This film was made in-house by the school itself to mark its 10 year anniversary, and to showcase how far it had come in that time. It isn’t clear exactly who the film would have been aimed at, but in a time before school league tables it is noticeable that no statistics are offered on school ‘performance’. Indeed, a good proportion of the film is given over to the summer fair. There is no ‘hard sell’.  Nevertheless, the head teacher William Hill, seen several times in the film, presents a...

This film was made in-house by the school itself to mark its 10 year anniversary, and to showcase how far it had come in that time. It isn’t clear exactly who the film would have been aimed at, but in a time before school league tables it is noticeable that no statistics are offered on school ‘performance’. Indeed, a good proportion of the film is given over to the summer fair. There is no ‘hard sell’.  Nevertheless, the head teacher William Hill, seen several times in the film, presents a school with a balanced curriculum and a recognition of the importance of fostering good student, teacher and parent relations. At that time the curriculum wasn’t centrally governed, and schools could exercise a fair degree of autonomy.  William Hill had been there since the school’s beginnings in 1960, and bets were off as to when he would retire – which turned out to be in 1978.

 

The YFA Online also has another film made by a Sheffield school, Newfield, around this same time, in 1968, Needlecraft Exhibition At Grosvenor. This too features a fashion display of clothing made by school pupils.

 

The film has a special interest because Myers Grove School – on the edge of the countryside between the Loxley and Rivelin valleys – was one of the first purpose-built comprehensive schools in the country. At that time secondary education followed the three tier structure outlined in the 1944 Education Act: grammar, secondary modern and technical. Although this Act was drafted by Conservative MP Rab Butler, the 1945 Labour Government let it stand until they came back into power in 1964.  The following year the Secretary of State for Education, Anthony Crosland, issued Circular 10/65 which, ‘requests local education authorities, if they have not already done so, to prepare and submit to him plans for reorganising secondary education in their areas on comprehensive lines.’ Although not having direct control over local authorities on education, central government was able to persuade by refusing funding.

 

In the aftermath of the Second World War, and the ‘baby boom’, the chief debates in education concerned primary schools (see the Context for Free To Grow Up).  One of the virtues of the 1944 Act was that it gave free education to all up to 15 years old – before the war only one fifth of all children received a formal education after age 14. The Act emphasised the need for spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, although what exactly this entailed was open to interpretation. However the 11 plus examination was clearly discriminatory, creaming off 20-25%, on average, of children for grammar schools. This did not reflect any ‘natural’ abilities but a practice of grooming pre-selected children, with quotas to ensure that this is what was got – so that many who passed, especially girls, still did not get a place.

 

Despite having a strong Labour tradition, the economic reality of Sheffield meant that in the late 1950s only 22% of children over 11 went to either a grammar or technical school. Yet Myers Grove was already building a reputation academically as well as in sport and other non-academic areas. The film is fascinating in that it presents what might be thought a typical comprehensive school at that time: the chemistry classes with minimum health and safety, a large uptake for school dinners, and a rigid gender division with girls being prepared for office work and domestic tasks – secretarial courses, cookery class, dress making – and boys for industrial work.  But although outdated in some respects, the school was ahead of many at the time in having sixth form facilities, with a mess room, and a well equipped library, not to mention the impressive display of fashion clothes designed and made by the students.

 

Robin Pedley, in his pioneering book The Comprehensive School of 1963, noted that comprehensive education was an idea ‘whose time had come’. Clearly Myers Grove sought to follow his prescription that comprehensive education should include “the creation of happy, vigorous, local communities in which the school is the focus of social and educational life.” Robin Pedley’s book came out the same year as the Newsom Report, Half our future, which presented a highly critical picture of the state of secondary education at that time.

 

The 1960s, as in much else, were heady days in the field of education philosophy and practice. Another comprehensive school to be founded in 1960 was Risinghill, in the then deprived area of Islington, North London. Under the tutelage of headmaster Michael Duane this sought an even more progressive practice of education and was eventually closed by the Inner London Education Authority in 1965. One commentator notes that what Duane attempted was, “to implement . .  a wide-ranging programme of pastoral care, pupil democracy, frank sexual education, close cooperation with parents, reformative rather than punitive discipline (strictly non-corporal), promotion of creativity and multi-culturalism’. As Leila Berg states, in her book written soon after the closure, Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School,‘Once you believe, or say you believe, that all children are of equal value whatever their intellectual attainments, you are changing the whole concept of school.'

 

Going even further in this direction was Alexander Neil, whose school Summerhill, at Leiston in the county of Suffolk, took a totally child-centred approach.   For Neill, "the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child", and that his role was to, "sit still and approve of all the things that a child disapproves of in himself." In 1962 Neil published a collection of his writings, called just Summerhill, which contributed to setting the terms of debates on the nature of education. Originally established in Dresden, Germany, in 1921, Summerhill has somehow managed to survive with its highly radical approach.

 

One other important publication to come out shortly before the film was made is The Plowden Report in 1967.  Although this was concerned with primary education, the emphasis it placed on the individual development of the child reflected the general ethos in the education community at that time. As the films asks, “Is individual study the pattern for the 21st century?” What might be seen in the film is the tension that existed then, and does to this day, between an approach that focuses on vocational education, or, more cynically, social engineering, and one that prioritises the enablement of each and every child to achieve his or her fullest potential. But the film does not push any particular approach; rather the low key commentary lets the pictures do the talking.

 

But the visionary ambitions that formed the context of the first ten years of Myers Grove have faded over the years.  The school remains as a mixed non-selective local authority comprehensive school serving the area between Malin Bridge and Stannington. But the academic level of the school has not always reached the standards attained at the time this film was made. The school lost its sixth form in 1988, and, at the time of writing (March 2009), Sheffield City Council is consulting on proposals to close both Myers Grove and Wisewood schools and replace the two of them with a brand new BSF-funded school on the Myers Grove site. On a broader level, the 11-plus still exists, along with grammar schools, in many places in England.

 

On a more upbeat note, one of the interesting aspects of the film is the way it highlights the talents of members of the School Band. The film opens, perhaps ironically, with Ted Koehler’s and Harold Arlen’s ‘Stormy Weather’, before moving on to more traditional Yorkshire brass band music. For the fashion display there is a more contemporary choice with the School Band doing a more than passable version of the great ‘Time is Tight’, from the 1968 movie "Up Tight!", and a hit for Booker T and the MGs in 1969 – later to become a theme tune for Johnnie Walker. A film that certainly reflects its own time, and sheds light on ours.  

 

References

Robin Pedley, The Comprehensive School, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1963 (3rd ed. 1978).

Leila Berg, Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School

Alan Weeks, Comprehensive Schools: Past, present and future, Methuen, London, 1986

Alexander S Neill, Summerhill, Penguin, Harmondsworth , 1962

Clive Binfield et al (editors), The History of the City of Sheffield 1843-1993 vol. 2: Society, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1993.

Sheffield Forum

Has a discussion thread from former students of Myers Grove School

and also, two

Risinghill


Further Information

The Newsom Report, Half our future: A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England), London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1963