Acklam Hall Grammar School
I remember the day the term 11 plus was mentioned.
It was one spring day and dad said “son”, he always called
me son, your 11 plus exam is soon. Are you prepared? Well, the answer was no, I
had not even heard of it. Apparently, it is a written exam. The results of
which determined whether you follow a route to university education or
secondary school and a trades career like plumbing or building.
A sort of
intelligence test as they called them in the 1950’s. The day arrived and we
were given a pamphlet full of questions. Of which we had a set period of time
to complete. You need to remember that in the 1950’s the UK was not metric, far
from it. It had its own weird set of standards. For instance, money, pounds, shillings,
and pence. 12 pennies to a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound plus half pennies
and farthings. Worse was length with fractions of an inch, feet, and yards
stop. 3/8 of an inch, 2 feet, 6 inches, etc. Then there was weights and volume.
16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone. Then we had volume. Cups, pints,
quarts, and gallons. All very confusing, yet the 11 plus had questions like “You
have a pint glass and a quart bottle. How many times must you fill them to
produce 2 1/2 gallons of water”! What! Two cups equal one pint. 2 pints equal 1
quart. 4 quarts equal one gallon. Needless to say, Dad received a letter on my
performance. I had failed. But marginally so, I was sent for interview where
they proceeded to ask me the same dumb questions, but this time I needed quick
mental arithmetic in order to give a response.
I remember an elderly teacher trying to help me with pints
and quarts. But I returned home despondent, Sure I had failed, but no I had
passed and my route to grammar school and higher education was secured.
If I thought Whinney Banks School was different to Bay School, Acklam Hall Grammar School was on another Planet. It was an old Georgian manor in its own grounds with Adams ceilings and enormous grounds with playing pitches for cricket and rugby.
Thirdly, it was run on military lines with punishment. If
you deviated from the rules, something I seem to do all the time! The first-year
intake was divided into three classes, A, B&C, and the membership of a
class seemed to depend on the 11 plus exam results.
You can guess where I was after my dismal 11 plus
performance. You are right 1C. And soon to be bottom of that class. So, I had
the distinction of being the dumbest in my year, which meant in year one,
bottom of the whole school! Our day started in the Assembly Hall on the
first floor of the main building. Very grand, with Adam ceiling and a stage at
one end.
I soon found out that abstract subjects such as science were
difficult and mathematics virtually impossible. X’s and Y’s did not seem to
represent anything I could recognise. And worse, we are expected to do
arithmetic exercises on them and substitute numerical values for X and Y to
produce a graph! I mean X ^2 + 2 X y = 10. What is that?
Worst of all were art classes where I met my nemesis. We
were to paint a portrait of a woman who sat half naked on a stool. Where to
start? Without guidance, I drew a “matchstick person”, with straight lines for
legs and arms. This got me a clip over the ear and ordered to leave the art
class immediately and never return. The outcome was to be placed in the
woodwork class where I excelled. However, the teacher was very strict and threw
pieces of wood towards us if we did not follow orders.
One boy, Hilton, was struggling to follow the procedure to
mark out his wood and was rebuffed by the teacher who shouted so we could all
hear. “Stop, you stupid boy. You might as well cut your wood into small pieces”!
Dutifully, Hilton, sawed his project into small pieces and waited until the
next inspection by the teacher. The result was as expected. “You stupid boy”,
said the teacher. Red in the face he grabbed Hilton by the ear and threw him
out of the class, never to return! Perhaps all of us in the class were problem
pupils. We certainly caused chaos as we progressed 1C to 2C to 3C.
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