MY FIRST DAY(S) AT SCHOOL 1953

It's 1953, I am 5. Immediately after my 5th birthday mother arranged for me to attend Tidbury Green Infants/Junior School, this was halfway through the Spring term, so not in the more usual September. I think you had to be 5 when you started school, but most people waited till September. This is a puzzle – why did she do it? To get me out of the house?

In any case it was a disaster - Tidbury Green was three miles away in the country and had to be reached by a 15 minute bus ride on the Midland Red double-decker 179, which passed our house. Who took me on the bus, aged 5?

I was scared stiff – from a peaceful life at home just with mummy I was suddenly thrown into the company of 30 rowdy children who all knew each other, in a strange place far from home, with horrible food. It was extremely traumatic - on the first day in the playground I stood petrified with my back against the external dining room door (it is still there), frozen stiff with fear. This seemed to go on for an eternity of days, I don't know how long – but eventually it stopped and I was at home again with mummy. I guess the teachers had seen my distress and told mother.

I honestly believe that this experience damaged me for life and contributed to me being a loner.

Come September, the new Burman Road Infant's School had opened, in the same street block as our house, so getting to it didn't even need crossing a road. Strangely, I was not at all apprehensive about going there, perhaps mother had been working on me, in fact I was looking forward to it. All the other children would be in the same boat, and starting equal.

Mother took me on my first day, and we assembled in the playground, in four separate lines if I remember correctly. Ian Richmond was wailing his heart out, but I was excited. We were shown our desks, and given an intelligence test (I have it still), which was an eight ? page booklet in two colours with multiple choice questions. We all set to work with our pencils, and after half an hour I had finished. I looked round to see the others still beavering away. Eventually “Stop” was called and they were marked. When the results were announced, I had come top (by a long way). Was it wise for the teachers to publicly categorise us thus, I doubt it is modern practice; it is surely not a good idea to condemn 5 year olds as unintelligent to their faces – I wonder where Ian Richmond came?

In contrast to Tidbury Green I was very happy at Burman Road – it was a brand new school and we were the first intake. There were two alternative routes which I could choose, and I used to walk there, being careful not to step on the cracks between the paving stones. When I got my Gresham Flyer tricycle (oh bliss) I went on it, I can still feel the vibration of it under me.

We were taught to read by the revolutionary new theory, just adopted, of 'Look and Say'. There was no learning individual letters and then assembling them into words - “Kuh-Ahh-Tuh”. Instead a flash card showing a cat was held up and then reversed to show the whole word CAT and we would shout out “CAT”. We learnt whole words. Except I can't to this day spell (thank God for auto-correct) and the system was abandoned as a failure about five years afterwards.

Eventually we all progressed to St James' Junior School, a red brick Victorian Gothic Church of England school (now demolished) opposite the church, headmaster Mr Davies - a churchwarden and pillar of the community (but that's another story better told by one of the girls).

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