Old School History
Reading a random post of Nourishing Obscurity reminded me of how my school was streamed back in 1976 and how you could decode what the class name referred to. It was a big school and had an intake of roughly 300 children every year. This equated to ten or so classes and we were allocated to our ranking in primary school. I worked this out because it was blindingly obvious- the top three kids from our class testing were together, myself included. (They tweaked it a bit to keep the sex ratio about the same).
The school was built as a Secondary Modern but opened as a Comprehensive in 1961, symbolised by the three rings of the school badge, representing the three abilities, namely gifted, normal and remedial. (Or so we were told- it really related to Grammar, Secondary Modern and Secondary technical according to the opening brochure). It had both a Girl’s and Boy’s wing being more-or-less symmetrical. The badge is still in use today, modified to include the City Crest.
There were 11 classes in our year, five L classes (grammar stream or “Learners”) four C classes (mainstream, or “Common”!) and two remedial classes (I don’t know what the G stood for, maybe “Grant aid”?) The classes were named after the compass points, so there was a 1LN, 1LS, 1LE and 1LW. The 5th class was 1LR, R referring to the Remainder, or the Rest! You then had 1CN all the way down to 1GS. (1GS was an insult applied to anyone being a bit thick and teachers used it just as much as the kids).
In the 2nd year, I went down to 2LS. This wasn’t because I was struggling, it was decided that children would be grouped according to language learning, so 2LN did French, 2LS did German. (Language was doled out on a simple formula- if you had done French for 3 years or more at primary you did French, otherwise German). I hadn’t done French at all until my last year at Primary as I changed schools. This is also why I came top of the class, my first school was a much better one…
In the third year, the system was changed because it was considered too divisive. Instead of the L, C and G groupings, a single letter was allocated. I didn’t know how they came up with the letters and none of the staff seemed to know either, maybe they just made it up. Anyway, we all knew that K, D, B & H equated to LN, LS, LE and LW and so on through the classes. (I don’t remember the rest of the nomenclature and I’m boggled that I remember any of it). I was in 3D, 4D and then 5D for the rest of my compulsory education. (6th Form was the very straight-forward 6L1 or 2 or 3 and 6U1 or 2).
In looking around for the school badge, I was fascinated to find the 1961 opening brochure on the school’s website which included plans and photos . By the time I went there eight years later a new lower school had been built and last time I drove past a VI form College was in the middle of the site (and it had expanded to absorb an adjacent church school beyond). The website says they are still building!
December 13th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
My goodness that was really a complicated system, but a really large school obviously.
I went to an all girls’ school that had a competitive entry system and the first year was A,B,C,D,E, and based on primary. I was in 1D and all the kids from the special advanced classes were in A. I was bound and determined to get higher and was in 2A and the A stream from second year on. It was so weird because you could only do German if you were in the A stream, everyone did French and Latin, but to do German you had to give up History. Then only the higher grades, A, B C did Chemistry and Physics but the lower ones did Biology which you could not as well as Chem and Physics. But we did everything more in depth then so now they do a smattering of everything poorly.
December 13th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
I remember when we were able to supposedly choose what subjects we wished to do in the fourth year leading on to “O” Levels at the end of 5th Year- the reality was that you could only do stuff that fitted in with the timetable. I couldn’t do English Lit and sciences, for example, but had to do Biology and Art.