By Harry Mottram: Following the second part of Dr Laura Carter’s history of the senior school in Cheddar changes are afoot as the numbers of students rise and the Government introduce comprehensive eduction. In 1964 Harold Wilson’s Labour Party came to power after 13 years of Conservative rule with a desire to modernise state education. The post war Labour Government raised the school leaving age to 14 as it inherited the partially state education system from the inter war years which was a mix of primary, secondary and central schools with the eleven plus exam introduced in 1944 by the Conservative Education Minister R.A. Butler. It was seen by some as a way to satisfy some parent groups who wanted their children to have a higher academic education and thus a route to university. Around 75% (it varied in different areas) failed the eleven plus exam and they attended secondary schools while the successful candidates went to grammar school. It led to a two tier system with those as secondary schools perceived as lesser than their grammar school friends and was seen as a perpetuation of the class system.
And so 20 years after its introduction the new Government set about changing the state system so that like state primary schools everyone went to the same school rather than being separated on the basis of one exam. However to make such a huge change was not easy since the old system had a variety of different buildings and sites while there was strong opposition from some parental groups, school governors, Conservative MPs and Conservative run local authorities. And making the change to comprehensive education was difficult in the Cheddar Valley.
Dr Laura Carter’s history of the senior school continues with the 1960s and the changes that would also create a new name for Cheddar Secondary School.
The Kings of Wessex alumna wrote: “The 1960s at Cheddar Secondary School were characterised by a growing emphasis on raising standards, through the introduction of GCE and other examinations, and on discipline and behaviour. There is a clear uptick in the use of corporal punishment (cane strokes on the hand) following Williams’s departure. A chronic offence, smoking on school premises, emerges in the 1960s. There are also many instances of misbehaviour on bus journeys to and from school, suggesting that the wide catchment area continued to shape the social life of the school. In 1969 a new group known as the ‘Transition Course’ (school to work) was introduced for fourth and fifth-year leavers, with a ‘blocked’ timetable of full mornings and afternoons. In 1969, of 73 fifth-year leavers, five went on to full time education at Weston-Super-Mare Technical College and one to sixth form at the grammar school.
“Meanwhile, the school population was creeping ever upwards (306 pupils on the roll in September 1961, 362 by 1963, 438 by 1969). The school was outgrowing its Victorian buildings, already deemed inadequate in 1950 by the HMI. The growth was both a result of demographics and of improvement in transport links to commute kids from across the catchment area to and from the school, although the issue of absence due to transport would persist here and there into the mid-1970s. In the early 1960s Somerset LEA purchased a new site, just down the road from the original one, to expand the school.
“Archaeological work in preparation for school building found that the land had been the site of a series palaces built by the Saxon Kings of Wessex and a sixteenth-century chapel.12 The exciting discovery delayed the building of the new school by one year and plans were redesigned to retain the excavated area as a feature. The purpose-built school finally opened with a new Saxon-inspired name,
“The Kings of Wessex Upper School, in September 1964 with Harry Broome as Headteacher. It had 357 pupils spread across fifteen classes. A short, silent film found on BBC Rewind contains some nice footage of opening day, stills from which are included at the bottom this document.13 Later in the 1960s, the school benefited from a series of new upper school buildings, encompassing hybrid social, dining, and work spaces, to meet the demands of ROSLA.
“As elsewhere, discussions for reorganisation were in full swing in Somerset by the early 1960s. In March 1966 the Cheddar school logbook records that the Headmaster and some School Governors attended a meeting at Weston-Super-Mare on ‘Comprehensive Education’. But whilst Cheddar secondary modern forged ahead with plans to go comprehensive, the Governors of the local grammar school (in Blackford, a village 7 miles away from Cheddar) resisted reform throughout the 1960s. By 1968 a Cheddar parent, apparently worried about the uncertainty, came to see the Headteacher and subsequently applied for his son to be moved to an alternative local secondary school that was already reorganised into an 11–18 comprehensive.
“By 1973 a compromise had been reached in the Cheddar Valley. The secondary modern in Cheddar would become a 13–18 comprehensive, the (coveted) former grammar school in Blackford would become one feeder middle school, and a second, purpose built feeder middle school would be constructed in Cheddar. All the existing village primaries could stay in place, educating pupil up to age nine. The archival sources contain inklings that reorganisation was stymied by the grammar school (Governors) refusing to any proposal to change their status from anything but grammar school. But according to a former teacher (who started teaching at the new comprehensive in 1977), Cheddar Valley’s middle school plan was a pragmatic solution to the spread out, rural catchment area. An 11–18 comprehensive that could accommodate all secondary pupils in the area would need to be enormous, and thus expensive to build new, whilst the existing secondary modern (only newly-built in the mid-1960s) that was to be converted into a comprehensive wasn’t large enough either for a full 11–18. In any case, the settlement did come rather late in the context of Somerset.
“By 1972, when Cheddar was still under discussion, Somerset had 26 comprehensive schools of which twelve were 11–18 schools, seven 11–16 schools, two 13–18 upper schools and five 9-13 middle schools.
“In 1975 Keith Herring was recruited as the new comprehensive Headteacher, appointed from 1 January 1976. Herring had previously been Vice Principal of Rawlins Community College in Quorn, Leicestershire, a 13–18 comprehensive school under the Leicestershire plan. Stepping into the role when feelings were still running high, Herring was strategic in styling himself as an ‘outsider’. When it came to the controversial issue of naming the new comprehensive (should it be named after the old secondary modern, or the old grammar?), Herring claimed to have ‘had no hesitation in suggesting The Kings of Wessex Upper School because of the historic nature of the site on which it was placed’.
“The unusual archaeological environment of the school site, much more ancient and prestigious than even the coveted grammar school, provided a kind of foundation and tradition in Cheddar upon which to build comprehensive new beginnings. (In 1988 HMI inspectors would lament that, despite having these unique archaeological features on its doorstep, ‘the school does little to use this environment to enhance pupils’ aesthetic awareness’.) Staffing was another potentially contentious issue. As in many cases of mergers, the senior posts tended to be occupied by the former grammar school teachers. In the case of Cheddar, where the school site and buildings were to be those of the former secondary modern, Herring reported an almost even balance overall of staff from the secondary modern (14) and grammar (17) in the new school, with a further 9 posts being advertised for recruitment.”
Next time we move up to date as the Cheddar site expands with more students and staff.
Notes
Former student of Kings of Wessex Dr Laura Carter lectures in British History at Université de Paris and has written at length about the school. She is the author of Secondary education and social change in the UK since 1945, for the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge and her new book Histories of Everyday Life: The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918-1979 (Oxford University Press, 2021) is now out.
For more on Dr Laura Carter visit https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/people/laura-carter
For more on Kings Academy visit https://www.kowessex.co.uk/
Axbridge News is edited by Harry Mottram and is published for the interest of himself and fellow residents.
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