FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE

It is a real privilege to be a head teacher anywhere, but particularly at the school which you attended as a girl and young woman. As I walk round CHS, many memories assail me; some because the familiarity of locations causes them and some because of the contrast between then and now.  

I joined the junior school in J11(4) – now known as Year 4.  To me Miss Rees’ current classroom will always evoke the memory of my first day: fractions, raffia weaving for lamp frames to be sold (and bought) at the summer fair or was it for Guild Day?  

Miss Carter’s classroom was J111(5): Miss Whorlow, bird-song tapes and experiments involving yeast and balloons, (which we still do and Year 3 took part in the RSPB schools bird watch only the other day!).  

Miss Goggin’s room was Miss Walker’s (she was always so immaculately presented): handwriting lessons and ‘stars’ only if we made absolutely no mistakes! How come she still looks exactly the same when we see her today, as she comes to support the school at various events?  

The Centenary when I was in JIV(8), making a Victorian sampler, which I still have.  

‘My office’ will always be Miss Bolwell’s! 

Red PE bags still hang on pegs, but gone are the checked smocks for art and animal club. (Rabbits and guinea pigs are still with us but only the tortoise is the same one from those far away days).  

Miss Whorlow would be envious of Ms Howard-Clegg’s separate music room, not the hall divided with a partition.  Games staff from the senior school are still well loved by junior girls, as was Miss Robertson, but we can no longer use the PE equipment to climb onto the bridge (Health and Safety regulations!!) and tumbling in gym is a much more comfortable event now that coconut mats are a thing of the past.  We still use the small wooden blocks with grey tops for drama though. The PE store no longer competes with the ‘rest rugs’ in their wooden racks. I am afraid I got rid of the blue and ‘orange circle’ curtains from the hall last year (very 1970’s)!

 Of course we’ve moved forward: an ICT room where the library was, the library in a space which simply didn’t exist; it took me ages to work out why I couldn’t look down into the dinning room any more, but that’s gone too as the older juniors eat in the senior school. Interactive white boards replace rolling chalk boards. 

Three different languages, not just French, are taught in Years 5 and 6, with residential trips including one to France. The youngest girls in the Nursery are only 3; no Kindergarten and Transition, but Reception girls still sit round the benches for stories! The curriculum has evolved; learning is more ‘independent’, although strangely playtime isn’t. Why can’t today’s children play endless games of rounders without adult supervision?  Why can’t simple logs become a horse jumping arena?  If only we could allow such things in a playground now, without writing endless risk assessments!  We also didn’t seem to need the huge variety of extra-curricular clubs that are now on offer.  

But … in the laughter and the fun of today’s girls, I can still hear the echo’s of those past friends: Josephine Charlton, Joanna Daly, Helen Jessup, Alison Leach, Gillian Mottram, Elizabeth Mitcham, Deborah Salmon, Siân Treweek.  How very lucky I am, to grow up to live my dream!   Thank you Croydon High.

          Vivien Sergeant (Hughes) 1981