Reflections on Monoux, 1966 on
Jean-Pierre (Duncan) Kirkland, teacher at Sir George Monoux 1966 - 74.
I joined the staff of Sir George Monoux in September 1966 straight from The Institute of Education. My teaching was principally geography with some economics and one period a week of RE.
When I joined the school, it was a selective three-form intake school. The school was about 600 in number with around 150 in the 6h form. I shall revert to the old pre-National Curriculum years as that is how they were then known. At the end, I have added some personal reflections and memories of staff.
My geography teaching was largely contained to the lower end of the school. Ken Salmond, head of geography, did not like teaching first and second years 'as they were fidgety and kept dropping things on the floor. Very irritating.' So I inherited all the geography in the first year, two of the three second year classes and one on the third year classes. I had one period a week of 6th form climatology. My economics was one fourth year class, one fifth year class and two sixth form groups, plus a second year RE. This gave me a very interesting overview of the introduction of comprehensive education.
Vincent Jackson Stirrup(VJS), BA, JP was head with Arthur Jenkins (AJ), MA as deputy. Peter Couch (PC) was nominally in charge of the sixth form. Harry J Hyde lovingly called these three the 'triumvirate'. VJS was coming towards the end of his career but when Waltham Forest, then only in its third year of formation announced the change to comprehensive education, he announced that it was his duty to see its introduction and implementation before he retired. There was no preparation for staff for what was to come. Waltham Forest had decided on a three-tier system of First schools, Junior High and Senior High, which was what Sir George Monoux was to become. We were to accept approximately 90 pupils into the fourth year in lieu of any first formers in 1967, with the same for 1968 and 1969 until the 'stem' had gone. Many staff expressed reservations about the likely 'quality' of the new intake, and there was a rush to secure the Times Educational Supplement on Friday mornings as staff sought better pastures elsewhere.
The folly of the new comprehensive arrangements really came with hindsight. Monoux was a 'proud' school with a rich and celebrated history and reputation. Many of those who had 'failed' to get a place there at 11 years old were very resentful at 'magnanimously' being allowed to finish their education there. Others just resented the change so late in their education, while others were totally bemused by the whole affair. What was appalling was that the school leaving age was still 15; this meant that approximately 30% of the new intake into the fourth year were eligible to leave after only two terms in their new school, and this was to continue for a further four years until 1971. (pupils whose 15th birthday fell before January 31st could leave at Easter under the regulations then). Many of those coming new to the school had already decided they were going to leave at Easter. The two terms at Monoux were just a joke and they proceeded to disrupt as much as possible. These pupils had no allegiance to the school, resented being 'shoved' here and set out to be as big a pain as they could. Many succeeded and very effectively. They became a great headache for the staff and in particular for that bastion of discipline, AJ, knicknamed 'Nero', of course.
This, however, was the least of the problems. No-one in authority had given training on curriculum modification. Many of these pupils coming in had been following a different syllabus from the Monoux one; there was little if any attempt at co-ordination between the schools in those early days. Those with lower ability were forced to cope with too high an academic diet as staff were largely unprepared. The Triumvirate decision was that there should be strict streaming with those coming in kept separate from those who had been in the school for three years. We thus ran a grammar school and secondary modern within the same building for the first year, gradually changing as the new intake numbers rose and the whole system needed review. Sadly, neither VJS nor AJ had an answer to this, the LEA were next to useless in terms of curriculum development, and PC left to go as deputy to McEntee in summer 1968. His replacement, the indomitable Ian Shaw, did his best, but he at that time was an academic with his sights and energies clearly on Oxbridge for the more able.
There are some amusing anecdotes however. I remember VJS trying to convince Mr Abbess, who taught maths, that it was perfectly feasible to teach lower level maths and succeed. He took over one of Chis Abbess's lower sets. He tried teaching the measurement of area (now in Year 2 or 3 of the National Curriculum!). VJS brought one of his pupils into the office in front of Mrs Wilkinson and Mrs Lewis to prove how simple it was to teach area. He asked the boy to show him how to measure the area of the office door to prove his point. The boy stood there gawping with an exasperated VJS trying to make him recall the two forty minute lessons they had spent on multiplying length times breadth. The poor boy, who probably had some form of special learning needs, could not even remember the terms length or breadth. VJS was utterly dejected as he walked back to his office across the entrance hall muttering 'I give up'.
Mr Tomlin was the caretaker and I am sure was the role-model for the subsequent TV Grange Hill caretaker! He interrupted staff meetings that overran by popping his head around the staff room door and abruptly announcing that he was locking up in ten minutes. His array of garden gnomes was the pride of Chingford Road, and long before an episode in Coronation Street, some went missing with accompanying ransom notes. (I wonder if we had a TV script writer amongst the pupils at that time!). Perhaps the most memorable incident was when some fifth formers played a practical joke on him. He had a 'coal hole' at the north end of the school. As he was emerging one lunchtime, the pupils dropped a 2 lb bag of flour on his head. Instead of going back down and brushing the stuff off, he trailed all the way up the stairs, along the top corridor, leaving a long white line of flour behind him, to the old staff room in the south west corner, entered and stood looking like the abominable snowman and exclaimed 'Look what they've done to me'. It was hard not to burst out laughing.
On a more serious note, the introduction of the comprehensive system was nothing short of a disaster. Many pupils failed to learn in those final terms at Monoux because the staff had no experience, there was no proper preparation and the syllabus content was totally inappropriate. Worse was to come. Within 2 years, increasingly large waves of displaced Bangladeshi immigrants stated arriving, along with Pakistanis and some Indians. Many had little or no English language skills. The numbers rose dramatically over the next few years and many were not given any real support or help by the LEA until the mid-70s. Many LEAs were similarly unprepared for this, but it hit Monoux staff hard coming as it did right on the heels of the comprehensive changes. There was a frustration among the staff; many key and very good staff left - Brian Pollard, head of English, Ian Shaw head of sixth form and history, several solid class teachers as well as VJS himself. I suppose I was fortunate in having only recently come from teacher training. In my first wave of new intake fourth years, I spotted 6 good pupils - they, with additional help from extra lessons in the lunchtime or after school, all got 'O' levels in economics the following year. A couple of them still keep in contact with me and two recently said I was one of the very few staff who treated them as humans! I find that very sad. It must have been far worse for them than we realised at the time. Interestingly, the year of my 'O' level success was also the year I got 4 pupils into Cambridge on Economics scholarships, and two of them are still in contact with me. (one was responsible for the flour on Mr Tomlin, by the way!).
It was Mr Brockman who brought the real comprehensive system into being in the school. He appointed a second deputy head and established a pastoral system. He had come from Hackney who were years ahead of Waltham Forest in their thinking.
The anecdotes are sometimes quite powerful metaphors now for our inability to cope. One pupil used to ride his cycle up the front flower beds in the mornings. We laughed at him. No one thought to try to find out why he behaved like this or to explain to him this was wrong. He was simply shouted at and put in detention. He liked the attention, so he kept doing it, and never did his detentions anyway. Mods and rockers with skin-heads were the fashion. Many pupils wore braces and boots. VJS in one assembly, showing how sadly out of touch he was with youth culture said 'I cannot think what possesses any of you to come to school in boots. We are not an agricultural institution'. Equally only a couple of years later, Brockman was to make a similar faut pas by basing the assembly around what he called 'tomorrow men', quoting Shakespeare in the middle. The message was completely lost on half the school who fell about laughing while the rest who understood did not take it seriously. Poor AJ had one hell of a time trying to keep order in those awful assemblies of his.
Looking back on those years, they were pretty grim. I saw a proud and at times very purposeful and meaningful school all but destroyed. VJS saw it as a challenge which was his big mistake; the LEA rushed it through to please Shirley Williams - they did not think it through and it was a disaster. The staff were totally unprepared and it affected many careers dramatically at the time. Worst of all, many pupils suffered from being pawns or guinea pigs in an ill-gotten experiment that was doomed to failure from the start. I was OK - I made it work for me despite timetable constraints, attitudes from above and shortage of appropriate resources, before my illness got the better of me.
There are many happy memories of staff. AJ came to live close to me in his latter years and we corresponded and met. I did go to see him in Suffolk as well, shortly after his retirement. I keep in regular contact with Ian Shaw whom I saw only a year or so ago, Nick Nicholls, who also taught history and Martin Daniels, our drama teacher and play producer. I starred in 'The Importance of Being Ernest' in 1967, produced by Brian Pollard, in 'You never Can Tell' the year after, and in the parents' production of 'Night Must Fall', where I took the lead role of Danny with Martin Daniels as producer. I took the first ever foreign geography field course to Locarno in southern Switzerland, and helped Mike Hodson run the skiing trips before taking a couple myself after he left.
Characters spring to mind. Maude Williams endlessly chattering in the staffroom - she became a good friend and I admired her a lot. I remember once saying 'tovarisch' (comrade) to Mrs Cohen who taught Russian. Unknowingly, I could not have called her by a more insulting name if I'd tried, and I received a very long lecture about the Russian revolution and the Tsars! I remember the autumn warning signs of pending absence by Ken Salmond. He took time off frequently, and in the autumn it was 'throat' - he used to come into the staff room, cough and say 'my throat feels like I've been chewing rusty nails' a week or so after the start of term - then he would take a week off! Russell Smith spent more time walking around the corridors and in the staff room than in the classroom - which is why he volunteered to construct the timetable when PC left in 1968. The sound of AJ's cobbled shoes echoing down the corridors brought instant silence in every classroom. JS Durrant continued to reward enterprising pupils with his 'magic pennies' until he retired, although he would have been able to continue his practice after decimalisation had he worked any longer. He took his lunch daily at the Rose and Crown on Hoe Street, where sadly I was to spend more and more time as my illness progressed. I still managed to stand as one of the Liberal Party candidates for Waltham Forest for the GLC in 1967 and 1970, and for East Walthamstow as the parliamentary candidate in the 1970 General Election.
I left Walthamstow very early in 1975 an built up my recovery and new career in Manchester before becoming a registered inspector with my own company until I retired in December 2004. Those early days are very precious and I have enjoyed writing this short account from my house in Thailand. I hope you will be able to extract something of value and use for those who were around at the time. Through 'Friends Reunited' I keep in email contact with a dozen or so former pupils, and through longer term friendship, with a couple of others.
Jean-Pierre (Duncan) Kirkland, teacher at Sir George Monoux 1966 - 74.