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Bob was very disappointed about the shift in the Mellish to comprehensive.  I think it was about the time he retired and he was glad to be out.  I never got into the details, I was in Canada.  Looking back it is interesting to think he paid for his daughter to go to the girls high school.  She came out of there with enough A's and O's to have gone to Oxford, or Cambridge, but she married an apprentice electrician.  I gues NGHS gave her good taste. :Friends:

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Sorry TBI. I really don’t understand why the system was junked - unless it was to bring “ equality”, meaning mediocrity, to every kid. We are NOT equally academically gifted, and thank God. I went to

I think the difference between Grammar and secondary education was vast,,, Qualifications GCEs etc were hardly in our vocabulary at Padstow............i soon realised after a visit from the ''Youth Em

I for one loved school.  Grew up on a Council Estate, passed the 11+ and went to Grammar School.  Not a perfect school but always grateful for a good education.  Both my Mum and Dad passed to go to Gr

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There were only a few free scholarships but there was and still is a very stiff entrance examination to pass. You had to be ultra clever to get in - money alone could not buy a place. My first girlfriend was a High School girl and her father was a headmaster of a secondary school! 

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#201

 

The head teacher at Berridge, Mr  J W Baugh, pressured my mother to let me sit the scholarship exam for NGHS as he was convinced I'd get in. Very wisely, she refused.  He told her it had been a bad year for 11 plus passes but, if my memory serves me correctly, there were 4 girls and 6 boys in my class of 30 who passed which doesn't seem a bad percentage. I believe pupils needed an IQ rating of 130 plus to pass the exam, where the average was deemed to be around 100. 

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#202. Which secondary school, Phil.  Wasn't Chandos was it?  Guy by the name of Marsh?

 

I knew a few of the high school girls through my wife.  They were quite the crowd!  I always referred to it as St Trinians.  She did not like that so I used to do it to wind her up.

 

Edited to add.  Why didn't your mom want you to go to NGHS, Jill.

 

Are there any NGHS gals on here?

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#209

 

Well, Loppy, no one knows you like your own mother and mine certainly knew me inside out. She was wise enough to realise that I was too much like my father in character to cope with a place like the Nottingham Girls High School. Apart from the final two years of junior school, I hated having to go at all and she never forgot the awful performances she had every morning trying to force me out of the house or disentangle my little fingers from the stair rails. I was fortunate enough to be sufficiently bright to do pretty well at Infant and Junior School but my mother knew that if it came to having to do any hard work, her daughter was far too lazy to put the effort in. She also knew that, like my father, I was very much not a team player and would not fit in well with an ethos where teamwork and group identity was going to be very important.

 

My mother also had a couple of friends whose daughters attended the Nottingham Girls High School on a scholarship and she was aware of the stigma that was attached to such pupils. 

 

I will always be grateful to my mother that she didn't fall in with Mr Baugh's plan to send me to the Nottingham Girls High School and I also realise that she fought very hard to prevent me going to the Manning for the same reasons. Looking back, there was probably also an element of guilt because my older sister had attended Peveril Secondary Modern School and my mother probably felt it would have been very unfair for me to have  a private education so, in the end, she compromised reluctantly and sent me to the Manning.

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If Dannimac and Spud Morrow were such kind and caring individuals, then why did half the boys spend the first three or four years of their Mellish lives permanently looking over their shoulders? Surely Danni and Spud should have stuck their heads above the parapet, and done the right thing? Rather than just taking the easy way out, and hiding. Were they too scared of such as Houston and Pig? Probably.

 

To be fair, some of the later younger teachers were even worse. They deliberately befriended the school hardcases, in order to protect themselves!

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As I noted earlier, Stan.  I did not attend the Mellish.  As things turned out Bob M was my Father in law.  He has been dead some eighteen years.  I am not familiar with the politics or dynamics of the issues that you cite and I can't ask him about them.  It seems like Bob and certain others were well liked.  The past can't be changed, best to leave it there.

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Orlando. I had no experience of life outside school. So when I was 16, I just assumed that it would be even worse than being at Mellish. And, as it happened, the last two years at school proved to be the best, in that there weren’t older pupils to bully us. So at 17 I started to relax for the first time. The first three years had been appalling.

 

Loppylugs. I don’t see why we have to look back through rose tinted spectacles. Surely being honest is better than trying to please everyone? But I apologise if you don’t agree.

 

Anyway, everybody just seems to want to hear good things. So I’ll not post anything else! Cheers!

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Stan, I agree with you entirely about the 'Rose Tinted Spectacles ' scenario, but there's no reason to leave just because some folk don't agree with your views and opinions. Give it another go mate.

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Stan, my post was not meant as criticism. I'm genuinely interested in what you have to say and you write so well when reminiscing that I'd very much like to hear all about your time there. In particular I'd  like to hear about those first three years that makes you still resent Mellish so.

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Just my opinion, but I always think it is better not to use people's names when criticising something that happened in the past, especially when they are no longer around to give their point of view (as Loppy said in his last post on this thread).  It just makes me feel uncomfortable.  Of course, I agree with not just writing about positive and happy experiences, as all our memories are valid

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I agree Margie. Fantastic memories, good memories, bad memories, it's life as it happens. Nothing is hunky dory all the time. 

Life is what you make it. Get over the bad, and fondly remember the good. 

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#220

 

Stan, no one on this site has done more moaning, complaining and generally droning on about the horrors of their old alma mater than I have!  It amazes me no one's told me to shurrup!!

 

I find it cathartic and its way cheaper than going to see the trick cyclist once a week.

 

You carry on posting. We all enjoy reading it and it imparts a sense of solidarity to those of us who didn't enjoy our school years!

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