REPORTS, EXAMS, PRIZES, PARENT MEETINGS
David M asked: "Did any other list member take part in any daft exam-completion celebration?" Nothing as remotely innovative as your heroic dash to Land's End. All I can recall is dragging the cricket sight screen to block the exit to Hall Road (very juvenile - must have been 'O' levels); going to 'The Ship' while still in school uniform (must have been 'A'levels); the ceremonial 'Burning of The Cap'. (Andy Lee)
By some fluke, I too managed to win a prize - for 5th from
French in 1967. By a still greater fluke, I still have the book complete with
a small sticker inside bearing J. P. Coles' signature. I doubt that my book
is worth any more than the 15 shillings it cost when new. Probably less with
the sticker in it! (Les Bird)
I would like to ask if the recipients of prizes on Prize Day at the school knew in advance they had won? Not having ever graced the RLS stage on these occasions, I do not know the answer? (Mike Merry)
Mike, I won a prize and can't remember, so I'd like to know that too. BTW; If it weren't for the annals (watch the spelling) of this fine establishment I would have clean forgotten I'd won the prize. Thanks to whoever sent in the year books. (Ian MacCauley)
As ... ahem ...
a recipient of one such prize (for nothing grander than completing the course)
I can reveal that advance notice was given.
Prize-winners were invited to choose a book (to the value of XXX) in which was
pasted a bookplate commemorating the event (see the Library for a couple of
examples). I chose The Concise Oxford Dictionary - predictable, but very
useful. The lucky beneficiary would alight the steps to the stage and shake the hand of
whichever big-wig was doing the business that year. (Andy Lee)
My enduring re-collection of speech day was the one I was compelled to go to simply because I was in the fifth form. I don't think a great many of my year were impressed by this as it meant having to be in the school when we could have been doing something far more useful - like preparing for exams!! (David Green)
Prize-winners naturally knew in advance that they had won so
that they could choose their prizes. Otherwise they would all have
received 'From Yorkshire to Civilisation by G.H.R. Newth.
Patrick Laycock one year chose 'Lady Chatterley's
Lover' but the secretary advised him that the Headmaster might take a dim view
of his choice so he chose Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' instead. (J. Alan Smith)
Being a pretentious twat (no change there then! - to pre-empt Hon Mem. Byrne's next post) I chose a set of Kafka novels. Really don't know who I was trying to impress (Trevor Landen) I, also, was a recipient of a prize in 1963, which I still have. I chose three booklets from the Library of Mathematics - Complex Numbers, Principles of Dynamics and Differential Calculus. Each one was 5/-. When I went up to receive my prize, I was handed a large book with a note attached to it that said "Return this book to the library after the ceremony". Apparently not all prizes arrived on time. (Peter Cowling)
The thread on School Prizes brought back some rather unfortunate memories. One year I got the transcript of the trial of Dr Crippen. No idea what Jake thought. The sad part is that I cannot remember what I did with it as I no longer appear to have it. I was in Hay on Wye last year and found other books in the same series on sale for £50 or more. And with the centenary celebrations of Crippen approaching the book will be in demand. Crippen was an insignificant little fellow, who was hanged for murdering his wife, a rather overbearing woman. (Doug Newlyn)
My memory was jogged by a previous post that the 5th form
was press ganged into attending speech day. Remembering our 5th form, it was a
very courageous thing for JPC to do. I would have thought the 1st or 2nd years
might have been a better bet. Still, it was the only way I was going to get
near a Speech Day. (Richard Hall)
Prize-giving day, I believe it was, when all masters appeared on stage in their mortar boards and variously coloured ermine gowns at a rehearsal in the morning. All very impressive to those of us who saw them this peculiar regalia for the first time. Some strutted about on the stage like fighting cocks (Mr. Pilling?), until Mr. Newth swept in like an absolute monarch, but most of them tried to seem unconcerned and perhaps inconspicuous... especially one or two who had no gowns at all! (Robert Priddy)
I wonder how clearly we all remember sitting the entrance exam? My own recollections are now very dim. I think on
account of living close to the School at the time (18,
I used to hate the end of term exams at RLS. You could do well the whole year and screw up an exam and finish at the bottom of the class. I prefer the method whereby a whole terms work is taken into consideration than base everything on one two hour or so examination. The exams seemed to be memory tests for most subjects and if you had a good memory you would probably score well, even if you didn't understand the subject and were merely repeating text. Not being particularly enamoured towards tests I usually dozed off. I don't remember anyone being kicked out of RLS for being dumb, although a few of us must have come close! I found I got on a lot better once I got out of school and into "real life" where doing set exams didn't count at all but having common sense did. (Mike Merry)
…there is no doubt that the marking of school work measured something different to the exams. For a couple of years I was about top of geography on school work. This was because most homework involved drawing maps & diagrams, which I loved. I would spend hours producing accurate drawings, fully coloured with neat lettering. I couldn't get other than 10 out of 10 for that. As to my knowledge or understanding of the subject, that was quite a different matter, as exam results showed! (John Hawkins)
In the fifties, A level candidates who tried for a State Scholarship took two subjects at S level at the same time as their A levels. (JAS)
...in the mid-fifties we first sat "mocks" or mock GCE examinations. Based on the results from these, if you passed a subject, you then sat the proper examination at no charge. If you failed in the "mock" you could pay one or two pounds and still sit the examinations you wanted to. I still have difficulty in understanding how when the final results were delivered by mail to ones home, during the summer vacations (1956) I learned that Mick Coles had passed English! (Mike Merry)
- I am fairly sure that in the 50's the going rate for a failure at "mocks" to sit the proper exam, was 10 bob, or 50p. I have a fond memory of Ron Smith finding out I was the only one in the set, whose dad was not going to lose 120 old pence on a cert failure. (Phil Kingham)
This 10/- I can confirm, for I didn't think a try at Latin would be worth it. (Robert Priddy)
PHIL SAID: "I am fairly sure that in the 50's the going rate for a failure at "mocks" to sit the proper exam, was 10 bob, or 50p. I have a fond memory of Ron Smith finding out I was the only one in the set, whose dad was not going to lose 120 old pence on a cert failure"
My mum paid 10 bob for me to take English literature in the early 60's. The reading book was "The Ship". The school was right - it wasn't worth me taking the exam, I failed. (Peter Cowling)
I seem to remember that the O Level mock exams were held in January. The results of the actual exams were posted (in SAEs that we provided) but it is possible that some people turned up at School during the summer break and found out how others fared. (JAS)
Do you remember those days in the run-up to your first G.C.E., the O-levels? Had to stay in most evenings and work, revise, revise, couldn't just go out to meet friends, go swimming or waste evenings with the radio (or the TV, if you had one). Life was then lived under a cloud of heavy looming weeks, with no guarantee of any silver lining when it was all over... plus there would be a wait of months before the results of one's labours would even be known. For better or for worse... to pass or not to pass, that was the question!
Lessons were more serious than ever too... masters were revising for us in effective, sombre tones, and then even revising their revisions up until the last minute. Pre-exam briefings took place, how to enter the exam room (in my case, the gymnasium), what one could and could not carry into that sacrosanct fane where Invigilators with eagle eyes stalked about on rubber-soled shoes. We were instructed in exactly when to turn over the question paper, how to divide it up timewise, when to make rough notes, when not, how to calculate the points for various questions (in maths, physics etc.) and concentrate on enough point-yielding puzzles to obtain a pass. On the all-too-near future horizon we envisioned yet more serious examiners in oral French, Spanish and/or German putting us through gruelling conversation which we would probably only half understand. We practised out French and other accents to try to bend them into a bit more convincing play-acting, though only in private places where no one could identify you, like the bogs, in the middle of the playing fields... mostly at home. What do you remember? (Robert Priddy)
In 1951 the entrance examination for the RLS and other
grammar and direct grant schools in
Arithmetic (mental and written) - the mental section involved our performing sums without being allowed to use pen and paper, the written section consisted of a number of additions, subtractions, long multiplications and divisions and "problems" (of the " If one man can dig 1lb of potatoes in one minute..." style).
Composition - Write a short essay on a given topic in twenty minutes; I suffered an early occurrence of writers block on this one writing about three lines (I have since recovered).
General - this was the difficult cum enjoyable part of the examination; it was an IQ test similar to those used by MENSA and similar organisations (why does a club of self-proclaimed clever people call itself "A Table"?).
When this was marked a statistical correction was applied to allow for the age range of the candidates and then the top 10% (or whatever) were selected for RLS or similar schools. There was also a smaller, lower scoring group that went to technical schools, everybody else went to the secondary moderns. Obviously one had little hope of passing the examination without appropriate teaching and coaching at primary school, together with a supportive (pushing) family. As an afterthought, I think that the problem with that system wasn't selection and the grammar schools but poor quality secondary moderns (see Colin Calvert's posting)
I saw my Dad last night and he confirms that when I joined RLS in 1962 the qualification was a good pass at 11+ and that, at least in my own case, there was no entrance exam or interview. He did also suggest that a family connection was a useful thing to have which goes to confirm that I went to RLS on the strength of my brother's brains!! (Graham Alexander Lee)
Reports - if you had 1 bad comment on a report, you were put on again the next week, I once had a full week of signatures, and Jake put me back on it the next week. I protested 'But I don't have any bad comments' and he replied 'But you don't have any good ones'. I also once went for a whole half of a term being put back on report week after week, until I was joined again by a new batch (not sure if I should be proud of that) (Rick Tolbart)
PARENTS MEETINGS
I cannot recall my parents going to the school at all for any reason in my five years attendance. There were never any invitations to meet my teachers and discuss my progress(or lack of it), as I did with my children at their school. It seems strange now but it didn't at the time. I suspect that all this changed when George retired. Can anyone confirm this? (Derek Humphrey)
I have just consulted Mr. Lee Snr. He recalls a preliminary meeting for parents of boys about to join the school, plus a couple of others (no more) at critical points - careers advice (hah!) and the selection of 'A' levels. The former would have been during George's reign, the latter during the very early days of Jasper's tenure. Neither he (mon pere) nor I remember me being present as my children were at the numerous equivalent meetings 25 years later. (Andy Lee)