celebrated though. We were told 'You'll do fine' and 'You tried your best.' The ones who passed got given gifts and were told to be proud of their efforts. Hpmh. Greyfriars Bobby, twice. Where's my reward for that?</div>
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Anyway, I loved my Secondary school. I had a lovely class. We were all friends and we had good teachers and a great principal who really cared about all the students. I passed my GCSEs- mostly A grades and two B's. I went to Grammar school to do my A Levels and passed them well enough too- 3 B grades- enough to get me on to a course in a highly respected university.</div>
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So what's the problem, then?<br /><br />That's the question Sammy Wilson, DUP MLA, asked me on Radio Ulster when I phoned in to complain about our system. Sure it works for everyone, doesn't it? It worked for me, didn't it? Didn't hold me back, right?</div>
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Well....</div>
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Here are a few ways in which failing that exam at the ages of 10 and 11 made my life a little more difficult than those who passed and who ended up (let's say) at the same university as me:</div>
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1. It's not kind to make failures of 11yr olds. Many arguments stop here. It's unnecessary to tell one group they're better than another. And it's also silly. Students change as they grow and many who don't perform one year can perform better in another. If a teacher tells you your intellect and ability is set in stone then they're a poor teacher- don't trust them. Why we still have a system which ingrains this idea in the minds of everyday people, I have no idea. </div>
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But it's not all about that.</div>
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2. Expectation. Educational achievement depends on lots of different things. But here's a guarantee: you tell a whole group of children that they can't expect to achieve as well as a whole other group; they will mostly believe you. I wasn't the only one from my Secondary school who went to university. But having taught 11-18yr olds for some time I have zero doubt that there were many who could have gone on to further study but whose families didn't even consider it as a possibility, because they failed an exam at age 11. </div>
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When I went to the Grammar school to take my A Levels I was gobsmacked to find that almost everyone just assumed they would be going to university. I hadn't even considered the idea. I filled in a UCAS form because I thought it was a rule that you had to. Kids in my class would ask me 'What are you going to study at university?' It was a different world. They all knew what they were going to study. Law. Medicine. Politics. It was mind blowing to me that there were people who had just done their GCSEs who were already planning to be lawyers and doctors. I didn't know ONE person in my Secondary school who wanted to be a doctor, let alone anyone who just naturally assumed that's what they would do. It's hard to explain the absolute division there was between those two cultures. And I cannot imagine that it was down to anything else but expectation. After all, I was in the same class as all those future doctors and lawyers now. So why should I feel any less inclined to think of myself as destined for university or destined for a professional career? But a sense of confidence doesn't grow overnight and it doesn't come from suddenly finding yourself in the company of those who have been told all their lives that they are successes. And many, many young people never even got that far because to make that cultural leap wasn't as easy for them as it was for me, and truth be told, I found it fairly hard. </div>
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That is what inequality is. It's pretending that everyone has equal opportunities but making sure that it's more difficult for some people to access those opportunities. There is nothing wrong with leaving school at 16 or taking a journey into your career that doesn't require university. There is a lot wrong with telling people at age 11 who they are. There is a lot wrong with denying everyone the same choices.<br /><br />3. But we don't even need to make inferences about the cultural divide between Secondary and Grammar schools to find what makes academic achievement harder for those who have been told they are 'not suited' to academia. When I wanted to take A Levels at the Grammar school my GCSE results had to be better than those who were already at the Grammar school to allow me to have a place alongside those who passed their 11plus. I didn't realise that until I overheard some students in my class discussing their GCSE grades. Of course, it makes sense- you would expect your school to have some loyalty to you as a student who had been there for five years already, and this leaves fewer places for outsiders and naturally in a selective school those places will be allocated to the highest achievers. This would seem fair if you were on the inside, wouldn't it? This is my experience of one school, of course, but the problem is that the system still allows for this to happen.</div>
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Our system does not allow for students to grow and learn and develop at different rates. It is a fantasy. It is a wish, for all minds to work the same way, and for achievement to simply be about being a better person- one who works hard and whose parents care. The fantasy means that nobody can be blamed for those people who never fulfill their academic potential. This fantasy means that our government can keep on telling the world that Northern Ireland has a first class education system while they sweep our terrible failings under the carpet. I feel very sorry indeed that the Conservative government are making moves to bring this system back to England.<br /><br /><b>Shirley-Anne McMillan, schools worker and author of YA novel, A Good Hiding</b></div>
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Copyright of the Author. Not to be reproduced without permission.</div>
Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-78506604077707389352016-09-14T11:24:00.000+01:002016-09-14T11:24:50.051+01:00Imposter Syndrome <span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I went to a Catholic secondary modern school, but am unusual in that through my school career I attended Sec Mods, comprehensive and eventually a grammar school. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After I failed the 11 plus I spent the next 4 years coming top or second in every subject but it never occurred to anybody to question whether I was in the right school. The level of education was poor. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It wasn't possible to take "O" levels, only CSE's which were more or less useless even then (1960's). </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">The only science lessons on offer were general science - for many years after I didn't know the difference between physics and chemistry. It wasn't possible to take any languages. </span><span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">I was destined to leave school at 15. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">I wanted to be a teacher but was told in no uncertain terms that as I hadn't passed the 11 plus this would not be possible. The aspirations for pupils were very low - it was made clear to us that if we became an admin worker or a nurse that this would be considered a great success. I got the feeling that we were being groomed to work in a factory or a shop. Further education was never mentioned at all. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">I escaped the secondary modern system when I was 15, when my family moved home and the system changed to comprehensive. I was put in the bottom stream because of where I came from, and I had just 5 months to get myself into the "O" level stream. Luckily I just managed to do it, getting a mixture of 5 "O" levels and 3 "CSE"'s. My family moved home again and we moved into an area where there was a grammar school. Because of my "O" levels they let me in and I went on to obtain 3 "A" levels. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">I was astounded when I went to grammar school to discover that the expectation was that people would go on to university. I wasn't at the school long enough for this to rub off on me, so I applied to teaching training college in defiance of people who said I would never be a teacher. After 1 year I realised teaching wasn't for me - I was more interested in what prevented children from achieving than actually teaching them. So I applied to university and did a Sociology degree at Bristol, and then went on to be a social worker. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">That was 40 years ago. I'm retired now, but ended up as a programme manager for projects in Birmingham and Coventry, working with disadvantaged young people. Just before retirement I was awarded an MBE. However there are huge gaps in my education. I am now learning Spanish - the first time I have had an opportunity to learn a language. I am wracked with under-confidence and imposter syndrome - that I will be caught out and people will realise I'm useless. This is what a two tier system does to people - consign a large number of promising young people to the dustbin for no other reason than elitism. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">I occasionally think about my school mates I left behind in the Sec Mod - did they manage to escape the early labelling and be successful? I think people who ended up on the wrong side of the selection fence and despite all are successful have had to work doubly hard to be successful. I belong to the Labour Party and would fight tooth and nail to oppose the reintroduction of selection.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fcfefd; color: #272727; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">Copyright of the Author. Not to be republished without </span><span style="color: #272727; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">permission. </span></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-69246120529624000642016-05-30T15:48:00.000+01:002016-05-30T15:48:42.199+01:00I said I wanted to be a 'lady detective'<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I passed my 11+ (1947) but failed the oral examination because I said I wanted to be a 'lady detective', so instead of going to Hastings High School I went to Hastings Secondary Modern School for Girls. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">There, I was with a few others allowed to study for 0-levels, but mysteriously this 'privilege' was withdrawn from us and we left at 17. I can find no archival records for this school, nor Ministry of Education papers of explanation.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Later, while employed, I took A-level papers and passed - I had to prove my capability, if only to myself. Despite the education authority and a careers adviser who tried to curb my ambition, I became a reporter on a local paper, then a journalist/editor in London, and finally a sub-editor on Woman. After marriage, children and living abroad, I joined the civil service (as a writer/editor) and later a press officer up to retirement. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">My husband assures me that my career has been better than many graduates, but I still resent what I perceive as injustice. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Evelyn Smith </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Copyright of the Author. Not to be reproduced without permission </span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-87418199308247066142015-10-17T16:15:00.000+01:002015-10-17T19:36:49.230+01:00Secondary Education Up North <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"S</span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">econdary </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">e</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"><b>ducation</b> in the northern industrial town I grew up in was aimed at producing chemical workers for ICI. The town "baths" were owned by the company, and that's where we were led once a week to learn to swim. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">This was in the 1950s and 1960s, when the town had a declining chemical industry, probably the most polluting chemical industry extant, using the Leblanc Process to manufacture "soda ash" It also produced by-products such as hydrochloric acid and tons of toxic waste that were piled up like small mountain ranges around the town. (Like Geneva with sulphur fumes). I used to play in them as a toddler, watching the dark green pools bubbling and foaming at my feet.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The primary school was Victorian and my first memory was the stench from the school kitchens.I never ate a school meal then or ever after. Despite rationing (which ended in 1954), I preferred to go hungry. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">n the primary school </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">we were "streamed" and I was in the "B" stream, and so destined to fail the 11-plus because only people in the "A" stream went to the single-sex grammar school. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Surprisingly (maybe the quota had been reached) five of the "A" stream boys also failed and ended up, like me, at the dual-sex secondary modern. (I don't know about the girls, at that stage they were beyond my event horizon).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span>he only preparation<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">I had for the 11-plus exam was to be given three brand-new pencils and a map of the 3 miles to get to the venue. There were few cars in those days, so it was a long walk on a Saturday morning. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">We were, however, given the choice of which secondary modern school we preferred if we failed, but no-one in the Local Authority took any notice; I was sent to the closest one.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">he secondary modern school</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> was built in the twentieth century, but had been outgrown by the post-war baby-boomer child population, so half the playground was taken up with "temporary" buildings with asbestos roofs. The toilets were also outside and there were no washing facilities. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">he school playing fields were 4 miles away</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> and we had a bus to get there but had to walk home after "playing" games. Often it was so cold that it was impossible to get dressed in the windswept field (the changing room being a pile of bricks inhabited by werewolves); fingers couldn't do up buttons. That turned me off playing organised sport for life. Later the local authority somehow managed to convert a field of allotments into a small athletics track and cricket field, next to the school. By then I had no interest, apart from what happened to the butterflies.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">(I once had to get back to school after playing games, to read some Shakespeare to my English teacher. It was The Merchant of Venice. I was frozen and tired, but I read it.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">he girls did home economics and biology</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">, the boys did woodwork and metalwork. There was a small school library and the main hall doubled as a sports hall and as a theatre for productions at Christmas. And, because it was not single sex, we had "socials". They taught us how to dance the "Gay Gordons" and others that I can't remember, which was revelatory. Girls, it turned out, were really interesting! </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">We were all placed in a "house" and earned "house points" for good work. I was in top set so we did have some good teachers that pushed us. A succession of teachers taught us Spanish, including one who came from Spain. He also tried to teach us how to pass a football, rather than just kick it upfield. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">t the end of the fourth year</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">, when I was 15, (1962) everyone did a school leaving exam. Luckily I passed 13 subjects and about 24 of us were allowed to stay on and do O Levels. In the previous year only two people did O levels. I wanted to go on and do A Levels, which the school wasn't equipped for, so I went to the grammar school to do them, along with a few more O levels. Four of us made that transition. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">he single sex grammar school and the teachers were inspiring</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">. Teachers wore gowns. It was run like I imagined school was in Tom Brown's Schooldays; an intellectual and physical challenge every day. The school had everything from top-class science labs to adjacent sports fields and a gym on the premises. If only I'd had those for the previous 5 years! The boys were amazing; confident and bright.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">he irony</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> is that a few years later my secondary modern school became the primary school, the grammar school became a 11-16 comprehensive (High School) and the headmaster of my secondary modern became the headmaster of the comprehensive. It is rated as one of the best comprehensive schools in the country to this day, 50 years later."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Ian Cox </b></span></span></div>
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</span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-76845640742120561942015-04-28T18:59:00.000+01:002015-04-28T18:59:36.528+01:00"High time to lay it down" <br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">My </span><b>Sec Mod experience is passing its 50th anniversary</b> <b>- high time to lay it down & throw off the feelings I still have about it. </b><br /><br />I don't know if the exam I sat was an 11+. I was not sitting it at the normal time having arrived in the UK, age 11, in early 1965. With father in the overseas civil service my primary schools numbered three in Kenya, one, briefly, in the UK, & the last in New Zealand. I sat the exam at the Grammar school. The format of the questions was entirely alien & I can't remember answering anything. The result came by letter to my parents from the Grammar's Head: “...Jack, as expected, to the Secondary Modern”. I was acutely aware this was a life-shattering failure though I'm not sure how I knew.<br /><br />So I found myself in the bottom stream, first year in the Sec Mod of a small Devon village. In hindsight, the village, parochial & riven into 'cow-town' & 'fish-town' was never going to be an easy place for me with crew-cut & Kenyan accent to blend. Life became Kafkaesque - I walked in feeling utterly doomed & it went down-hill from there.<br /><br />I was christened 'fish-face', a handle that stuck for most of my time there. I made few friends & these mainly among the other non-locals (“voreigners” in the Devonian parlance of the time). I guess my treatment was similar to that meted out to the other non-locals. I commonly had to recover part of my clothing from down the toilets after PE - something about which the PE teacher did nothing. Parental complaints served only to alienate me from some of the staff. The bullying continued unabated.<br /><br />Desperate to escape, my hopes were pinned on the 13+ till dashed on being told I would not be put in for it. I recall no one else sitting it so suspect school policy was not to bother with this exam at all. I coped by day-dreaming so it all seemed to be happening to someone else. Perhaps it's why I recall few details but have strong reactions on just seeing a picture of the place.<br /><br />The turning point came after a row with the biology teacher over a low mark for a piece of work on which I had really grafted. She refused to have me back in her class. Thankfully, the physics teacher allowed me to attend his instead. I clearly remember my first physics lesson. It was on the triangle of forces. In my many aero-modelling magazines I had seen diagrams of flight showing the balance of lift & weight, drag, & thrust, & now I could understand them. It was the start of a life-long passion for physics. My maths & English improved dramatically as I started to appreciate their value through physics.<br /><br />The physics teacher persuaded my parents to let me stay on for the 5th year & CSEs. The year was small with maybe only 15% of us staying on. Careers advice was a 5-minute one-to-one joke with the least able teacher in the school. He met my university ambitions with incredulity & suggested I think of something less demanding.<br /><br />I spent 3 happy years doing 'O's & 'A's in the totally grown-up atmosphere of the local 'Tech' - a huge contrast to school & perfect prep. for university. I gained a degree & Ph.D. in physics, spent 16 years a university lecturer then set up my own consultancy.<br /><br />The education system as a whole served me well, providing a World-class education that lead to a varied & fascinating career. Via our local Comp. & Oxbridge it has taken my children to even more promising careers.<br /><br />But what of the Sec Mod? Only one of my contemporaries, now a BBC producer, went to university (also via 'Tech'). We have both repaid the investment in our higher education many times over.<br /><br />I'm sure many of the others were educationally short-changed & much of their potential wasted, especially those that had to leave at the end of the 4th year with no opportunity to sit for qualifications.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Colin Mill</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">Copyright of the author. Not to be reproduced without permission.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="comment-actions secondary-text" id="bc_0_0MN" kind="m"></span></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-52349013463801815982014-06-01T22:25:00.000+01:002014-07-22T22:56:09.205+01:00 I often feel I am "looking in" <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">I have no memories of one specific 11+ exam, but recollections of a variety of 'tests' in that
last year of primary school (1965/66). However, I do remember that early on in that that
year it was well known who had 'passed' or 'failed'. This suggests that a combination of
factors determined who would go to which secondary school; possibly test results and
'decisions' by school staff - who knows.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">I remember clearly that two girls went on to the grammar school and one girl to the
technical school; just three from a class of probably 25-30 pupils. The rest of us went to
the local secondary modern school. Those three girls and I had headed up four reading
groups in the class (I only remembered this when I started writing this piece). I enjoyed
leading this group but recollect now that I was very reluctant in later school years to take
on any 'leadership' roles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">I was an only child and my mother was a refugee from Germany in the 1930s who was
never able to fulfil any of her ambitions. I know my 'failure' was a big disappointment to
her. When the younger children of near neighbours (& friends of mine) went on to the
grammar school a couple of years after my move to secondary school, she told me they
'wouldn't speak to me again'. They didn't. My father was more philosophical about the
whole business but I don't remember much discussion about any of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">I remember the first day at my 'modern'. Everything was huge and overwhelming. We lined
up in a netball court in six new tutor groups. Later we were individually 'setted' for each
academic subject. There were five sets and also a special needs department (called
‘remedial’) for those who had specific learning issues. We girls spent large amounts of
time (two whole mornings a week, I think) in needlework and domestic science classes,
whilst the boys did woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing. There were long art and
pottery classes too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">At 13 the French teacher told my parents I should try for the 13 + and transfer to the
grammar school. I have a strong memory of not wanting to try for this. By this time, part of
me had become somewhat disinterested in academic work. Another part, I think, felt that if
I had failed once I wasn't going to chance it again. I was fed up with the whole system.
Also, I was particularly enjoying piano lessons (& liked the teacher) and a move would
have interfered with that happy stability. I had become used to the school and had some
friends. I also remember, particularly, and fondly, the wonderful needlework teacher - a
lovely and inspiring woman - and several English teachers. I didn't want to lose that known
environment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">This secondary modern did offer O and A level classes beyond the obligatory CSE exams
(which we all took). Many pupils left at 15 so the class sizes reduced considerably. I
ended up with a reasonable sprinkling of O levels and completed the first year of two A
level courses. I then left school to start a nursing course, changed my mind & direction
again over that summer, and went on to a technical college. Here they offered A level
courses over two years but also very intense one year A level courses. I took this option
and got my two A levels and offers to study Librarianship and Information Science at
degree level. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">My depleted confidence after 11+ failure caused me to transfer from a degree to a diploma
course early on at university. I hadn't been prepared, I think for that intensity of work.
Student life was a success and the diploma gave me a reasonable career over a number
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">of years. More recently I completed a TEFL course and did a degree with the Open
University. The move from degree to diploma course at 19 had always left me feeling
annoyed with myself although at the time it was probably the best move.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">Until now I have rarely spoken about my 11+ failure. My life has taken me into contact with
many people who went to public or grammar school; I often feel I am 'looking in' at their
very different school lives when childhood experiences are aired. My husband has
encouraged me to move on from this and I am trying to do this, but I believe passionately
that selection at 11 is a harmful and damaging process.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Julia</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Copyright of the author. Not to be reproduced without permission.</span></div>
Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-91620116742834078382014-03-26T18:12:00.000+00:002014-11-23T17:39:52.312+00:00I Never Knew Why <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">"I recently celebrated my 69th birthday and have been reflecting on my life in the form of a scrapbook; writing about my upbringing, school, working years etc.. Whilst compiling memorabilia and photos for this project I realized that unbeknownst to me, for years I have withheld giving any information pertaining to my school years to anyone but never knew why. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I was always under the impression that I had completed the required years of education, and even took an "extended" course in typing, successfully landing an office job immediately after simply walking out of the school gate for the last time. A few years later I married and emigrated to the U.S.A. I had two daughters and as they grew older I re-entered the workforce at which time I also decided I wanted to further my education. Feeling somewhat smug at the prospect, after all, I excelled at various subjects in secondary school: I could read and write by the time I entered infant school, had excellent penmanship which had earned me a certificate and an italic pen as a prize, had excellent reading skills, and also possessed a certificate of excellence in embroidery. In fact I felt quite confident when I first strutted in for an interview at a local community college. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The first blow was when I was asked for my high school transcripts. My heart sank and the shattering truth was realized in that I was not going to be accepted. I remember going home and thinking that for 1) I never attended high school like the american children did - I attended a "secondary" school, and 2) I did not have any document, except for a couple of torn report cards, to even show that I had ever attended ANY school. Needless to say I never went back to the college, but still with some optimism I sent a couple of letters to the County Council where I had attended school requesting information for proof of my attendance, and even had the gall to ask for documentation that I had completed school, which were totally dismissed. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I felt cheated whenever anyone would talk to me about my educational experience, as it was considered with my current employment, that surely I was not a "drop-out." It then occurred to me that it was looked upon as though I had not "graduated," so from that time on I found myself cleverly changing the subject with feeble humor never again disclosing my age of "completing" school. Over the years I did manage to maintain gainful employment by taking courses to upgrade my skills in a local business school, and also receiving on-the-job training to keep me abreast of required job qualifications. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I do NOT remember taking the 11+ exam (I didn't even know it had a name), but it has been embedded in my brain and has haunted me for all of these years that I failed a test in school when I was quite young that obviously dictated whether I would be offered the opportunity to further my education in a positive way, or rather be stifled educationally due to failing an obvious flawed exam at the tender age of 10, which favored from what I've been reading, children from a more affluent background than myself, that environment was also a factor, and yes, could it have also been because I was female? </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A couple of years ago I asked a close friend of mine who resides in England if she remembered anything about taking a test when we were very young, and she did. She even offered a little extra information that made me cringe even more, informing me that we left at the age of fifteen, whereas I was under the impression we were the ripe old age of sixteen. Then one day I googled "Tests given at school in the 1950's in England," and I was absolutely astounded to read some of the material regarding the educational system at that particular time depicting evidence of "pollution" as far as the scoring system. I do feel comfort in that obviously there are many other "victims" out there bearing this emotional scar from years ago. How AWESOME that this period will go down in the history books."<br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" />Carol</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Copyright of the Author. Not to be reproduced without permission.</span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-68677966197754680722013-12-20T17:57:00.001+00:002013-12-20T18:00:28.186+00:00"we were destined for the jam factory"<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">"I adored my Primary School, the female headteacher, was a Cambridge MA, who had been Steiner trained. My mother was better educated and more middle class than my father, who was very working class but hugely intelligent. I had a thirst for knowledge from as early as I can remember and my mother taught me to read and write at the age of 3 and the head allowed me to start at age 4. I enjoyed studying for the 11 plus, I loved the challenge of it all. My teacher was keen for me to go to the Grammer School (the High School for Girls) and told my parents that I had the ability to pass. <br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" />I passed all the written exams but had to go for an interview at the Grammer School, as there weren’t enough places that year. The interview was appalling for a child of that age. I stood alone before the board of governors and the headmistress. I couldn’t understand why they were asking me the questions they were – what newspaper did my parents read? What did my father do? Did my mother work? Did we own our house or was it a council house or rented? Where did we go for our holidays? What did we call our midday meal? They asked me very little about myself; what do I want to do when I grow up? I wanted to go to university and teach and do research, but I didn’t feel they believed me. When the letter came saying I hadn’t got in, my parents accepted it, although my mother was very cross and blamed herself for “marrying down”. My headteacher wanted to take it up with the local authority as she was appalled, but my parents said to let it drop.<br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" />My first day at the school was horrendous, I had never met such rough kids before was totally confused. The teachers seemed to be hostile and unfriendly and not like being there. <br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" />I very rarely speak of my secondary school days to anyone. I was bullied from that first day until the day I left. I was beaten up, burnt with cigarettes, sexually assaulted by other girls and ostracised. I told my mother after a year about the bullying, I though she would get me moved. In fact she gave me a slap and told me never to mention it again or to anyone else. I think she just couldn’t handle the guilt or something. I never trusted her again to help me in life and we drifted apart in closeness from that day onwards. At age 14 I tried to commit suicide several times. <br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" />The school had absolutely no expectations for any of us. Teachers endlessly told us we were “rubbish” and “the dregs” and that we were destined for the jam factory (which employed large numbers locally) or fruit picking. Most kids mucked about in class and barely any teaching went on. We had to take the pointless CSE exams. Most kids left after those; they didn’t offer anything else beyond a few O’ levels if a teacher fancied teaching them. <br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" />I did O’ levels – English Lit and Language, History, Art and Needlework. The local authority allowed me to transfer to A level college after that, but really I was restricted in which ones I could take because of the O levels I had. I was very depressed at that college and found it increasingly hard to trust people and make friends. It makes me weep when I think what a friendly, out going child I’d been at Primary School. I got a place at University, but my parents wouldn’t let me go. They thought I would be rejected at university due to my social class. I was allowed to go to teacher training college instead, as this would at least give me a proper job at the end. I had a breakdown at college and the college doctor refused to sign me off as medically stable in order to teach. I worked for years in low paid jobs, totally lacking in confidence. After marriage, I did a degree through the Open University, then three postgraduate qualifications at another University. Eventually I taught on a degree course for over a decade; I am now teach workshops as well as mentoring students who have mental health issues. I have achieved a lot in life through hard work and determination. I still feel angry about things that never should have happened. What about all the other kids out there that never got a chance." </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Anonymous</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Not to be re-used without permission</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"><br style="line-height: 21px;" /></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-87662810276545378422013-10-13T22:36:00.000+01:002013-10-13T23:10:03.105+01:00Half our Future? Secondary Modern Schools and the Newsom Report - fifty years on <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Professor Gary McCulloch is Head of Department of Humanities and
Social Sciences at the Institute of Education, University of London. </span><span lang="EN-US">His
principle interests are in the history of education, including curriculum
history, the history of secondary education, the history of teachers and
teaching, the history of educational policy, historical perspectives on current
educational issues, historical theory and methodology relating to education,
and documentary research methods.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"><a href="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/secondary-modern/abb-g_1_27coedclassweb/" rel="attachment wp-att-5607" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0498c9; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Blackwell Secondary Modern School. c1950. Crown copyright" class=" wp-image-5607 " height="376" src="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ABB-G_1_27coedclassWeb-620x447.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.292969) 0px 0px 3px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.199219) 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 4px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" width="521" /></a></span><br />
<div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 11px; font: normal normal normal 11px/22px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
Blackwell Secondary Modern School. c1950. Crown copyright</div>
</div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In
an article that Gary McCulloch and Liz Sobell published in 1994, ‘Toward a
social history of the secondary modern schools’ (History of Education,1994,Vol
23, no. 3, 275-286), the authors pointed out how little attention had been
given to Secondary Modern education. They indicated possible future lines of
enquiry, such as how gender figured in these schools, how pupils’ families
related to the schools, and called for any analysis to be put within the
contexts of social stratification and the ‘tripartite system’ . They pointed
out that the 1944 settlement established this system in the institutions which
the Act set up - Secondary Modern, Grammar and Technical schools - but that the
notion that students aged 11 can (or should) be divided up in this way precedes
1944 and persists today. In relation to social stratification, are explicit and
implicit ideas about ‘working-class’ education. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again,
these ideas precede the Secondary Modern era, run throughout it and continue
today. Studies in this area range across the psychometrics of eg Cyril Burt et
al; the monumental reports of eg Crowther and Newsom; Brian Jackson’s
sociological study of one grammar school; the historical accounts of eg Harold
Silver; Floud and Halsey’s celebrated studies in inequality; fly on the wall
explorations by eg Phil Cohen; the political analyses of eg Brian Simon, Ken
Jones. The sociolinguistic work of Basil Bernstein and William Labov arrived at
very different conclusions on the part played by the ‘home’ language of young
people. Meanwhile, what might be called the ‘Bourdieu tradition’ reversed the
whole view by asking what is it about the nature of education that appears to
suit some social layers more than others. This analysis has been attacked by
the Right, sometimes drawing particularly on the ideas of E.D.Hirsch whilst
bringing to an end the era of local control of schooling on the grounds that it
‘failed’. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did
it? And if it sometimes did, as Gary McCulloch’s own work as in ‘Failing the
Ordinary Child’ (1998) suggests, was the problem with the local control or with
national implementation of ideas about adolescence, intelligence, language,
social class and the ‘needs of society’ - a notion often reduced to the ‘needs
of employers’?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In
all this, the voices of pupils, parents and teachers in Secondary Modern
Schools have been mostly absent. So, we return to the opening lines of
McCulloch’s and Sobell’s article of 1994:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>“Surprisingly
little attention has been given to secondary modern schools. It is clear that
there has been much greater interest in grammar and public schools than for the
secondary modern schools, which catered in their time, only a generation ago,
for the large majority of the 11-15 age group.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gary McCulloch has
very kindly written the following introductory notes for our Sec Mod blog. </span></span><!--EndFragment-->
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*****</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
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</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Half our Future?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Secondary modern schools and the Newsom Report – fifty years on</span></u><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">October 2013 marks the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Newsom Report,
<u>Half our Future</u>, which examined what it called ‘the education of pupils
aged 13 to 16 of average and less than average ability’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Report tried hard to keep well clear of
the debates about comprehensive reorganisation that we then being rehearsed
widely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet it was highly relevant to
pupils in the secondary modern schools where the so-called ‘ordinary child’ was
usually taught.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to this
Report, the characteristic problems of educating such pupils could not be
solved through administrative changes, but needed to more basic change in
attitudes about educability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this
spirit, it supported the raising of the school leaving age to sixteen – still a
controversial proposal nearly twenty years after it had been endorsed by the
Education Act of 1944.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is some useful literature about the secondary modern schools and
its pupils.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My own contributions have
tried to show the links between the secondary modern schools and the changing
educational, social and political context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My book <u>Failing The Ordinary Child?</u> (1998) examined these schools
as an example of working class secondary education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A new book, written by myself with my
colleagues Tom Woodin and Steve Cowan, looks at the raising of the school
leaving age (<u>Secondary Education and the Raising of the School Leaving Age</u>,
2013).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have also written articles that
are relevant to these issues in <u>History of Education</u> (with Liz Sobell,
1994) and the <u>Journal of Educational Administration and History</u>
(2000).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>What we still lack, though, is a
social history of these schools that brings out the everyday experiences of
pupils and teachers. </i>[Our italics]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Again a good starting point for such a history is the Newsom Report of
1963.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the purposes of the Report a
national sample was taken that provided over 6,000 pen-portraits of 14-year-old
boys and girls, a cross-section of all pupils in these schools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were 3,668 secondary modern schools in
England at this time, more than two-thirds of all secondary schools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This survey gives us some help in beginning
to reconstruct the experiences of pupils in these schools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A collection of oral and written testimonies
from teachers and pupils, highlighting memories of these schools from those
most closely involved, would be a wonderful resource as a basis for a social
history schools which is sorely needed, and a great contribution to a fuller
understanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look forward to seeing
the results of this new enterprise looking back on the secondary modern
schools, fifty years on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Gary McCulloch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Institute of Education London<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></span></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-33762389573964008482013-09-28T22:06:00.000+01:002013-09-28T22:06:34.098+01:00Article first published in History Workshop Online January 24 2013 <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #252525; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"></span><br />
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_5607" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f8f8f8; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(230, 230, 230); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-color: rgb(230, 230, 230); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(230, 230, 230); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(230, 230, 230); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 531px;">
<a href="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/secondary-modern/abb-g_1_27coedclassweb/" rel="attachment wp-att-5607" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0498c9; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Blackwell Secondary Modern School. c1950. Crown copyright" class=" wp-image-5607 " height="376" src="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ABB-G_1_27coedclassWeb-620x447.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.296875) 0px 0px 3px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 4px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="521" /></a><br />
<div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 11px; font: normal normal normal 11px/22px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
Blackwell Secondary Modern School. c1950. Crown copyright</div>
</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Michael Rosen and Emma-Louise Williams explain the background to their website, <a href="http://secmod.blogspot.co.uk/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0498c9; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Sec Mod</a>, which is collecting memories of education at secondary modern schools in Britain.</strong></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Michael Rosen writes:</strong></div>
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I came to this subject in several ways: personally, my educational experience began when I was three in 1949, so I hit the 11-plus in 1956-57. I passed and went first to Harrow Weald County Grammar School and then (because we moved when I was sixteen) to Watford Boys’ Grammar School. I thought that I would fail but my mother (who was a primary school teacher) assured me that I wouldn’t because the headteacher had told her that I wouldn’t! At the time this seemed odd. She explained to me several years later that that is what primary school headteachers did. They had the ultimate say-so on who would pass. The visible display of that at my school was one girl who came to school on ‘results day’, clearly and obviously having failed. She was someone who had always finished in the ‘top half’ of the top stream in primary school. I remember our class teacher saying something reassuring to the girl on ‘results day’. On the first day of Year One, I saw her in her grammar school uniform.</div>
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In short, this 11-plus exam wasn’t quite the meritocratic, objective test it was made out to be.</div>
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Woman: ‘In my last year at school we had to choose whether we wanted to go in the class that lead us onto a nursing career or a class for those interested in office/secretarial work. The two other streams were for the least able pupils. I neither wanted to be a nurse (we had been shown around the local hospital to see tape worms in jars, etc) or work in an office. I suppose I must have plumped for the office option as I remember sitting at a desk with a typewriter.</div>
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‘I left school in 1967 at the tender age of fifteen years and three months without any qualifications and got a job as an office junior. As a young mother in my early twenties I studied with the Open University. Thank God for Jenny Lee!’</div>
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My other reason is political. My parents were active in the movement to bring about comprehensive education. I was surrounded from an early age with debates about the validity (or not) of IQ testing, streaming, segregation of children at eleven, the predictive value of tests at eleven on children’s outcomes at fifteen, sixteen, eighteen and so on.</div>
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So, for many years I have been curious about what went on at the schools where some of my friends went, what happened to them after they left, how they view the relationship between their schools, their later lives, people who passed and so on. Quite simply, I don’t know, and in that sense I’m part of the problem! A 1950s grammar school boy like me doesn’t know what it felt like to have been a sec mod boy or girl of that time, and as an adult now I don’t know how my contemporaries feel about it all.</div>
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Miss Williams says that only the top two rows</div>
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will pass their Eleven Plus.</div>
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She stands next to the last person on the</div>
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end of the second row.</div>
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She holds up her hand as if</div>
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she is helping people cross the road.</div>
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This side will pass, she says.</div>
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This side will fail, she says.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘The Bell’ in ‘Michael Rosen’s Big Book of Bad Things (Puffin, 2010)</strong></div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Emma-Louise Williams writes:</strong></div>
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My dad failed the 11-plus. When I was a child, I remember him telling us that when his younger brother passed the exam, he got a bike. My dad didn’t get the bike. He went to a sec mod in Kenton, Harrow, left at fifteen to go to technical college. He became an apprentice, a draughtsman, ran his own business and is now a specialised form of surveyor. I have never thought of him as being less able or less skilled than anyone else, but I wonder how he perceives himself. I should add that my experience of studying in Germany in the late 1980s showed me that people pursuing technical and vocational courses were valued as much as my German friends following more academic courses.</div>
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My mum came from a working-class family (her father worked on the tugs on the River Thames) and she passed the 11-plus and went to grammar school in 1955.</div>
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I went to a comprehensive school.</div>
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This one family history expresses an intersection of some of the themes running through post-war English education.</div>
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As a radio producer, I have had the feeling that this subject still hasn’t been heard and I would really like to be the one to make that radio programme.</div>
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Education is an aspect of our collective past that seems strangely absent from narratives about how we have lived.</div>
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_____________________________________________________________________________________________</div>
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Stories of schooling appear in individual biographies and an account of government legislation appears in accounts of decades and eras. Missing from either is a sense of what it was collectively like to have experienced a particular kind of schooling. The two exceptions are accounts of life in the large private schools and, more recently, stories of life in the grammar schools of the 1950s and 60s. In themselves, there is of course nothing wrong with these, but highly selective view of the past has led to the construction of a particular ideology on the back of these stories: private education was ultimately a ‘good thing’ no matter what individual privations may or may not have been suffered by (in particular) boy boarders; grammar schools were a good thing both in themselves because they provided a ‘good education’ and because working-class children in particular benefited from them.</div>
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Both these ideas can be contested. Post-war grammar school education was in many places seriously deficient in how it approached science and technology, and the education of the working class cannot be told in its entirety as a story of what happened to those working-class children who found their way into grammar schools. It should also be said here that the classification of children as ‘working class’ in this period is beset with many problems that don’t show up on the scales that were used at the time. Brian Jackson’s study Education and the Working Class (<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jzgOAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0498c9; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">now available as an ebook</a>) drew particular attention to the invisibility of the education of working-class children’s parents. He pointed out that one parent, often the mother, was often of educated origin, and that fathers had often experienced an ‘invisible’ form of education through trade union or political activity.</div>
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However, the major gap in all this is the story of the secondary modern school. To recap, in 1944 the ‘Butler Act’ as it came to be known, or the 1944 Education Act brought in the ‘tripartite system’ in England and Wales. This divided schools in to grammar, technical and secondary modern. In their last year at primary school, when the children were aged ten-eleven, all children in state schools would sit an exam, which came to be known as the 11-plus, which would decide the type of school that the children would go to. The exams consisted of three elements: maths, English and a form of IQ test. Those that averaged a pass would go to the grammar school. Those that failed would go to the secondary modern (or ‘sec mod’ as they came to be known) and some children who were borderline or deemed to be of a particularly technical bent, would go to the technical schools.</div>
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<a href="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/secondary-modern/plate2a/" rel="attachment wp-att-5612" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0498c9; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Brass Band in a Secondary Modern School. Crown copyright" class="size-full wp-image-5612 " height="273" src="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/plate2a.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.296875) 0px 0px 3px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 4px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="450" /></a><br />
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Brass Band in a Secondary Modern School. Crown copyright</div>
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As it panned out (and there are very interesting historical reasons for this) the technical schools never really got off the ground. They morphed into technical colleges that accepted students at fifteen or sixteen rather than at eleven. The history of how these technical colleges at first provided a high level of qualification for many sec mod students and some grammar school students – all of whom were mostly of working-class origin – has never really been told. We’ll leave that to one side for the moment.</div>
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So the failures at 11-plus went to the sec mods. Instantly there were problems with this. Education was controlled at the local level through local education authorities. Different local authorities provided different percentages of places. One area might only allow for a 10 per cent pass rate. Another over 30 per cent. All local authorities aimed to provide equal numbers of places for boys and girls. However, more girls than boys usually passed. What followed was in essence a fiddle. A percentage of the girls who passed the 11-plus were retrospectively deemed to have failed, and sent to the sec mod. A percentage of boys who failed were nevertheless sent to the grammar school.</div>
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Woman: ‘When I “failed” the 11th plus I felt sad. When the head showed me my result on a print out and told me that had I been a boy, I would have gone, I felt sadder. He said he could intervene but felt I would do better being at the top of a set rather than the bottom. In a way he was right but to this day I still feel inferior.’</div>
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The education in the two institutions – grammar and sec mod – was very different. Before the days of a national curriculum or indeed any fixed idea of a universal national entitlement, the curriculum was worked out by dint of a matching of government ‘reports’ or commissions, the government inspectorate, the exam system, local authority inspectors and teachers themselves. Grammar schools were largely ruled downwards, starting with an intention to get as many people as possible through A-levels and, before that, O-levels. These exams structured education both in terms of the curriculum and how it was taught back down the school from the O-levels down to the first year (the present Year 7).</div>
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Woman: ‘I was told if I did well enough and came top in the end of year exams I might be moved to the grammar school.</div>
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‘I worked hard and got really good marks in all my tests, except for needlework where I was second from bottom and art where I came bottom of the class. I came top in maths, science, French etc. There was nothing to be done I couldn’t be moved.’</div>
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Secondary modern schools were a different matter entirely. Some were streamed, some weren’t. Most children left before taking O-levels. Some had a top stream, which encouraged children to take one or some O-levels. Small groups of students made their way into grammar schools, post-sixteen if they had passed sufficient numbers of O-levels. In some areas the number of the students doing those rose year on year, thereby showing that the segregation at eleven was seriously faulty.</div>
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However, the question remains: what was taught in secondary modern schools to students aged between eleven and fifteen (which was the school-leaving age until 1972)? How was it taught? By whom? But of course schools aren’t solely a matter of what is taught. They are institutions governed by rules, overseen by an implicit ideology or ethos. What were the explicit and implicit rules? And what did it feel like to be in such schools for six hours a day – as a pupil, as a boy, as a girl? As a teacher? As a school worker?</div>
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How did it feel to be a sec mod student or adult in the neighbourhood? Was it like being a member of a caste or class? What was it like to be in a family group where some went to grammar school, some to a sec mod?</div>
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And what was it like to go through life after a sec mod career? Did it mark you out? Did such people find that they were deficient in certain ways or was that just a perception by others? Or both?</div>
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Woman: ‘I don’t actually remember taking my 11+. What I do remember was being called to the girls’ grammar school for an interview because I was “borderline” the interview was terrifying. Four very stern women kept asking me what I wanted to do when I left school. I was really very uncertain but thought I might want to be a teacher! That was obviously the wrong answer. I remember a letter coming addressed to my mother. She opened it in my presence, and I learnt I had failed to achieve a place at the girl’s grammar because, “I was uncertain about my long-term future, and what I wanted to be”. I felt angry having got to an interview and then being rejected, but even then I knew deep down a girls’ grammar was not for me. No one in my family had ever got beyond secondary modern school so why should I be any different? was the thought going through my head. My family were not bothered one way or the other.’</div>
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So there are many questions here and behind them all we might ask ourselves, why should this matter? Two answers come to mind: the first is that this isn’t some over-specialised subject confined to a tiny clique of people. A very large majority of people who went to school between the time of the 1944 Act and around 1970 went to sec mods. This was the majority’s experience of secondary education. This means that most people born in England and Wales between the early 1930s and around 1960 experienced this kind of education. How extraordinary that this huge body of social history remains hidden from view.</div>
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The other answer concerns the here and now. Major reforms are taking place in education. Grammar schools have remained in several localities but the major restructuring taking place concerns the slow death of local control and local accountability. Schools are becoming (or told to become) academies. These have a new and special status governed by new rules and controlled from the national centre by the Secretary of State for Education. A new kind of autonomy is coming into play that may well involve subtle and covert methods of selection. The exact nature of these has yet to be determined. However, there has been a steady stream of comment and policy from the centre that has claimed that comprehensive schools were faulty in many different ways (they say), but mostly because they enacted postcode selection and lacked ‘specialism’. Academies, they say, will avoid postcode selection and their specialisms will offer ‘real choice’. Meanwhile, many commentators and politicians talk up ‘the grammar school’.</div>
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In this context, we think there is an urgency about releasing the story of the sec mods. This is not just a matter of getting the stats out. Halsey, Floud et al did that admirably in their famous studies of inequality in the late 1950s.1 It’s also a matter of ‘felt’ history, the collective subjectivities of lives lived, both in the schools but subsequently. ‘Out there’, there are hundreds of thousands of people who experienced this. People who are now aged between their late forties and eighties. With this in mind we have set up a <a href="http://secmod.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/this-blog.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0498c9; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">sec mod blog</a> with a view to beginning a collection of testimonies. We are asking people to send in their memories and accounts of attending or teaching at secondary modern schools to the blogspot. There is a selection of the contributions that we’ve already received within this article.</div>
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Man: ‘Many of my junior cohorts, well, the boys that is, were also destined for the sec mod school. Thus we all ended up one September morning nervously filing into what seemed a very large hall. The building was pre-war and low level. There was a main entrance in the centre and two large squares of classrooms led off from this, one side for boys, the other for girls. Our entrance being at the extreme edge of the square and as far from the girls as could be arranged and never the twain did meet. There were roughly 450 boys in our school. Classes were streamed by ability, the G stream being the top or most academic and a lower strata or T stream, not sure what the T stood for, Technical perhaps? Bullying was a massive problem. There was a north playground, which was for first years only, and was strongly segregated for our own protection. There was a humiliating ritual called ‘The Block’, and older boys would pass in the corridor and ask if we had been ‘blocked’ yet. Blocking consisted of a public beating while hung face down over the low walls which separated the class room corridors and surrounded the square of the senior playground’</div>
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We are fully aware that this is only one method of collecting views of these experiences and such a self-selecting group of people are governed by important factors: they are literate, have access to the internet, are interested enough to want to put their experience in the public domain and so on. To get a fuller more multi-dimensional view, we will have to compensate for such biases by, for example, seeking out testimony from non- or semi-literate people, people without computers, people who might be disinclined to volunteer their experience without a face-to-face encounter with someone who is interested (i.e., one of us) and so on.</div>
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The ultimate aim is to turn these testimonies (or something like them) into, let’s say, a book or some other media intervention (film, TV programme or radio programme).</div>
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In the meantime, there is a good deal of legwork to be done!<br />
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><a href="http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0498c9; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Dr Michael Rosen</a> is Visiting Professor of Children’s Literature at Birkbeck, University of London.<br />Michael is a former Children’s Laureate and son of educationists, Professor Harold Rosen and Connie Rosen. He presents Word of Mouth for BBC Radio 4.</strong></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Emma-Louise Williams is a radio producer whose work has been commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and includes social histories of speedway (The Smell of the Shale), topical songwriters, Weston and Lee, (Oh, My What a Rotten Song), and socio-poetic montages about the city (Eye Hopes), and separated teenagers seeking asylum (A Place for Us).</strong><br />
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In 2011 Emma made a feature-length film-poem <a href="http://underthecranes.blogspot.co.uk/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0498c9; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Under the Cranes</a>, based on Michael Rosen’s play for voices, Hackney Streets.</strong></div>
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References</div>
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1. Floud, Jean and Halsey, A.H. (1957) ‘Intelligence tests, social class and selection for secondary schools’, The British Journal of Sociology Vol 8 No 1. March 1957; Floud, J.E. (ed.), Halsey, A.H., Martin, F.M. (1956) Social Class and Educational Opportunity, Heinemann, London.<br />
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<a href="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/">http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/</a></div>
Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-83640050344948395632013-09-12T19:57:00.000+01:002013-09-12T19:57:45.109+01:00Hewers of wood, drawers of water<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">"I was at a sec mod in the late 50s and 60s. Passing the 11 plus made no difference because it was the only school within reasonable travelling distance.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">The teachers didn't really teach, but just sat at the front expecting silence, which they generally got. Some kids played cards or a variety of paper and pencil games. Some of us read, either the books in the classroom or those we brought in with us.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">There were a few exceptions to the no teaching rule. The craft teachers - metalwork and woodwork - kept the boys busy and the girls learned needlework and cooking. Housecraft, I think it was called. The games teacher was an ex Welsh rugby cap, so was keen to promote talent.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">There was no pussyfooting when it came to what teachers thought of us. To some we were "the scum of the earth," to the more liberal we were destined to be, "hewers of wood and drawers of water."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">The discipline was fairly harsh with the cane being used for even minor infringements. I was caned maybe three times. The most memorable was for walking the wrong direction around the grounds, which was a serious offence. As well as the cane, my place in the school concert was removed. I went to the teacher responsible and pleaded to be allowed to perform my piece but was told, "who do you think would want to listen to someone like you." I have not played the piano since. I still feel guilty that my mum scraped together five shillings a week for lessons and paid for my up to grade eight and five certificates. Unfortunately, I simply accepted my place.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: large; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: large; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">The school made some minor provision for a few children who took 'O' levels. On the other side of the playing fields were mobiles attended by "the specials," children with pushy parents.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">Since I could read extremely well and had good enough maths from 'extra curricuar' activities, I was not bothered by schooling. It provided access to the library and a midday meal.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">Like most of my peers I left school at 14. We were needed in the factories and at the docks. That suited the teachers who could provide for 'the specials'. The only post 14s I recall was a lad with a speech defect, a pregnant girl and a few reprobates who were destined to find it hard to get a job.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">During my mid to late twenties I got the notion that education may not be as difficult as those in charge made out so got some 'O's and 'A's, the best degree in my year and have picked up other higher gongs and a PGCE along the way. My reading I owe to my grandmother. I don't feel I owe school anything. my higher maths skills I owe to Lancelot Hogben.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I suppose our masters and betters have as much contempt for us lower orders as they always did and the downgrading of education and the demands for the return of Grammars reflects this."</span></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-87685180982802979352013-09-12T19:46:00.000+01:002013-09-12T19:46:56.911+01:00Did I go to a secondary mod?<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Did I go to a secondary mod? I thought I joined a brand new “comprehensive” in 1965 but……<br /><br />In 1970, after, I thought successfully obtaining 5GCSE’s (well 3 and two CSE grade 1 “equivalents”) I opted for A level English. This was success beyond anything I knew. None of my family had examination success. My uncle had left the same school without even taking any exams at age 15.<br /><br />Almost immediately the school informed parents that there was no A level English course as only 4 pupils had opted for it. The 6th form in the first year of the comprehensive intact was very small.<br /><br />A campaign was mounted by parents, students and staff. Letters were exchanged. Meetings were held. Finally, we heard that special allowance was made and the course was started.<br /><br />We read around the subject for 6 months, half disbelieving the reason for this strategy which was being explained as “good for you” to get a wider perspective. It did not help that the school apparently had not been delivered of the set texts. In those days I did not know where a bookshop was. I remember searching for one only a few years earlier to buy a school prize for myself, and ending up buying a book from a gift shop. This story must be partly untrue because there was a radical left wing coffee shop called I think “Centreprise” in Dalston Lane, by this time. (I note that it seemed to have opened at exactly this time in 1970!<br /><br />I can’t remember what we read.<br /><br />I do remember that a temporary teacher or supply teacher for first term explained that his literary interest was erotica… however we did not cover this and I think he left shortly after.<br /><br />Time passed, eventually the set texts arrived and we studied. Although I enjoyed the debates I struggled with the texts and writing essays. After two years I failed the exam. Then again I believed all four of us failed the exam.<br /><br />I write this, and what follows especially to those that believe that comprehensive education is only about passing exams<br /><br />The teachers worked hard. I recall that one drove us all the way to Wimbledon Theatre to see a performance. We spent hours going across London in his Ford Capri, stopping at his house for lunch. I do not recall which play, it may have been the Rivals but I believe it might have been another “reading around” experience.<br /><br />I cannot say they were experienced as they were not and clearly often only a chapter ahead of us. They had never taught a 6th form course, the school had never arranged 6th form exams. It was all new to them. We are talking about an era when working class children were only for the first time going to the 6th form in large numbers.<br /><br />The choice of “literature” was perhaps unsuited to East End 17 year olds. Villette and Bronte, I loathed. There I have said it yet again, as so often then, but 40 years later. Swift, especially the rudest bits I loved. Dryden was pretty good too if you understood the history (which we had not covered in history. Hamlet, after getting past the language was OK. I remember some Chaucer, and still mention “Piggye’s Bones in a jar by the door.” at every opportunity.<br /><br />As I was drafting some of this earlier a thought passed me- where was Villete. I am sure I kept the copy. In an instant there in the shelf I turned to Grapes of Wrath” unread, save for twice more since I placed that label marked “Inner London Education Authority” on the inside front cover. I loved Catcher in the Rye, that’s here too!<br /><br />Well maybe passing the exam, nice though it is, is not everything. I am left with a lot now looking back. They may not have been the slickest exam preparation and it is easy to be very critical. It may have not been successful in the examination but I took away something worthwhile .<br /><br />I can’t discard these books. Several I have returned to. I rubbed shoulders with some expert teachers and they showed me their enthusiasm. I still take the Observer on Sundays on their behest. I have some awareness of literature and I have gone on to read more widely and appreciatively."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="comment-actions secondary-text" id="bc_0_0MN" kind="m"></span></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-2702162190303217412013-09-12T19:38:00.000+01:002013-09-12T19:38:04.176+01:00I was told I was "borderline"<br />
<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
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<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"I attended a Boys Primary School in the late 50s-early 60s.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />When we took the 11plus I was told I was “borderline”, I had an interview with someone (I don’t remember who) to decide if I was suitable to go to Grammar School. A few weeks later the whole school was called to the school hall. The Head read out some boys’ names, and then told them they had passed the 11plus and they were going to Grammar School. He then told then they could go home early to tell their mothers (fathers would all have been at work then). The rest of us were sent back to lessons. </span></div>
<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was deflated by this insensitive way of telling us the 11plus results.<br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">***</span></div>
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<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At Secondary Modern we were in streams, A-F, I was in the A stream. We had exams in all subjects except PE/Games, twice a year. A small number of pupils moved up or down the streams as a result of the exams but very infrequently. We didn’t study languages, but one teacher tried German and French lessons after school for a while, but they didn’t last long.</span></div>
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<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">***</span></div>
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<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We all left school at the age of 15(no O levels or A levels). A small number of us took the exam to go the local further education college to take no O levels. After taking O levels I did an Engineering Apprenticeship. 11 years later I trained as a teacher. Most of the other pupils started work at 15 mainly in unskilled jobs.</span></div>
<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
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<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Meeting class mates years later I realised many had abilities that were not brought out by their education, I have friends who went to Grammar School and they also say it was not a good education. Many left Grammar School without qualifications, and were only prepared for public exams.</span></div>
<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="comment-content" id="bc_0_0MC" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My feelings about the Secondary Modern are mixed, I think the teachers tried to give a well-rounded education, and in some ways not having public exams to prepare gave those freedom teachers today don’t have. I do strongly oppose Grammar schools."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="comment-actions secondary-text" id="bc_0_0MN" kind="m"></span></span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-24128659968082223142013-07-11T16:26:00.000+01:002013-07-11T16:26:22.173+01:00"A Belief in How Secondary Modern Kids Could Achieve"<br />
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">For five years, between 1953 and
1958 I was a pupil at a run down Secondary Modern School in Hampshire. The
first three years of that schooling were grim and dispiriting ones. The
teaching team, led by an ineffective and irascible man, seemed disheartened and
struggled to find ways of engaging us in the classrooms. We in turn, being 11+
scholarship ‘failures’ and subversive to boot, disrupted their attempts at
pupil control whenever we glimpsed a chance. I for one, frequently removed from
class, spent many hours during those years standing, or working alone at a
table, outside the Head’s door gazing into the teeming aquarium, placed there
as entertainment for visitors. I heard and saw many canings and was familiar
with the range of beating sticks he kept in his cupboard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I lost all my friends when the
great sheep/goat separation happened at the age of eleven and the effect of
that crucial loss, in addition to the abiding sense of not measuring up to
expectations, left me mute, mulish and deeply hesitant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Then in 1956 Mr ****** arrived at
the school as our new Head and in his enthusiastic wake came a distinctive
uniform, a school badge with a motto, a new curriculum, the opportunity to sit
national exams, refurbished classrooms, new books etc. He even introduced a
school song, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Forty Years On</i> which we
sang each Friday and which ironically, I realised later in life, was ‘borrowed’
from Harrow School.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But for my class, by then just
entering the 4<sup>th</sup> year, the most joyous and momentous thing of all
was the coming into our lives of a newly appointed teacher Mr ****. He was a
Cambridge graduate whose beliefs in how Secondary Modern kids <u>could</u>
achieve, led him to our ailing school and our classroom. His instant and
constant belief in us brought about some kind of wondrous alchemy. We were
transformed from a disaffected group of pupils into one that wanted to show our
clever, kindly, attentive teacher that we valued his friendship and his
teaching.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I remember the frisson of his
opening up his bashed up brief case each morning, his full name and Cambridge
college inked on the inside flap. It would be heavy with our books and we knew
that, on opening our own, his encouraging comments would nourish us. Those
comments were real gifts to young people whose work had never been much valued.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">That teacher was the most
significant person in my school life. His belief in me, his passion for
literature, his youthful coolness, his quiet caring, will always remain. He
taught me French poetry (I still chant on sleepless nights,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Rappelle-toi Barbara….’), how to read a
novel and a Shakespeare play, how to write a critical essay, how to love words,
how to make a cogent point, how to value others and to feel valued….. and above
all, how to look forward. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In after school chats he
impressed upon me that I should not leave school at sixteen but after ‘O’
levels, must move on, not only to join old friends in the Sixth Form of the
Grammar School but also how I should set my sights on Higher Education. He gave
me, in his quiet committed way, the confidence to slowly, slowly achieve those
things. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So I did move on. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 15px;">I trained as a teacher, taught
for thirty years, studied at the Tavistock, did a Higher degree and became a
University Lecturer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Now, retired but still working
with children and books, taking stock of a life filled with teaching other
people’s children, bringing up my own, I find myself thinking about where I
would have been, would be now, without the timely wisdom and guidance of an
inspiring teacher</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">(Copyright of the Author, not to be reprinted without permission) </span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-8621199734428105872013-06-16T23:59:00.000+01:002013-06-16T23:59:48.965+01:00A Teacher & Parent Viewpoint<br />
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;">In 1964 I think, my daughter, Jill, went to Aylesbury Secondary Modern Girls' School in Bromley. It was also when I began my own teacher training, so I was more critical of methods there than Jill was herself. However, here's a story I'm sure you'll love.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;"></span> </div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;">Being very keen on theatre, I took our four children whenever I could. At some time during Jill's 5 years at Aylesbury, we went to see a Shakespeare - Jill thinks it was at the Old Vic while it was still the 'Naitonal Theatre'. Whatever it was, we all loved it (even the youngest of our four children). Jill was so excited by it that she enthused about it to one of the teachers. Shortly afterwards, there was a parents' evening, at which I was castigated for taking Jill to see a Shakespeare play - "giving her ideas above her intellectual capacity".</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;"></span> </div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;">From 1968 to 1973, I taught English at Cator Park Secondary Modern School for Girls, in Penge. There, I had several altercations with the headmistress. In those days, before drama was on the curriculum, I used it nevertheless in my English lessons whenever I could. Then I proposed starting a lunch-time drama club for one of the years. The Head was horrified, and forbade it passionately. But my passion was just as strong as hers, and I kept nagging, giving all the theory of education values of it that I could come up with. In the end, she looked bored, gave in, and said I could put up a notice about it in the hall, "but no-one will come," she said. I put up the notice, and next day, 70 girls turned up! And kept coming.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;"></span> </div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;">Another story from the same school - which only ever entered the girls for CSEs. Having nurtured 'my girls', the ones who'd begun at the school in the same year as I'd begun teaching there, and whom I'd kept for the whole 5 years, I suggested that we enter them for GCE English. I was told not to be ridiculous - our girls are not up to it. I persisted, nagged some more, and finally she gave in. They all achieved their GCE English, though I'm afraid I have no record or memory of their precise grades. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;"></span> </div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;">Finally, with ref to this Head - during my last year there (I had to move to another part of the country for my husband's job), it was suggested by the Council that a drama studio be built in the grounds of the school. I'd like to think it was because some of the governors had come to watch one of my lunch-time drama sessions, which the Head had suggested - in the hope, I suppose, of them insisting on putting an end to it, but they were terrifically impressed, one of them telling the Head how good they thought it was for the girls, and that they all agreed 'they'd never seen anything like it!' But I have no evidence of that hope. Anyway, plans went ahead, and I helped the architects with suggestions for the interior, which would give drama teachers the most flexible opportunities for its use. By the time it was built, I had left, so I've never seen it, but was flabbergasted to hear that the Head had never allowed it to be used for anything other than assemblies - never drama. She left shortly afterwards, and I've heard that the school now has quite a reputation for performance arts.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;"></span> </div>
<div style="line-height: 22px;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;">In the 1980s, we came back to the London area, and I had an English teaching post at a girls' secondary modern in Mitcham. In my third or fourth year there, I felt that the only way to help some of my girls who seemed to be struggling with things like spelling, punctuation, etc., was on a one-to-one basis. So I instigated a system by which I spent some of my lunch-hour/s in a cupboard-like room that was available, and arranged for girls to come and get individual help, when they needed it. I was pleased with the results, and prepared to keep going. However, my head of department took me to the local pub one day, told me off for doing it "We get paid to teach whole classes, not individual children", and suggested I find another job.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></div>
Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-14346813772363877092012-03-31T20:21:00.000+01:002012-03-31T20:21:55.996+01:00In my final year at primary I got to sit a lot of practise papers. My parents were called into the school because although I was top of the class I was under performing in the tests. I was answering the questions too slowly. I felt I had to answer each question before I moved on, despite being told I had 30 seconds per Q.<br />
<br />
When I "failed" the 11th plus I felt sad. When the head showed me my result on a print out and told me that had I been a boy I would have gone I felt sadder. He said he could intervene but felt I would do better being at the top of a set rather than the bottom. In a way he was right but to this day I still feel inferior.<br />
<br />
Looking at a Dyslexia report the other day I think I probably have some form of it. When it came to transition from state primary to state secondary with my own children - at the last minute I sent them to a private school. Their self-confidence increased as did their aspirations and their results. I didn't want them to slip through the net the way I did<br />
By Anonymous on This blog on 27/03/12<br />
<br />
Copyright of the Author. Not to be used without permissionUnder the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-32354094424932437622012-03-31T20:13:00.000+01:002012-03-31T20:13:27.434+01:00I also don't remember taking the 11+ although I may have done. My parents went through a period of legal seperation and so we moved between their home towns a number of times. One town had already gone over to being fully comprehensive and the other still had the secondary/grammar school divide.<br />
<br />
I started my secondary school life in a secondary modern, moved to a comprehensive school for a couple of years and then completed my last year at the secondary school. I remember being excited about moving up from junior school to the big school. My friends and I were mostly concerned about showing off our gymnastic skills and wondering whether our new PE teachers would be impressed.<br />
<br />
The school was within walking distance. I do remember a girl near to us going to grammar school and having a nice uniform.At the time I didn't question why she was going to the grammar and I was not.Also, there was the safety of going where all your friends were.I vaguely remember feeling that the grammar school was for better off people and anyway my parents wouldn't have been able to afford the uniform or bus fares.<br />
However, I don't know why I remember feeling this as the secondary had a uniform too, of sorts.Grey skirt, blue jumper or cardigan but not a blazer.The secondary wasn't co-ed as there was a boys school close by.<br />
<br />
I don't remember that I enjoyed my time there but I wasn't especially miserable either. I have very little recollection of lessons except reading Lorna Doone in English class and the domestic science department having a mocked up dining/living room where pupils learned to make and serve meals and be proper little domestic goddesses. Getting the chance to do that was supposed to be a privilege. In my last year at school we had to choose whether we wanted to go in the class that lead us onto a nursing career or a class for those interested in office/secretarial work. The two other streams were for the least able pupils.I neither wanted to be a nurse (we had been shown around the local hospital to see tape worms in jars etc) or work in an office.I suppose I must have plumped for the office option as I remember sitting at a desk with a typewriter.<br />
<br />
I left school in 1967 at the tender age of 15years and 3months without any qualifications and got a job as an office junior. As a young mother in my early twenties I studied with the Open University. Thank God for Jenny Lee!<br />
<br />
By Oddie Park on This blog on 27/03/12<br />
<br />
Copyright of the Author. Not to be used without permissionUnder the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852409997049479040.post-10199234216848046842012-03-25T22:14:00.001+01:002012-03-25T22:17:31.353+01:00I moved to a junior school in the south of England in 1964 from Scotland and joined the last two terms. I had already been to 4 different schools before so was used to being the new girl. Nothing prepared me for what was to come.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/nechronical/dec2011/7/8/moorside-secondary-modern-school-344768728.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="194" src="http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/nechronical/dec2011/7/8/moorside-secondary-modern-school-344768728.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I was given a number 48 which was the number of girls in the class. I couldn't understand their accent and they couldn't understand mine. I hated it. I tried a bit of school refusing but after a few days of being taken to the school in tears by my father I realised it was futile.<br />
<br />
Everyone else had done their 11 plus and knew which school they were going to be going to. One day I was taken into the heads office and sat down in front of her to do the test that I was told would decide if I were to go to the grammar school or not. She watched everything I wrote for what seemed like hours. Some weeks later I was told I had failed. I didn't tell anyone at school as the shame was too much.<br />
<br />
Day 1 at the secondary modern was another shock. Not only had I failed but I had failed so badly I was put into the 3rd out of 4 classes. The work seemed trivial and undemanding. A month or so later I was unexpectedly moved to the top class. I was told if I did well enough and came top in the end of year exams I might be moved to the grammar school.<br />
<br />
I worked hard and got really good marks in all my tests, except for needlework where I was second from bottom and art where I came bottom of the class. I came top in maths science French etc. There was nothing to be done I couldn't be moved. I was told if I was capable I would be able to do GCSEs rather than CSEs. I did well over the years in my exams. The French teacher allowed me to join the higher class sometimes and I took French gcse in my 4th year.<br />
<br />
One day in the French class we had to write down our plans for the future and it was my turn to read them out to the class. I said I wanted to go to university. That was a big mistake, the French teacher told me and the class that not one of us was bright enough to do that. So I kept quiet about what I might want to do. I was pleased to be able to do maths, chemistry English biology at gcse level. The biology was crazy...I had followed the cse lessons only to find a week before the o level exam that the curriculum was for human biology and the level I had been entered for was biology....I had done no plant biology at all! And failed, similar for physics....but I came away with cse grade 1's and 5 O levels.<br />
<br />
I made no friends at the secondary modern and kept myself to myself. Others taunted me for being a swat, I didn't try very hard but remained an outsider. I went on to the 6th form college, which was at the grammar school. Without the basic O levels it was always going to be hard, but I ended up after 3 years there with some decent A levels...re-sitting in the 3rd year in zoology ( I never did plant biology) maths and physical science. I applied to study medicine and after my 3rd attempt failed to get a place at clearing, I was offered various places to study nursing at a polytechnic, genetics at university etc and then medicine in London!<br />
<br />
Now I am coming towards retirement as a GP in north east England. I qualified in 1979 without any difficulty and have enjoyed a continuous career ever since. The schooling is something I regret, I never had an academic school background which I would have loved. Despite my failure in needlework and art those are both hobbies I now have and have done some creative work in both. Perhaps the constant failure made me more determined to succeed. My experience of school in a non-caring, non-academic surrounding has helped in my understanding of patients in working class areas, but I feel I missed out on a lot. There is lots more to say, but writing this has in some ways helped.<br />
By christina on This blog on 23/03/12<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Copyright of the Author. Not to be used without permission<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Under the Craneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02397405094624950202noreply@blogger.com3