The First Seventy Years: 3 - A Flawed System
...I remember clearly that some displays of disobedience or academic incompetence would attract some form of physical contact between teacher and pupil. This quite often took the form of what today is euphemistically called 'a clip round the ear'. In reality, it constituted a somewhat heavy blow to the head which sometimes left a pupil dazed...
Eric Biddulph tells of a time when physical punishment was commonplace in schools.
To read earlier chapters of Eric's entertaining autobiography please click on The First Seventy Years in the menu on this page.
I must have been seven years old when I moved across the road to attend Stanley Road Boys Junior School.
There were seven or eight classrooms, each of which was accessed by a door leading off the rectangular-shaped hall in which each class had its physical education and games sessions as well as the daily assembly.
One of the pupils in my class was the son of Mr Martin, a senior teacher. The 1940s was the era of corporal punishment. I remember clearly that some displays of disobedience or academic incompetence would attract some form of physical contact between teacher and pupil. This quite often took the form of what today is euphemistically called 'a clip round the ear'. In reality, it constituted a somewhat heavy blow to the head which sometimes left a pupil dazed.
Mr Martin's son fared badly whenever he had to face disciplinary action administered by his father. One could always remember having had a confrontation with Mr Martin; it was but nothing compared to what he dished out on his son.
One of my other classmates had parents who were very keen for him to have access to what they perceived was the best secondary education. During the 1920s the Government had introduced a segregationalist policy at age 11. All pupils during their last year at junior school would sit an examination to determine their level of perception and intelligence.
I sat mine in 1947. Like most other children who sat these tests over the years I 'failed'. The percentage of children passing this examination varied according to the local authority area in which they lived.
It was only many years later that I became aware of how bogus and contrived was the whole exercise. A local authority may have had far more places available for its 'better schools' proportionate to the number of potential entrants than a neighbouring authority.
In addition, many of them had a policy of operating single sex secondary education. Allocation of places, therefore, was not necessarily dependent on your ability to pass the examination but also on whether or not you were the right sex. The better schools were known as grammar schools, whilst the others were called secondary modern.
One could have the absurd position of two pupils gaining exactly the same number of marks but only one of them obtaining entry to the grammar school because there were insufficient places available for the potential applicant who happened to have suffered the misfortune of living in a local authority area which had a lower ratio of pupils being admitted to its grammar schools, It was also sometimes the case that a pupil may have gained sufficient marks but had the misfortune to be the wrong sex.
This also led to the equally opposite absurdity in which a local authority had a surplus of grammar school places and felt compelled to fill the empty classroom places by lowering the threshold level of attainment.
My classmate, meanwhile, Geoffrey Thomas, always known as Tommy, went home to inform his parents that he had failed his 11 plus examination. Soon afterwards I remember Tommy's somewhat stunned and irate parents storming into school demanding to see the headmaster. Needless to say, this proved to be a fruitless exercise in persuasion. Most teachers in those days believed in the scientific integrity of the system.
