The class of '68, part 2 ..... failing the 11 plus or Andrew and Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School

The one sure certainty of failing the 11 plus was that you went to a secondary modern school.

Not of course that this over surprised me.  My mother had been told by my year 6 teacher back in the January of 1961 “that I was not academic material.”  A sentence that burned deeply into my mother and condemned my father and me to endless evenings of 11 plus tests by the kitchen stove.

All to no avail.  I failed.  But not before I along with all the other also runs had to endure the class interviews where the hopefuls destined for a bright grammar school future would give a presentation to the rest of us, which were really rehearsals for the real thing in front of the head teachers of the local grammar schools.

To this day I remember my first introduction to Vasco da Gamma that Portuguese sailor who boldly went where no European had sailed before.  Even then I wondered why the cabin boy and cook as well as the man steering the ship never got a look in through the entire talk.

Years later teaching year 8s the European voyages of discovery, plunder and much else I was always pulled up by the mention of the said captain and taken back the twelve years to the upstairs classroom of Edmund Waller Junior School and the talk given by Barry Whatshisname.

But enough of such bitter vituperation.  That was what the 11 plus was supposed to do.  Separate the elite from the rest of us, and while they went on to a bright academic environment we were destined for schools which specialized in more practical things, .......woodwork not Wordsworth, technical drawing not Tennyson and so much more.

Added to that our schools were not as well funded and led to one glorious episode where just before my O level history exam in 1966 we were given a world historical atlas published in 1938 which finished with the wonderfully optimistic comment that “it is hoped the leaders of Germany and Italy will see sense and rejoin the League of Nations in a profound desire to solve issues by peaceful means.”  Now today I can see the dark humour in that, but at the time I pondered how we had to use a thirty year old text book which added to everything else got the next ten years of European history so wrong.

But my secondary modern school and many others across the country strived not to give us a second class education.  They were fully aware that a rigid test at 11 did not mean that those who failed to pass were failures.  And so many of us were entered for 0 level exams that badge of so called academic excellence while class mates were given the practical skills which enabled them to become tradesmen in a whole range of occupations.

And these places attracted the talented and committed teachers.  I can remember many who I would have been happy to work beside when I started teaching in 1973.  Indeed in the years after I started I benefited from the advice, good humour and wisdom of those who had been at Oldwood Secondary School here in Manchester before it was merged with the local grammar school to form Poundswick High School.

But despite all their efforts secondary modern schools were just that.  They were a secondary form of education for those who judged unsuitable for the full academic experience.

Today as then selection at 11 has its supporters who in their advocacy of grammar schools focus on the poor records of some comprehensive schools and on a golden age of grammar school education in the late 1940s and 50s.

Now I can be both objective and generous in my recognition of the opportunities grammar schools gave to children of all classes particularly ones who like me came from a working class background.

But I was under no illusion at the time and since that what we who failed that 11 plus were offered was less than best. Not for us that heady excitement of preparing for a new educational world with like minded bright young things.  In the September of 1961 I assembled with the majority of my male ex classmates from junior school in the playground of Samuel Pepys, and apart from the uniform and an absence of girls there was little to mark this off as any different from what I had already experienced.

It would be five years before I had my opportunity to enter a school of all the talents where money and resources were on offer to all of us.   This was Crown Woods School in Eltham, one of three big shiny and exciting comprehensive schools and the place where I really began to feel valued and above all come to love learning.

Tomorrow, part 3 at the centre of something pretty good, ..........Crown Woods School

Pictures; Andrew Simpson aged 16, 1966, and the badge of Samuel Pepys School from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Oldwood Secondary Modern School, 1956, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m66278

Rediscovering a lost adolescence ...... attending a secondary school in the September of 1961

It was early September 1961 and along with twenty or so others from Edmund Waller Junior School I was in the Annexe of Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern on Old James Street in Nunhead.

Now I can’t be sure but I don’t think I was shot through with anxiety as we stood in the playground on that September morning.

After all I walked up from Lausanne Road with my friends,  Jimmy O’Donnel and John Cox and were surrounded by lads who just six weeks earlier I had been with at Edmund Waller.

And that was pretty much it.  True we now had a uniform and the name of the school was different but otherwise that great shift to a secondary school didn’t amount to much.

We had exchanged one school for another, most of the people I had known had joined me along with about another 130 or so boys from neighbouring schools and the building looked just the same.

The only significant difference was that the girls had gone off to other single sex establishments and we were missing that small handful of hopefuls who had qualified for a grammar school.

We stood in the playground, our names were read out and we were allotted a class, a teacher and timetable.

None of which is at all remarkable and is the lot of thousands of young people every year.  Except we were the secondary modern boys marked out for an education which would be less well funded and would concentrate on technical not academic subjects.

As it was in the fullness of time we were given the chance to do “O” levels and made to feel that we were not second class.

Not that any of these things even entered my head all those years ago.

Back then it as just what you did.

And that first year has ranked low on my list of significant personal events.

If I am honest there were even times when I wondered just how much of it I remembered or how relevant it was to me later in my life.

But of course it was and was so in many different ways.

I suppose the first is that it points yet again to the baby boomer generation which put great pressure on the system as we passed through it.

Samuel Pepys had expanded to cope with the increase in pupil numbers, building a new building beside the old LCC school and farming out the year 7s to Nunhead which was some distance away from Telegraph Hill and the rest of the school.

Equally it is how with the passage of time you begin to question bits of that younger life, and so it was with the school annexe.  Did we really walk a good 20 minutes in the opposite direction to the main school to Nunhead?  Was the building still standing and what of the surrounding area?

Rye Oak School, 2006, © Tim Wardle

Well, the building is still there although now it is Rye Oak Primary School but some of the places I knew have gone, like the little sweet shop at the opposite side of Old James Street, run by a little old lady called Kay.

Here from memory was a place which hadn’t changed in three decades.

With an eye to her potential profits she sold all sorts of cheap sweets including paper cones of lemon ice for a penny.

Before and after school for a brief twenty minutes the place would be full after which I guess it settled down with just the occasional customer.

It was the sort of place we all felt quite at home in and was replicated by scores of similar tiny shops closer to home.

And in the same way the Annexe was very little different from my Junior school which is not surprising.  It was built in 1887 and the Annexe three years earlier.

Edmund Waller School, 2009, © Colin Fitzpatrick

These were the Board Schools, built of brick with high windows and were warm in winter and cool in summer unlike their 1950s successors which with those walls of glass were the very reverse.

I took them for granted but looking back they were a high point in school architecture.

These were solid and sound, meant not only to last but announced to everyone that inside the serious and exciting business of education was offered up.

How different from their modern counterparts, which with a change of name and purpose could be a set of offices, or even a supermarket.

All perhaps a long way from that playground in the September of 1961, but perhaps not so for.

I started off thinking about a school I attended and remarkably I find it still there as I left it and still doing the business.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Rye Oak Primary School Tim Wardle, Victorian Schools in London, 1870-1914, http://www.victorianschoolslondon.org.uk/Schools.htmx?schoolid=402 & Edmund Waller, courtesy of Colin Fitzpatrick

The class of '61 that talented bunch from a secondary modern

Now when you spend your time digging deep into other people’s lives it is easy to neglect your own and those that have shaped the way you look at the world.

I was reminded of this during a long conversation with someone I last met in the July of 1966.

This was the year I left Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School.

I was part of the class of ’61 which had left junior school having failed the eleven plus and was destined for an alternative education to the one offered to students who went to the grammar school.

There had been 180 of us back in the September of 1961 which had fallen way to just fifty or so by the beginning of our final year in what was then the fifth year .

Those that had left had taken advantage of the early school leaving policy which meant that could you say good bye to the playground, the books and morning assembly at the age of 15.

All of this was in keeping with the ethos of the secondary modern school which as its name suggests was a secondary or alternate route for those who had been judged nonacademic by that formal set of tests given out to all English and Welsh children in their final year in Junior School.

Not that any of us at the time I think felt that we were failures, that for me came much later.

At the time you just accepted this was your lot.  You left the junior school in the July and except for a hand full of the “gifted” turned up six weeks later in a uniform and joined another 150 or so youngsters.

Now over the years I was hard both on secondary schools and in particular Samuel Pepys, but on reflection they did a grand job with less resources than were allocated to the grammar schools and by the time I left were offering the same range of public examinations as their elite competitors.

So my conversation with Les was timely.

We began as you do remembering shared class mates and exploring the different paths our lives had taken.

And what came out was that simple truth that we were a talented bunch.  Some had gone on to become successful in business and public service while others had really only blossomed much later.

Les I discovered had been part of a band which had played support to the very best groups of the late 60s and early 70s and gone on to have a successful career in the city.

It was a salutatory lesson in confronting that inferiority complex which had dogged my years as a teacher.

Surrounded entirely by staff who came from grammar schools I suffered from being the only “secondary school boy” and while it may have been a self induced feeling of  inferiority it was real enough.

Real enough to make me wonder when the moment would come when I would be discovered masquerading as something I was not and shown the door.

All of which is a nonsense I know but is still there just under the surface, so I thank Les for reminding me that us secondary modern boys were not the also runs.

And in time I trust there will be more stories of the class of ’61.

Pictures, from the collection of Andrew Simpson