Ex brincliffe grammar school?

[DUFFEMS 55]

The class I was in was made up of 13+ pupils, the form teacher for the 3 years I was there was Miss. Bingham who taught French.

Mrs. Potter, the English tutor, was a typical example of "how not to get your pupils to achieve", she ridiculed and looked down upon pupils who'd entered Brincliffe via the 13+ system, it always seemed as though she couldn't wait to retire.

Pupils I recall are:

Pat Hides, Elaine Smith, Elizabeth Bowskill, Pat Lobb (all ex Carfield pupils along with myself), Jacqueline Hancock. Shirley Hamer, Angela Siddons, Sharon Usztan.

We spent the full 3 years in the ground floor classroom.

Jack Buttery, Andy Howden, Chris Clegg, Boz (can't recall his name!) who were all in an upstairs classroom being 11+ pupils as were all the other classes.

 

Regards,

Duffems

[sovrappeso 4]

1 hour ago, DUFFEMS said:

The class I was in was made up of 13+ pupils, the form teacher for the 3 years I was there was Miss. Bingham who taught French.

Mrs. Potter, the English tutor, was a typical example of "how not to get your pupils to achieve", she ridiculed and looked down upon pupils who'd entered Brincliffe via the 13+ system, it always seemed as though she couldn't wait to retire.

Pupils I recall are:

Pat Hides, Elaine Smith, Elizabeth Bowskill, Pat Lobb (all ex Carfield pupils along with myself), Jacqueline Hancock. Shirley Hamer, Angela Siddons, Sharon Usztan.

We spent the full 3 years in the ground floor classroom.

Jack Buttery, Andy Howden, Chris Clegg, Boz (can't recall his name!) who were all in an upstairs classroom being 11+ pupils as were all the other classes.

 

Regards,

Duffems

Nobody was safe from Mrs Potter's scorn including pupils in the A-stream. She also gave the impression that she thought that subjects with a large factual contact eg science could be successfully studied by "any idiot".  She did not get on at all well with Mr Boul as I remember. I got the impression that Mr Howson thought she was a bit ridiculous.

[DUFFEMS 55]

Most of the tutors were well passed retiring age and made it so obvious, they really didn't want to be there.

Some of the pupils in my class will be 72/73 now so may not even be around but, it would be good to see more on here with memories good or bad.

Duffems

[sovrappeso 4]

20 hours ago, DUFFEMS said:

Most of the tutors were well passed retiring age and made it so obvious, they really didn't want to be there.

Some of the pupils in my class will be 72/73 now so may not even be around but, it would be good to see more on here with memories good or bad.

Duffems

There was a mass exodus of the younger teachers in 1963 i.e. ones under 40.  Those last couple of years must have been a bit dispiriting with the dwindling pupil numbers &  the uninterested teaching staff.

 

I have remembered a bit about Mrs Potter's previous history. Mrs Potter, as you may know, was the wife of Professor Potter of the Sheffield University history department. Before Mrs P. started at Brincliffe , she and the professor spent 2 years in Bonn, West Germany where the professor was some sort of cultural envoy or attache to the government there. So you can see that teaching at a small provincial grammar school like Brincliffe was a bit of a come-down after that. Still, she really didn't have to have that attitude to teaching us. As one of my fellow ex-Brincliffians once said she was, "A dreadful woman & an even worse teacher".

 

Yes, it would be nice to see a few new names  on here but there weren't that many of us to start with.