Over Hill and Dale

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘Well, she suited me,’ concluded Councillor Peterson, stressing the word ‘suited’. ‘When I fust clapped eyes on ’er I thowt she’d not be up to t’job but she ’as a lot about her, that young woman, and I reckon she’ll do champion.’ Then he turned in my direction and his fat face broke into a great smile. ‘And I could see that Mester Phinn, here, liked the cut of her cloth, didn’t you, Mester Phinn?’ I did not say anything but smiled and headed for the door and the fresh air.

  As I walked to the car I passed again the great bronze statue of the school’s founder which dominated the main entrance. I paused and stared up for a moment at Sir Cosmo, standing proudly on his large plinth, hands on hips, legs apart and chin jutting out like a mastiff about to pounce. Something seemed strangely familiar about the figure. I looked more closely. Yes, it was the suit he was wearing. Sir Cosmo was dressed in a suit with wide curved lapels, heavy cuffs and large buttons. I guess he had done his shopping at Fritters of Fettlesham.

  11

  The name, Sunny Grove Secondary Modern School, was singularly inappropriate. It was a grim, towering, blackened building surrounded by high brick walls and set in a depressing inner-city environment of dirt and noise. From the high windows, shabby factory premises and derelict land could be seen by those pupils tall enough to peer through the grimy glass. Row upon row of terraced houses surrounded the school; street after street of grey, gloomy buildings. The few houses that had been built in the last twenty years had acquired a look of drabness and neglect. Even the air had a sooty, dusty taste. It was a depressing scene of litter-strewn roads, graffiti-covered walls, windowless bus shelters – a landscape devoid of trees and empty of colour. The bright morning sunshine did little to make the scene less bleak. The previous term I had marvelled at the awesome view from Hawksrill Primary School – the great craggy fells, steep-sided gorges, trickling silver streams, lustrous pine forests, rolling green pastures and purple moors. It was a world away.

  Sunny Grove would have been an ideal setting for a film version of a Dickens’ novel. It resembled one of those dark and forbidding institutions described in Hard Times or Nicholas Nickleby. I could imagine Mr McChoakumchild, the heartless teacher, or Wackford Squeers, the brutal Headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, feeling very much at home here. I was directed across the school playground by a large arrow, following the instructions for all visitors to REPORT TO RECEPTION. It was just after nine o’clock and the school assembly was in full flow. Hearing the boys singing the hymn based on Blake’s poem ‘Jerusalem’, I thought to myself how apt were the lines:

  And was Jerusalem builded here

  Among those dark satanic mills?

  As I turned a corner, I bumped into a small, grubby-looking boy of about eleven or twelve who was creeping around the side of the school, as if trying to escape from someone. He had long, lank hair, an unhealthy pallor to his skin and was dressed in a dirty blazer and grey flannel trousers far too big for him. The boy looked up at me with a frightened wide-eyed expression – like that of a rabbit caught in a trap.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. He continued to gawp at me. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ He nodded. ‘Well, come along then, you can show me the way to the school office.’ I motioned him to go before me. Head down and dragging his feet, the boy turned reluctantly towards the school entrance.

  The window in the glass-fronted reception desk slid back.

  ‘Good morning, may I help you?’ a woman enquired. Then, catching sight of the pupil skulking behind me, she reached for a large, red book which she flicked open. On the cover was written in large letters: PUPILS ARRIVING LATE. ‘Excuse me a moment.’ She craned her neck to get a better view of the boy. ‘Third time late this week, Justin,’ she declared, shaking her head and writing down his name.

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘And what’s the excuse this time?’

  ‘Miss, I had to run an errand.’

  ‘And where should you be first period?’

  ‘PE, miss,’ whispered the pupil.

  ‘Well, you’ve missed assembly. You had better go straight to your first lesson.’ The little boy scurried off. The woman turned her attention back to me. ‘I’m sorry about that. Now, may I help you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I have an appointment with the Headteacher. My name is Mr Phinn and I’m from the Education Office.’

  ‘If you would like to take a seat, Mr Phinn, I will see if Mr Fenton’s available. I think he should be just about out of assembly by now.’

  A moment later the Headteacher emerged via the school office and held out a large hand. I had seen his face over many a drystone wall, driving a hundred tractors along the winding country roads, staring stern-faced at sheep auctions, herding sluggish cattle along the farm tracks. It was a Dales-man’s face: a thatch of thick, grey hair over a broad, creased brow, weathered features, heavy moustache and brown, good-humoured eyes.

  ‘Good to see you, Mr Phinn,’ he said. ‘Come along in.’

  I followed the Headteacher into a large, comfortable room. The heavy, dark, wooden bookcases lining three walls were crammed with books, and the rest of the room was filled with a large oak desk and leather armchair, two threadbare easy chairs, three ancient-looking filing cabinets and a small table piled high with reports and files.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, ushering me ahead of him. He skirted around the two easy chairs and small table and placed himself squarely behind his desk on the large leather chair. ‘Were your ears burning this weekend, Mr Phinn, by any chance? I was preaching at Hawksrill Methodist Chapel last Sunday and Mrs Beighton and Mrs Brown – we call them “the merry widows” – were singing your praises. I’m a lay preacher, you know, for my sins. Anyhow, I was chatting to them after the service and your name came up. I believe you visited the school last term. It’s a lovely spot up there, isn’t it?’ How strange, I thought, when I had only been thinking of the place myself five minutes earlier.

  Mr Fenton chatted on amiably and inconsequentially for a further five minutes, without stopping for a reply. Then, when a pause came and I endeavoured to respond, he jumped up, negotiated the chairs and the table again and disappeared out of the door. A minute later he was back with a tray of coffee. ‘I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on. Now then, Mr Phinn, you’re not here to talk about Hawksrill and my preaching. Shall we get down to business?’

  For the first part of the morning I sat with the Headteacher to look through the examination results and discuss strategies for improvement. The pupils’ performance was low compared with the grammar school’s across town, but it had been steadily improving over the past few years and Mr Fenton was justifiably proud of this achievement. I soon found that he had strong views which he was not afraid of expressing. When he spoke about his pupils, his dark eyes lit up with a sort of missionary zeal. Then came the sermon.

  ‘The boys arrive here at eleven, Mr Phinn, having failed their eleven-plus examination. Their parents will have received a letter from the Education Office informing them that their son has not reached the required standard to qualify for a place at the grammar school. In effect, these children will have been deemed to be failures. Some parents have promised their son a bike ifhe passes, a sort of misguided incentive to encourage him to work harder perhaps. The bike is not now forthcoming, of course. Many of the boys arrive here, therefore, under-confident, with low self-esteem. Some have seen their best friends heading up the hill in grammar school blazer and gold badge while they have been heading downhill. Our job, Mr Phinn, first and foremost, is to build up their confidence and self-esteem, continue to have high expectations for them and be sure they know, give them maximum support and encouragement, develop their social skills and qualities of character to enable them to enter the world feeling good about themselves. I want them to use their time at Sunny Grove so they develop into well-rounded young people with courage, tolerance, strong convictions, lively enquiring minds and a sense of humour.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘I really am sorry, M
r Phinn,’ he said, ‘I got carried away. I’m sure you don’t need to be told all this. I must sound incredibly pompous. I don’t mean to be, but I do feel so passionately about this and if I have a captive audience… It’s the Methodist lay preacher in me, I guess.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, Mr Fenton,’ I replied. ‘I really do enjoy listening to someone else holding forth about education.’

  ‘Well, I am sure you are not here for a sermon from me. You’ll have to visit Hawksrill Chapel for that. Let’s have a tour of the school and then I have arranged for you to join some English and modern language lessons for the remainder of the day. I believe you said in your letter that you would be reporting on the teaching and learning.’

  Sunny Grove Secondary Modern School was built at the turn of the century. It was a substantial, three-storey edifice of red brick built around a central quadrangle. Movement about the school was by means of a wide, green-tiled corridor running round this quadrangle. Classrooms, which formed a square around the central paved courtyard on the ground floor, had hard wooden floors and high, beamed ceilings. The windows facing the corridor extended down past waist level, enabling the Headmasters of old to patrol the school each morning, cane in hand, and peer into each classroom to ensure the pupils had their noses to the grindstone. Invariably, they would have been hard men who would impose harsh discipline. Punctuality, silence, obedience and cleanliness would have been their bywords and if they could get the pupils placed in their charge to learn to read and write, add up, fear God and know their station in life, so much the better. The windows facing the street were high, thus preventing any inattentive pupil from staring at the outside world and dreaming.

  The school was very different now. Paintwork was in bright blues and greens, and display boards, which stretched the full length of the corridor, were covered in line drawings, paintings, photographs and children’s writing. Floors had a clean and polished look, the brass door handles sparkled and there was not a sign of graffiti or litter. Everything looked cheerful and orderly. The quadrangle was now an attractive and informal lawned area with ornamental trees, shrubs and a small pond. There were garden benches and picnic tables and two large modern sculptures.

  Following our tour of the building, I headed for the first lesson, to see Mr Armstrong, Head of the Modern Foreign Language Department, with a group of thirty thirteen-year-old boys.

  Mr Armstrong was a pink-faced, weak-jawed individual of indeterminate age. As I entered the classroom and took a seat at the back, he surveyed me morosely with the pale grey eyes of a fish glimpsed at the bottom of a pond. He moved to the blackboard, stooping heavily, as though carrying some great invisible weight on his shoulders.

  ‘Now, where were we?’ he asked the apparently disinterested and extremely passive group of adolescents, most of whom appeared to be staring vacantly into space or were slumped, as if drugged, over their desks. ‘Ah, yes,’ he continued, not getting or indeed expecting a response. He then began to chant:

  ‘Je vais – I’m going

  nous allons – we’re going

  tu vas – you’re going

  vous allez – you’re going

  il va – he’s going

  ils vont – they’re going, masculine

  elle va – she’s going

  elles vont – they’re going, feminine

  on va – one’s going.’

  I’ve only just arrived, I thought to myself, but I wished that this one was going, I really do. The teacher continued to drone on in such a soporific tone of voice that I felt like joining the rest of the drooping listeners. My mind began to wander and my eyelids became heavy. I was brought out of my reverie by a large, thin-faced boy who was sitting next to me.

  ‘Do you speak any foreign languages?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I replied in an undertone.

  ‘Do you speak German?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you speak French?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  He thought for a moment, surveyed the teacher still chanting at the front, and then nodded in his direction. ‘Which is this, then?’ he asked.

  The second visit of the day, to an English lesson with thirty-five eleven-year-old boys, proved to be as tedious as the first and, at times, quite bizarre. The teacher, a Mr Swan, was an extremely frail-looking old man with wild, wiry grey hair and a strangely flat face. He was dressed in a threadbare sports jacket with leather patches, shiny flannel trousers and a mustard-coloured waistcoat. The pupils had been asked to learn a list of collective nouns and were being tested on them. This exercise seemed to me to have very little relevance or value, bearing in mind the low literacy level of the pupils. They would have been much better occupied, in my opinion, developing their skills in reading and in writing clearly and accurately instead of chanting the various collective nouns.

  ‘The collective noun for sheep?’ barked the teacher, strutting between the desks.

  ‘Flock,’ chorused the class.

  ‘Cattle?’

  ‘Herd.’

  ‘Sailors?’

  ‘Crew.’

  This went on for some time until the nouns became rather more esoteric.

  ‘The collective noun for foxes?’ cried Mr Swan.

  ‘Skulk,’ shouted back the children.

  ‘Cats?’

  ‘Clouder.’

  ‘Leopards?’

  ‘Leap.’

  ‘The collective noun for snipe?’ shouted the teacher. There was no response. I had no idea either. ‘Wisp,’ he informed us, writing the word in large capital letters on the blackboard. ‘Skylarks?’ There was another silence. ‘Exultation.’ The word was added to the other. ‘What about rhinoceros?’ Still no response. ‘Crash!’ he exclaimed. ‘Not a lot of people know that.’

  Well, I certainly didn’t, I said to myself. ‘Crash’ would be a very appropriate collective noun to describe a group of bores, I thought. ‘A crash of bores’. I imagined with horror a whole school full of Mr Swans. When and how would these youngsters ever apply this knowledge? ‘Oh, look, our mam, there’s a wisp of snipe and an exultation of skylarks flying over that clouder of cats!’

  When the pupils had settled down to tackle a very simple and deeply uninspiring comprehension exercise on glass production in St Helens, I moved around the class examining their books, listening to them read and testing them on their spellings and knowledge of grammar and punctuation. Mr Swan observed me, stony-faced, from behind his desk. Standards were very low indeed.

  Justin, the little late-comer I had met earlier that morning, sat in the corner, away from the others, looking nervous and confused. I sat down next to him.

  ‘May I look at your book?’ I asked gently.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he whispered, pushing a dog-eared exercise book in my direction. He watched me with that frightened, wide-eyed look on his face. I read from the first page an account entitled ‘Myself’.

  ‘Sir, we had to write that for Mr Swan when we came up to this school,’ he explained quietly. ‘Sir, so he could get to know a bit about us, sir. It’s not very good. I’m not much good at writing, sir.’ I found the description of himself immensely sad.

  Im not much good at anything really I like art but am not much good. I am in the bottom set for evrything and I’ve not really got eny friends. I dont really like school, Id like a bike When I leave school, Id like to work in a bread factry. I like the smell of bread baking, you get free bread if you work in a bread factry. The man next door told me that.

  The teacher’s comment at the bottom read: ‘Untidy work. Watch your spellings. Remember full stops.’ The boy was given a grade of two out often.

  ‘It’s not bad at all this, Justin,’ I said, staring into his large, wide eyes. ‘You just need to do a bit of work on the spellings and put in your full stops.’ He nodded slowly. I went through his work with him. ‘Now, tonight when you get home, you copy out carefully your next draft of this account. Will you do that?’ He nodded. ‘
You know, I worked in a bread factory once, when I was a student, and you’re right about the smell of freshly baked bread. It is a wonderful smell. My job was to take the tins out of a huge oven with a long pole. I wasn’t very good at it. And you are right, we did get free bread.’

  He smiled. ‘Sir, are you learning how to be a teacher?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been a teacher though.’

  ‘Can you come and teach in this school?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I can’t do that,’ I said. ‘I’m a school inspector now.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d want to teach in a place like this, anyway,’ he told me, gazing up with his wide-eyed look.

  I gave Mr Swan some rather blunt feedback at the end of the lesson when the pupils had departed for lunch. There was little evidence in the exercise books that his pupils had improved at all in terms of spelling, punctuation and presentation in their writing during the half a term he had been teaching them. There were a few short accounts, an essay, a couple of simple comprehension exercises and no poetry. Whilst there were plenty of critical comments in red biro at the end of the work, there were no suggestions about how the pupils might improve. I explained that I saw little value in teaching the boys about collective nouns when they did not have the first idea what a noun actually was, and many were incapable of spelling the very simplest of words or using the full stop correctly.

  ‘Well, I don’t agree,’ he said, bristling at the criticism. ‘I think that a knowledge of the different collective nouns is very important.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s useful for them to know these things.’

  ‘And when would the pupils be in a position to apply this extensive knowledge of the collective noun?’ I was getting irritated by the man’s manner.

  ‘That’s beside the point. It’s part of our cultural heritage. Anyway, Mr Phinn, these boys are very weak academically. I mean, what can you expect?’