Another Kind of Secondary Modern
By A HEADMISTRESS
Tms is a mixed rural secondary school in the I Cotswolds. There are some 400 children drawn from the small town where the school is established in temporary two-classroom blocks and from the surrounding villages. The children come from the homes of small tradesmen, farmers and farm-labourers, and in a few cases from the homes of men and women who work in our small local factories. It has been developing for four years. When I began, there was nothing here but the bare classrooms and lavatories and a modicum of uncultivated ground roughly divided by nar- row paths into patches of mud which spread everywhere in wet weather. Since then the pupils have themselves created a minor civilisation here. They have widened the paths, cultivated the ground (so that I now look out, as I write, upon
a bed of roses), built their own cycle shed, four goat houses, a pigsty, hen coops, erected their greenhouse and painted murals on their canteen walls. At the moment boys are digging out an ornamental pool beneath our only tree. They are doing this voluntarily in their dinner hour, as well as in a practical lesson. Another boy, with- out any help, has converted an old cage into an aviary. On a rota system the boys and girls feed our livestock at weekends and in holidays; each autumn term they have grown their Christ- mas dinner and prepared it for the oven.
The school has been busy outside the school grounds too. In four years it has produced two plays, Toad of Toad Hall and The Pirates of Penzance, this last so successfully as to cause a nine days' wonder in our small town—the interest- ing thing about the play was that it was a com- bined effort of staff and pupils—three masters and one mistress taking the more difficult roles, but the pupils in the minor characters and the chorus bore the brunt of the play and stole the thunder. They have raised £120 for refugees in a concerted effort of staff and pupilS, the girls are invited to give dancing displays at local fetes and it is now recognised that they will give regular help in entertaining the Over-Sixty Club. All this does not spring froth' a school where 'co-education fails at the social level.' Our boys are not rude—they. do not shove the girls around; with the exception of a few louts found in every school in and out of the State system, they are helpful, friendly and cheerful. They greet one as one enters the school in the morning with a smile and often shout a cheerful goodnight on departure. When forty of them wish to get through a small door and no one is about to guide the traffic—they 'shove; what boys do not? They lean against the walls, but it has never occurred to anyone to make a rule that they should not; they lark about in lavatories and sometimes scribble a coarse word there. With inexperienced teachers they certainly talk when they should listen. 1, who went to a very
polite girls grammar school remember with shame how we talked a young mistress out of the class- room in tears and finally out of the school. In this school I have seen eighty children taught without any difficulty by any one of the experienced staff. Some of our small classes of backward pupils can be handled by a prefect. It is true that of the fourth year the 'B' stream begin to lose interest in classroom work in their final term. One can- not expect anything else. Soon they will be work- ing. The Youth Employment Officer is finding them jobs. Like any other pupil who is leaving the school without having to pass an examination, the boy or girl from the secondary modern school begins to be outward-looking. However, he or she will make up for boredom at the desk by tackling with goodwill and some skill any practical jobs which will help the school.
But what of the academic side? The standard is not high, our local grammar school does a thorough job of creaming, but we are making GCE possible for the few who can and wish to take it. For the rest we ain't at an intelligent use of reading and writing, sonic knowledge of our environment and the larger world, a little criticism of ourselves and others, and the usual practical activities, and we think we are not doing too badly. Very many read for pleasure, and the lib- rary, in charge of a prefect, is well filled every day in the pupils own time by many readers who are not merely idly turning over the pages of a picture book. There are those, too, of course, but they are in the minority and do not disturb the others. We show them intelligent films on the school projector and they constantly surprise us by criticism which is acute if not always cogently expressed.
There are those who still lack the basic skills and among them, far from finding indifference, we discover a pathetic will to try and an engaging gratitude for small successes. Their parents are grateful, too, and go out of their way to say so.
This is not a unique school—we have our counterparts around us, we meet them at games, we read their school magazines. Certainly in this area secondary modern schools arc like other schools, aiming at a standard a little above the reach of the majority, facing the problems presented by the misfits and the unruly, but on the whole they are stable, pleasant places where friendliness meets with friendliness, where the good days outnumber the bad and the successes are far from overwhelmed by the failures.
Finally, I cannot resist a biographical note because it is apposite. I came here four years ago from a large mixed grammar school where I was senior mistress and taught- Latin and English. Not even on the wettest and muddiest Friday, when every school problem seems to present itself on the same day, have .1 for a moment regretted the change I have made. I know, too, that for the maj- ority of those who teach here the persistent anxiety is not that our pupils may think us too good for them, but that we may fail our pupils through inability to recognise their quality. Enthusiasm, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and flourishes where it is glimpsed.
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