Newfield High School for Girls (Newfield Secondary School) Norton Lees
Sheffield
Yorkshire England UK
I started at Newfield High School for Girls (blue building) in 1966/67 in the third year, having moved from Beaver Hill Secondary School, Woodhouse.
There was a ’streaming’ process in place whereby pupils were assigned to classes according to their ability. The forms were named 1E (Excellent), 1G (Good), 1A (Average), and 1P (Poor). In retrospect, wasn’t this an awful thing to do? A child was labelled ‘Poor’ at the age of eleven!
There was an adjacent school for the boys (red building), in the same grounds, but perhaps what would be 300 yards or so to the right in the photo above. The two sexes were divided by a stream running between the schools.
In 1969, as I entered the fifth and final year, the eleven plus examinations were abolished in Sheffield and all the schools went comprehensive. (The ‘eleven plus’ is a selection process where pupils are examined for their suitability to transfer to a Grammar School).
As a result of ‘going comprehensive’, the two sexes were mixed.
Boys and girls were certainly treated differently! The curriculum for the girls included needlework and housecraft. The females were groomed for their future roles as housewives. We were taught how to make beds properly – folding all the corners; the open end of the pillowcases had to face away from the bedroom door to reduce dust. How to iron garments correctly was also a major concern. There was even a mini flat were one’s skills could be practiced in situ! Mrs Dewsnap was the Domestic Science teacher and Mrs Bancroft taught sewing.
The girls were not allowed to do ‘boy’s’ subjects like woodwork and metalwork. Physics and chemistry were considered ‘boy’s’ subjects, girls being suitably confined to biology.
Very rarely did a Newfield Boy enter the Girls’ building, or vice-versa, so I nearly died one day when I was asked to deliver a message to the boys’ school! What an eyesore – the place smelt of grubby boys, desks were dark and old and carved into with graffiti, the corridor walls were chipped and in a bad state of decoration. What a contrast from our prim and proper, light and airy girls’ school with its modern light-wood desks in pristine condition.
Mrs Fletcher (Flea Bags) taught us O level maths when we went ‘comprehensive’. She was a tiny, elderly figure with short raven-black, wavy hair. A stern figure not to be messed with. At the end on the day she would finish class with the prayer ‘God be in my head’. Now this was the only time her beady eyes were distracted from the class when she said ‘let us pray’ and tightly shut her eyes. This was the cue for half the class to launch into silent mayhem, the boys bashing each other with rulers, catapulting ink-sodden pellets around and generally murduring each other, returning to angelic statues on Flea Bag’s final word of ‘Amen’. Mrs Fletcher was frightening, just once would she tell you about simultaneous or quadratic equations, and it was woe to the poor unfortunate creature who failed to grasp it!
More coming soon!
Article about Sheffield Beauty Queen, Christine Owen, which appeared in a 1970/71 Skegness local newspaper:
