Sunday Times


August 03, 2003

It’s an ’orrible ordeal in the 1950s school
Rachel Dobson and Andrew White



TRADITIONALISTS who would like to see 1950s education brought back to British schools may have trouble finding the children to educate.
Letters from 16-year-olds tucked up in the Royal Grammar school (RGS) in High Wycombe, as part of an experiment to test educational standards, suggest they are finding it hard to adjust to the regime.

In a month-long television venture, 30 boys and girls have been stripped of all home comforts in an attempt to recreate the tough discipline and rigorous teaching of a 1950s boarding school.

Before their ordeal ends, they will take O-level examinations in maths, English and history so the results can be compared with their GCSE grades which come through later this month.

The children arrived at the Buckinghamshire school under tight security two weeks ago, and the only communication they are allowed with the outside world is through letters home to their parents. They are not allowed to leave the school grounds, watch television or use mobile phones.

Harriet Rykens, normally a pupil at Queen Margaret’s school in Yorkshire, wrote in a letter to her mother: “I could go on about the bad bits for ever . . . like nasty food. I smell because there is no deodorant and we hardly ever change our shirts or underwear.”

She goes on: “I will succeed. You know me — I don’t go down without a fight, maybe after a few tears on the way.”

Another pupil, Rajay Naik, 15, from Coventry, told his parents of “a formal and serious search” when he arrived at the school, of boys’ hair being cropped short and an itchy maroon and grey uniform being issued.

“The other day they had a massive raid on the dormitories halfway through the night to find items that weren’t supposed to be there,” he wrote.

Teachers at the school spoke this weekend of the running battle with pupils over discipline and the problems of children trying to sneak 21st-century goods into the school — they were meant to use only items from the 1950s.

Tony Perry, a housemaster and science teacher, said: “One boy was made to look up extracts from the Bible about truth for several hours after we found a hoard of sweets and deodorant in his locker.”

Teachers also said that the teenagers were finding it hard to adhere to the “six-inch rule” — girls and boys must be no closer than six inches at any time. “One particularly tactile boy claimed he was taking a piece of fluff off a girl’s back; he was disentangled from the girl and punished with a freezing cold shower,” said Perry.

Detention classes are held nightly where children have to write out lines. Naik was made to write 100 times “I will guard my mouth when others are listening” for swearing in front of the matron.

The mock school’s headmaster Andrew MacTavish, himself an Old Wycombiensian, said he was disappointed that the staff could not use the cane for modern legal reasons. He remembers when the entire school — all 850 boys — were given two strokes of the cane after a snowball broke a window: “We didn’t mind. When, at assembly, the headmaster referred to the ‘exercise’ he had had, a great cheer went up.”

Other old boys remember equally harsh punishments. Tony Hare, a shopowner in Torquay, started at RGS in 1951. “There was caning, throwing blackboard rubbers and whacking people round the ear — the prefects used to slipper everybody,” he said.

The producers chose pupils who were predicted to get

A* and A in their GCSEs. It puts them in the top 30% of their age group, roughly comparable with a 1950s grammar school intake.

Subjects include French, which involves pupils learning the pluperfect rather than reserving a hotel room. In science they are dissecting a rat.

The exams will be a shorter version of O-levels. Even the programme producers claim not to have seen the papers. Dr Francis Burns, a former chief O-level examiner who set the tests, said: “They know only the style of the papers, how many questions and what choices. In the 1950s you got a list of essay titles and they were bland and general.”

However, there will be some reprieve for the children. Next week they will receive a visit from their parents as part of a special Founder’s Day service.

Additional reporting: Claire Newell