Amalgamation:

When Mr Spelman, left the school in 1956, some felt it was time to amalgamate the two halves into a single mixed school under the headship of Mrs Goldthorpe. A vote of the governors went 5-5, with the chair casting in favour of the status quo. The LEA intervened and a new vote was taken, but this also went 5-6 against coeducation. Then the government stepped in. The HM Inspectors report of the inspection of the Boys' School during 18th-20th April 1956 resolved that Dinnington Secondary School should be amalgamated from Spring 1957. The report was accepted "under protest and very grave disquiet" by the school board, and Mrs Goldthorpe was approached by the County Officials in May 1956 to oversee the amalgamation. Despite great anxiety from parents, the combined school was announced on November 7th 1956 and opened under Mrs Goldthorpe on 7th January 1957.

Mrs Goldthorpe wrote of the amalgamation:

"The first week of the new school has been surprisingly smooth. The pupils accept the new regime with ease and little apparent excitement. Staff are finding it not so easy. Many of the women staff who have never handled boys before and men teachers who have never taught girls are having to adapt their teaching and relationships accordingly".

The oversubscription of previous years continued to be a problem. By the end of 1957, the school population was 948, and a year later the Primary School and Nursery Block were being magpied for classrooms. Overcrowding was also behind the decision, in 1959, to institute the 11+ from 1961, replacing the 13+ that had previously existed at Dinnington.

Some of this overcrowding was alleviated with the arrival of the six-roomed Annexe to the east of the school; begun in late 1958, and opened on 6th April 1959. All the pupils were shown around and invited to "note its beauty and cleanliness". "Two of these lovely rooms" were to be taken by the "less able" department, two for Needlework and two for Geography. The arrival of the Annexe allowed the school to operate as a single campus for the first time in several years, as opposed to having to borrow rooms from the Junior and Nursery schools, but by now the roll was in quadruple figures.

There is mention in the governors' minutes of an intention to acquire some more temporary HENGIST classrooms around the same time that the Annexe was built, but I have been unable to find any evidence that further West Riding blocks were erected during this period.

In December 1960, Dinnington was the first school in the area to hold a Careers Convention. Despite this, it was noted a year later that there were more leavers without a prospective job than had been known before.

Fire Scares:

From 30th July 1961 comes the following description of that year's Flower Festival: "With a hall full of children and parents, smoke was observed to be seeping through the woodwork!" The fire alarm was raised and the school evacuated. "The painters, using a blow lamp on outside boards, had ignited rotten wood which was smouldering... Mr Higgs and Mr Rayner crawled under the building with extinguishers. By the time the fire brigade arrived the danger was over."

On 27th September 1961, less than two months after the last scare, there was a fire in the drying cabinet of a Housecraft room, which ignited the woodwork of the wall and ceiling. The fire was noticed at 12:30, and again Mr Higgs was on hand with the extinguisher. Little damage resulted. Another two months later it was National Fire Prevention Week.

Panorama:

On the 14th November 1961, TV journalist James Mossman, augmented by a BBC film unit, arrived at Dinnington to make a Panorama item on "Corporal Punishment in Schools". It would examine contrasting discipline in two schools in the West Riding; the other being a school in Leeds.  Dinnington may have been chosen because of the close professional relationship between Mrs Goldthorpe and the progressive Chief Education Officer of the West Riding Education Authority, Alec Clegg.

Mrs Goldthorpe writes:

"The BBC teams were most efficient and very little interference with the timetable was necessary. Shots were taken of many of the activities of the school -- dance, drama, handicraft, English, Maths, etetc. The children were very interested in the filming technique and asked many pertinent questions of the camera crew. Interviews with the head teacher, the deputy head and several teachers were arranged".

On the 29th there was some follow-up shooting. And then on 4th December 1961, programme 264 of Panorama aired on the BBC ([BBC programme number LCA6833S]). The episode contained items on Tanganyikan (Tanzanian) independence, new immigration controls, and decimalisation, in addition to the two reports on school discipline. Of the interviews filmed on the 14th, Mrs Goldthorpe's seems to have been the only one used. She writes: "The 'cutting' was drastic and the school was not shown as the busy, healthy, happy place it is, but our views on corporal punishment were fairly stated. The Leeds school emerged in a bad -- totally wrong impression -- almost sadistic." The suggestion is that the comparison in the programme came out in favour of a more progressive discipline regime at Dinnington, though it is hard to judge without having seen the programme.