Even More Photos!

1958/9/Football Team 

George Forrester  - R.T.Morris, Derick Lambley, Mr Snell and Geoffrey Oxendale at the back. Second row from the left hand side:- Grant, McGee, Me, Shepard, Livingston and Graham. Front Row :- Yates, Willis, Jones, Flynn, Merry, Shipman and Wally Browning.

Paul Nicholas Williamson back right, isn't that Ritchie Graham, future head boy, Mortimer.

George Forrester - Ritchie Graham it is, and a good cricketer he was too.

Paul Nicholas Williamson and a good footie player, played in the same team as him after I left school, The Phildown Dynamoes, a few more played Barry Shipton, Ian Peebles, Chris Elkington, Brian Slater and loads more, Del Elmer who became a super star when they changed there name to Phildown Henley.

Another sports photo - possibly 1956 - 7 also with Headmaster Mr Morris in the middle back. Who are the teachers?

Paul Nicholas Williamson  Archie Lambley on the left !! That would have been the junior cross country team, under 13's as we would run in an A race and a B race in teams of 8.  Mr Tinsello (PE Teacher).

Trev Teasdel Can you explain what an A race and a b race was - ie was the younger ones and older ones and was it a different route - ie senior and junior ?? And why teams of 8 or was that arbitrary?

Paul Nicholas Williamson The A team would have the best runners in the team, as the first six from each team would count in the scoring, being clever you would put your best six in with two others, leaving you 7th and 8th runners in the B team as there star runners.Scoring would be as follows, first would be one point,second two points,third three points and so on, using your first six runners the team with the lowest points would win the team event.

Michael Billings I'm back row on the left. Between Mr Lambley & Mr Morris is John Richardson. In front of Mr Tinsello is Noel Richards & Lucas. Also in the team Yates, Snell, Browning & Pebbles.

Paul Nicholas Williamson That would have been Ian Peebles, his younger brother Alistar was in our year,both Dudley boys.

Brian Slater I rented my first colour tv from Merilect. Salesman was Alistair . I remember Ian ( think he was known as Jan) he was a good footballer and hard as nails too.

George Forrester Bottom right, kneeling down in Mick Faulkner. Tom Merry behind him, and John Bolster, right hand side back row.

Michael Billings Middle, kneeling is John Snell.

John Slevin - Kiran Naik, Willy Brown, Tim O'Grady, Mark Charlton, Mark? Bevan, Pip Hawkes, ? Kelvin Cowie, John Slevin, Pete Jennings, Johnny Castle, John Bricknell (Stanford), Ged Ostick, ? Can anyone fill in the blanks?

Peter Dawson - Paul Davies second from right back row.  Nick Bevan.

The name of the last person in the Cricket photo above is Morrissey. I think his first name was Kevin, but may be wrong. Regards, Peter Jennings.

Nigel Tuckley

Chase me Comrade 1973

Back Row L- R: Mark Harrison, Jeff Stockdale, Stephen Hill, Robert Griffin, John Harvey

Front row L-R: Nathan Johnson, Phil Herd, ?, Chris Hill, Mark Jeffery — with Nath Johnson at City of Coventry School.

Michael Billings -School Reports 1955 - 58

Along with lots of other material, Michael Billings, who was at the school 1955 - 58 sent copies of his school reports.

The early one 1955 - 57 are designated as Wyre Farm Camp School. The school changed its name to City of Coventry Secondary Boarding school in 1957 so the subsequent reports reflect this in the report headers. However the reports were longer than A4 so the headers are missing on these scans!

This style of report continued until 1961 /2 when the incoming headmaster - Mr Rowland replaced these sheets with a report book, leaving more space for the staff and House masters to write in. The signature is RT Morris - headmaster 1953 - 1960.

Fist the Headers - 

Very small classes - roughly 20 ish per class. Numbers at the school were restricted by the accommodation available. The smaller class size and staff to pupil ratio was promoted as a positive by the school.

One observation of these early reports is that broke down English and arithmetic more specifically than the later report books did.

Form teacher is R. Francis - a name I'm not familiar with.

Interesting for me personally in that the form master was John H Lowe. Mr Lowe was also Deputy head at the time and this must have been just before he left as he went on to be Head of Willenhall Wood Junior school in 1957 (the school I went to before CCBS), and was replaced by Mr Lambley as deputy. another observation is that all subject reports are written by the form master. In the the later report books, the individual teachers wrote their own reports.

The last report by John Lowe. presumably he left at the end of the academic year.

Form teacher now F. Ridley. Mr Ridley was Junior House (Annex) house master when I started in 1962 and left end of the academic year 1963 to become a psychologist of some form I think. He taught maths and Science if i recall correctly. This means he was there from at least September 1957 to summer 1963. I've not heard of W.E. Sterland before.

This report mentions Geoff Oxendale as house master (not sure which house). Geoff  was a maths teacher and still there at least up until 1967 when I left. By then he lived in married quarters at the end of the assembly hall (Bursar's office end).

In this report we see Wally Clarke as form teacher December 1958 - Clark left about 1961.

Note that Michael is to go on to O' Levels in 1960. In 1957 the school changed name and became a secondary modern boarding school offering for the first time GCE's. It's not clear from these reports how that affected the curriculum and teaching methods. If anybody can throw light on that, please comment!

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