The book "Forty Years On!", published to mark 40 years of comprehensive education, is available from the school. The author is John Cornwell, a Governor of the School, who also wrote the much-admired "King Ted's", the Centenary History of the School 1905–2005.
Cost is £5 plus 65p P&P. Contact Jo Jackson, King Edward VII School, Glossop Rd, Sheffield S10 2PW, at or telephone 0114 229 6568.
1965 |
Sheffield City Council decision that all secondary schools will become comprehensive schools. |
1966 |
Russell Sharrock appointed as the sixth Headmaster of KES. |
1968 |
Last cohort of grammar school pupils, who passed 11+ examination, admitted to KES. |
1969 |
KES,
along with all other Sheffield LEA secondary schools, becomes a
co-educational comprehensive school. |
1969 |
Girls
recruited to the Sixth Form. There are also girls in the new First Form
(Y7) who join those who were already at
|
1970-80 |
Creating and developing a comprehensive school on four sites. |
1972 |
ROSLA – Raising of the school leaving age to 16. |
1974 |
The “Flour Bomb” incident. |
1981 |
New
proposals from City Council for eight tertiary education colleges and the end
of school sixth
forms. |
1986 |
The
Conservative Government “save” six Sixth Forms in the Hallam Constituency, including KES. Only six
tertiary colleges allowed, later amalgamating and becoming
|
1988 |
Conservative Education Act, possibly the most significant education legislation since1944. |
1988 |
Michael Lewis becomes seventh Headteacher of KES. |
1995 |
New
building at
|
1998 |
KES
designated as a
|
1999,
2002 |
KES awarded Sportsmark for PE and Games provision. |
2001 |
Rebuilt
|
2005 |
KES celebrates its Centenary. |
2008 |
Mrs. Beverley Jackson becomes eighth Headteacher of KES. |
If the former Headmaster, Nathaniel Clapton, who retired in 1965, could possibly visit KES today, how much would he recognise in the comprehensive school whose creation he had so opposed in the middle Sixties? The Upper School building, built in 1837, would look exactly the same and he might be quite impressed with the Lewis Building across the Close. Once up the steps and past those eight Corinthian columns he would find the interior had scarcely altered in appearance, but then he would notice none of the students were in uniform, the staff were wearing casual clothes not gowns and many of them appeared to be women. He had not appointed a single woman teacher in his fifteen years as Headmaster, and would have thought it inappropriate at an all-boys school. The school he bequeathed to Russell Sharrock was occupied solely by “White British” boys, now half the population were girls and a third were BME or dual-heritage. He had died before the decision to make KES a co-educational school, and he would not have approved. When told that KES’s current population was twice the size of the school in his day, he would wonder were the other 700 pupils were housed. Crosspool School at Darwin Lane opened the term after he retired and, if he was aware of it at all, it was intended to be a girls-only comprehensive, not part of KES, in the forthcoming new regime.
On closer examination he would discover there were no longer any prefects, whom he considered essential for running the school, no canes to keep discipline (in 1953 he had been desperate to replace the school’s dwindling stock, and a company in Manchester, who had a few left in stock, sent him some suitably disguised). In this new world there were no morning assemblies that were essentially a Christian act of worship attended by all the school, Speech Days at the Victoria or City Hall had disappeared, there were no school scout troops anymore, the school song was no longer sung and they had tampered with the school’s coat of arms. The teaching of Classics had ceased and its space on the timetable was replaced by IT, which he might well have approved of, because he was a mathematician who knew about the amazing new “alchemy” that Alan Turing and his successors had invented.
However, he would be amazed at the size of the Sixth Form, with half of them joining KES at sixteen from other schools. That, from a totally unselected entry, 97% of the middle school pupils continued in post-16 education, that almost two hundred students went on to University each year — with eleven going to Oxbridge this year — and that there was a 97% pass rate at “A” Level, the examination that was introduced into English grammar and public schools in his first year as Headmaster. He would appreciate that Drama and Music were at least as strong as they had been in his day, although all the performers then were boys, and that the school now played many more sports with a fair number of students winning international and representative honours during the last forty years. It would be made clear to him that the school curriculum was underpinned by a sophisticated, caring, pastoral system, and it was one of the school’s highest priorities to support all pupils through the difficult secondary school and teenage years. Many pupils from Clapton’s time will attest to the fact that if you did not measure up, the Headmaster and the school generally had little time for you. Finally, he would have found it difficult to accept that there was now a woman occupying “his” office, where pupils, and even staff, once very visibly feared to tread.
Nathaniel Clapton had been a stern faced, hard taskmaster, highly successful by his own standards; but if he took the opportunity to delve a little deeper into the soul of the present day KES, he would find that very many of the students actively enjoyed attending the school, and were very proud to be at King Edward VII School in Sheffield.