Commemoration

COMMEMORATION, 1969

HEADMASTER'S REPORT

One of the characteristics of St. Peter's, in which I take great pleasure, is that the School is deeply involved with the City of York, and I am very honoured and delighted that you, My Lord Mayor, and your Sheriff are present at this Prizegiving and Commemoration so that I can say to you how much we value our many links with the city.

During these last few weeks many of our boys have participated in the York Festival which is just drawing to a close, not only as audiences but also as singers or actors. We value our close connection with the Minster; it was particularly pleasing when, earlier this term, our choir was invited to sing Evensong in the Minster. Moreover, our sixth-formers enjoy the experience of being guests and hosts at conferences with schools of York, and many of our senior boys also go out into the City on various tasks of social service in which not only can they bring practical assistance to those in need but perhaps more important, they themselves learn from contact with real problems. And I am delighted too, that Mr. Cummin is on the Council.

The City of York is of a size to encourage hopes of much collaboration in education. We are within walking distance of many other schools and of the King's Manor, and I hope that it may be more and more easy in the future to share some of the facilities amongst the various schools in York; for instance, by co-operating in certain subjects for sixthformers such as Russian, or in General Studies projects. And if I may bring in the University of York at this point, to repeat what was said in Latin, in case any of you missed it, we find that the University is extremely generous and hospitable to us; only two days ago half of our sixth-formers attended a conference at the University which was devised to show them what University life and University work will entail.

In the educational world outside York this has been a year full of talk and speculation. Almost a year ago the Newsom Commission published its report on the Independent Boarding Schools. We are still awaiting an official statement about it from the Government. The document was a curious one which received a uniformly bad press. There was evident disagreement among the members of the Commission as to whether the Public Schools were very good or very bad, but there was some basic agreement that the schools have a great deal to offer a national educational system, and the Commissioners based their argument on boarding need. There are many children, they argued, who need to board because, for instance, their parents live abroad or move around, or because a boy or a girl has a special aptitude and a particular boarding school can provide suitable amenities. (An example in our own case is that of the organ in Chapel. Throughout most periods of free time one can hear a boy practising on the organ.) For others boarding is a need because of difficulties at home.

I believe that St. Peter's and St. Olave's are doing a good deal to help those with boarding need. Almost one-third of the boarders in our Junior School and a sixth of our Senior School boarders have parents living 7

abroad, and there are many others whose parents, for professional reasons, have to be nomadic. We intend to continue to meet this boarding need.

A second major topic has been teachers' salaries, which rose in April of this year in accordance with an award recommended by the Burnham Committee of about 7%. Our own salary scale is based on Burnham, and the salaries of the staff, therefore, rose in April. It is on this account and on account of a rise in domestic staff wages that the Governors decided, most reluctantly, that the school fees would have to rise to £270 a year for a Day Boy and £585 a year for a full boarder. A letter to this effect was sent to parents in March of this year. These revised fees, arrived at after prolonged discussion, are intended to ensure that we maintain our standards both on the educational and boarding sides. These fees, as before, are inclusive of every charge which can be fairly spread over all the parents.

A third major topic in the outside world - has been the future of the sixth-forms of the country. Sooner or later it is intended that the school leaving age should go up to sixteen. Even before that has happened the maintained schools are finding a flood of new entrants, not always particularly academic, into their sixth-forms. There are very many sixthforms that are extremely small. For such small sixth-forms only a narrow range of subjects can be offered. The bigger the sixth-form the wider the range of subjects, of course. The real crisis that is foreseen is that there will be a shortage of teachers in the sixth-forms to teach the specialist subjects. Over the next few years, as reorganisation schemes take place, we may find that many potential sixth-formers will not receive the teaching or personal attention that they need.

At St. Peter's we have a long sixth-form tradition and a teaching staff very much at home with sixth-form work. We expect that every boy capable of benefiting from "A" level courses will enter the sixth-form, and that means those who, when they were younger, did not think of themselves as particularly academic. I note that of our 70 boys in the second-year Sixth taking "A" level, 14 failed their 11+ examinations about seven years ago.

We welcome into our sixth-forms those who come in from other schools after "0" level, and we can offer a range of subjects which cuts across the normal split between the Arts and Sciences. Some of our sixthformers specialise in Maths and English: a would-be architect can specialise in Maths, Physics and Art, and there are, of course, more conventional groupings of subjects.

There are some boys who like the idea of taking "A" levels at Technical Colleges. Doubtless they are in search of adult emancipation, and indeed, in the Colleges a wide range of courses is available; the Minister of Education is obviously thinking seriously about steering "A" level candidates into the Colleges to overcome the problems of shortage of teaching staff at sixth-form level. There are disadvantages. In particular, Dr. Miller, Chairman of the Adolescent Unit at the Tavistock Clinic in London, spoke strongly at the University of Kent last Easter to a conference of Headmasters "It is a tragedy to remove children at 15 or 16 from school, whether to work or to a sixth-form college. At these years they need to have

figures in their lives—adults—whom they use as models for their own development. Instead, they tend to think that all that matters is their own peer-group, and ignore adults."

I believe, and I hope that parents agree, that education is more than classroom proficiency; more than training for qualifications. It involves as well the development of social concern, the working out of values and the exercise of a sense of communal responsibility.

We expect that the majority of our "0" level candidates will go on to "A" level. We have a long sixth-form experience, an enthusiastic staff to whom I am extremely grateful for their labours in and out of the classroom and laboratory, a Careers Department that has for long tempered our academic ideals with practical thoughts, and a sixth-form in which there are manifold opportunities of combining with other sixth-forms in York.

It is normal for this speech to contain a review of the year. I will do this briefly, reminding those who wish for further details that the School Magazine scrupulously records the many activities of the school.

This is the wrong moment to comment on academic work, except to say that it engages the largest proportion of the energies of all of us— perhaps that's rash—nearly all of us! Our programme summarises external exam results of a year ago; this year's results do not arrive until August and, for "0" levels, early September, so I will not anticipate. Perhaps I should say that this year, for the first time, we have put one of our sets in for the C.S.E. exam in French. The Head of the Modern Languages Department reckoned that the boys in this set would not merely fail the "0" level but would also be discouraged by the extent of the "0" level syllabus. The C.S.E. syllabus, more rewarding in terms of the boys' abilities, seemed educationally preferable. The fourteen boys who have sat for C.S.E. French, of course, sat for "0" levels in the other subjects. Though I do not expect that in future we shall advise boys very often to put in for C.S.E. in place of G.C.E. "0" level in particular subjects, it remains true that we include a very wide range of academic intelligence among our numbers and that we are trying to find for every boy work that is demanding but not too demanding; we wish to encourage effort, not discourage it.

One other point relates to academic work. We have now equipped for ourselves a technical drawing room, devised by Mr. Maw and executed by Mr. Hawkins in one of the Grove Block classrooms. The provision of this specialist classroom out of our own inventiveness and resources points to the future, I think. I would like to see many more of the classrooms being equipped for specific subjects, so that they may be used not merely in school time but for interest's sake in free time, as subject centres rather than mere classrooms.

•

The Headmaster then gave a full report of school games and other activities which are reported elsewhere in this issue, and he concluded thus:

I am convinced, and let me end on this emphasis, that the excellence of a School depends on the scholarship and the personal enthusiasm of the teaching staff. After two years in St. Peter's I repeat, with pleasure,

9

that I have great confidence in the scholastic talents and tireless extracurricular enthusiasm of the staff.

In reading a book the other day on Student Power, I noticed this sentence The relationship between teacher and taught is "inherently and spontanecdsly conflictual".

This seemed to me nonsense. A feeling of companionship may exist between teacher and taught; this atmosphere of co-operation, of friendly give and take between boys, staff, yes and parents too, is much more conducive to the exploration of ideas than hostility or suspicion or political jockeying. We are all in this together.

Summary of the speech by Professor J. P. Brockbank, M.A., Ph.D., Head of the Department of English, University of York. THE IMPORTANCE OF GENUINE INDIVIDUALITY

In a speech of deep subtlety and apparent levity, Professor Brockbank, after giving away the prizes, made a strong plea for genuine individuality in a world that tends towards uniformity; but he gave warning that individuality does not simply mean being different or not conforming.

The trend to uniformity was being encouraged by mass media; the transistor made possible the spread of the same culture at the same moment in any part of the world, and there was danger in this.

If part of the mass culture was revolutionary progaganda, it was showing itself in the generally conflictual tendency among students, and the Professor reminded us that in relation to the three thousand years of civilisation we are all about the same age and are all concerned to preserve what is good.

Among the mass media, the microphone and the amplifier could be the enemies of thought; the Professor considered that they had caused the wildness and the regimentation of the nineteen-thirties, and that now they prevent communication because of noise. He suggested that we cannot even hear each other screaming, let alone talking, and that the microphone is merely providing "freedom of screech".

The Professor believed that differences of individual achievement are necessary in the present tendency to sameness, and should be acknowledged generously, and so he was a believer in prizes.

The importance of differences led the Professor to the responsibility of the revolutionary; let him be prepared to opt out of classroom learning, or to walk off the field from the game he does not enjoy: but let him accept his consequent ignorance if he opts out of learning, and his consequent selfish isolation if he opts out of the game.

The true individual, the Professor suggested, would seek his own adventurous way, like a nomad crossing the desert on his camel, without modern aids and without a transistor.

PRIZE LIST

NORMAN CROMBIE MEMORIAL PRIZE

STEPHENSON PRIZE FOR GREEK

P. E. LORD PRIZE FOR CLASSICS ... M. R. Stokes

... J. C. W. Williams

... A. Scaife

WHYTEHEAD MEMORIAL PRIZES FOR DIVINITY:

Senior ... Junior ... J. Fender D. M. Dempsey

PALESTINE & JERUSALEM MISSIONARY ESSAY PRIZE N. W. S. Blitz

THE HEADMASTER'S PRIZE FOR CREATIVE WRITING D. H. Brown R. J. Hamilton- Williams

THE HEADMASTER'S PRIZE FOR MATHEMATICS

J. Nutter

DEAN OF YORK'S PRIZES FOR LATIN:

Senior ... Junior ...

THE B.M.A. PRIZE FOR SCIENCE

TOYNE EUROPEAN HISTORY PRIZE ...

J. R. Jund R. J. Wood

I. A. Blomfield

J. R. Williamson

SIR LUMLEY DODSWORTH ESSAY PRIZE ... D. F. Harding

THE OLD PETERITE CLUB READING PRIZES:

VIth Form ... Below VIth

YORKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY'S PRIZE

THE JACK BRITTAIN MEMORIAL PRIZES FOR

MIDDLE SCHOOL ESSAY:

IVth Forms ... Thirds ...

ATKINSON PRIZE FOR RUSSIAN

... M. E. Bailey ... J. T. Morley

... J. L. Linsley J. W. Carlile

... C. J. Brown ... E. J. M. Walmsley .. A. S. Bowie

MODERN LANGUAGES PRIZES:

French ... German

PHYSICS ESSAY PRIZE ...

CHEMISTY PRIZE

BIOLOGY PRIZE

GEOGRAPHY PRIZE (Below the VIth)

MUSIC PRIZES:

Keyboard ... Instrumental ... J. D. B. Hargreaves A. S. Bowie

S. Foster

P. W. Dacey M. A. Cantrell

R. A. Copeman