Forms and Structures:

Senior Girls' School
Senior Boys' School
Mixed Modern School
Dinnington High School
 · The "D" System
 · The Band System
 · The House System
 · The Current System

Senior Girls' School
sourced from the Girls' School Log Book

The Girls' School was designed to accommodate 320 girls, and opened with 243 girls arranged in six classes: Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, IIIa, & IIIb.

There were seven forms by 1938, and the school staff consisted of a Head, seven assistant teachers (operating as form tutors and often teaching a broad range of subjects) plus two dedicated Domestic Science teachers. Of the assistants, four were graduates. English was taught by three assistants (245 minutes per week of English, maximum), History by one, and Geography by one. Arithmetic, Science, Art, Handicraft, Music, Domestic Science, Needlework and PT were also on the curriculum.

In March 1938, the girls were given an opportunity to democratically select their afternoon's lesson. The vote fell as follows:
 

(For those of you not up on your '80s pop duos or turn of the 20th century teaching vogues, Eurhythmics is essentially Movement & Dance.)

A house system commenced in November 1942. I don't know what they were called.

By 1950 there were 360 girls on the books. Even if you take into account the Art Room extension, the school was oversubscribed. There were 10 classes, with pupils streamed three ways in the first two years and two ways in the last two (the reduction in population due to the leakage of pupils to other establishments (mainly the Tech) via the 13+ exams). Streaming was mainly on English and Maths ability. Forms were numbered 1-10, starting with the first year "C" stream. So the top 4th year form was 10, and the middle 2nd year form was 5. This system perhaps started alongside the identical system at the Boys' Department, circa 1948, though by 1950, the boys had already replaced it with something else.

Forms divided for Art and Needlework, and combined for Singing.

A 6-day timetable was in operation. Half a day was divided for Needlework and Art in an alternating period of six days. Another half-day (Friday afternoon) was devoted to club activities, and the 4th year were given a guided choice of practical or academic work on yet another half-day. At least two lesson periods were held in the library. Eight staff (including the Head) shared the teaching of English.

135 minutes of every six days were given over to Social Studies (the Humanities), and there were two dedicated teachers in this area. There were also two science teachers, though neither were suitably trained and there was a bias towards Biology.

In Music lessons, the A-forms played recorders while the less academic pupils made do with percussion. There was a good stock of records but nothing to play them on.

PE took up four lessons every six days: two gym, one dance and one games. Rounders, Netball and a little Tennis were played.

September 1953 saw the launch of a new school subject: Flowercraft. It seems to have been rather popular. In 1955, the class was treated to a talk by Mrs AJ Cooke of Leicester on 'Flower Arranging Through the Years'. Mrs Goldthorpe wrote of it: "A better history lesson never heard! The girls were enthralled."

In October 1953, the Friday afternoon of club activities was abandoned as it was felt not to be a good use of school time. Instead the clubs operated after school.

Streaming was abandoned at the end of 1955, as the school struggled to function amidst overcrowding and understaffing. To compensate, a "Retarded" group was established under Mrs Cutts.

In 1956, Gardening and Beekeeping were withdrawn from the curriculum due to a lack of interested staff.

Senior Boys' School
sourced from the Boys' School Log Book

Like the Girls' Department, the Boys' School was designed for 320 pupils. In 1937 there were 10 forms: Ia, Ib, Ic, Id, IIa, IIb, IIc, IIIa, IIIb & IIIc (though the C and D stream kids in each year  were usually grouped together as two forms (Ic & Id; IIc & IIIc) to give eight forms). There were nine assistant teachers: one was a BSc and the rest had board certificates or similar qualifications.

In 1940, lessons broke up as follows:
 

Registration	20' per week
Religious Instruction (after Reg.)	2:45' p.w.
Maths (inc. Orthographic Projection)	5 lessons p.w. (4 in 3rd yr)
English	8 lessons p.w.
Art	2 lessons (1 in 3rd yr)
Woodwork & Metalwork	3 of either (3 of each in 3rd yr)
Light Crafts (Bookbinding, Moulding, etc)	2 in 1st yr
Gardening	1 in 2nd yr
PT	4 (3 in 1st yr)
Geography / History	3
Music	2
Science	2
Recreation	1:55' p.w.

Lessons lasted 45'.

A house system was already in operation at this time. On 22nd February 1946 the houses were re-named and reconstituted. The new houses were:
 

Each house had two allied teachers. I have no record of the previous house names. Houses met once every 10 days (ie every fortnight).

By August 1948, a new form naming system was in operation (developed some time after 1946), identical to that which we saw in use in the Girls' Department in 1950: IVa became 9, and Ib became 1. The higher your form number, the more educated you were.

French was introduced as a subject in September 1948, and in February 1949 the school spent £7 on recorders for the Music department.

In September 1950, a third form-naming protocol was introduced. Now form-names were a letter and a number; the number being the year, and the letter being, roughly, an indicator of ability. I say roughly, as the naming went A1, B1, C1, D2, E2, F2 etc... So G3 was the top form in the third year, and C1 the bottom form in the first year. This curious system seems to have really taken off, perhaps through the benefit that the letter was maintained throughout the form's school career. So A1 became A2 in 1951. K1, L1 and M1 became the new first year forms, while I and J fell off the end and into the abyss. F2 was also lost, with only two third year forms on account of the 13+ effluvia, though it briefly returned as F3 for the weak readers of the 3rd and 4th year.

A pupil was not stuck with their form, and could move up or down, dependent on their performance in an annual exam. Similarly, there was no consistency of form tutor. The initial first-year grading was on intelligence as notified by the feeder schools. If my school got it wrong and I ended up in C1, I could be in B2 next year, and who knows, maybe even A3 if I failed to get in at Maltby Grammar.

By this point, the boys, like the girls, were operating a 6-day timetable, and also like the girls they were dedicating two periods of those six days to club activities. The clubs initially on offer were: Dancing (popular if only because it was done with the girls), Stamp Collecting, Photography, Plastics, Bee-Keeping, Indian Basketwork, Chess, the Sportsman's Club, the Young Farmers' Club, Weaving, and Construction (aka Junior Engineers). These were joined in later years by Drama, Imitation Jewellery, Bookbinding, Light Campercraft, Athletics, Aero Modelling, Toy Making, Gardening, Marquetry, the School Newspaper, the Author Club, Solid Carving and the Nature Club.

Rural Studies first arrived in 1951.

New for the 1951/2 year was Maths setting in the first year. Meanwhile, the 4th year had a choice between extra Metal or Woodwork, and Rural Studies or extra Art/Craft. The Rural syllabus in Year 2 was subsequently cancelled to be replaced with special lessons (11 per week) for non-readers.

In June 1952, a house points scheme was launched: Up to 40pts were available for classwork, 20 for conduct, and 4 for attendance. Weekly totals were taken, and house positions duly plotted.

In June 1953, leaving exams were introduced, and, to tie in with this, A-E gradings were introduced for school work.

A cup for the house championship was introduced in November 1953. The points system was revised, with points for "work & conduct" and games. Points were recorded by house captains, using specially prepared notebooks. Red points were marked for good work and blue for bad conduct. Shortly after, individual diaries were introduced for pupils, "in which good work upon items of topical interest" could be placed. End of term reports were instituted too.

By 1956, the Boys' School was operating an 8-day cycle timetable, with seven periods per day, and two periods in the cycle set apart for club activities. No Technology was taught in the first year.

Mixed Modern School
sourced from the Mixed School Log Book

Following the amalgamation of the two departments into a single Modern school, there were 42 staff and 948 pupils.

A House system was maintained, with houses named after local stately homes:
 

The Priory in question was Nostell Priory, as revealed by house-group trips to their respective "house". As Priory was previously a house under the boys, one would assume it also kept the old colour (blue).

New admissions to the school were streamed based on their report cards from the feeder schools. The 3rd and 4th years were unstreamed.

Some limited form of inclusive policy seems to have existed across the previously gendered subjects. An entry in the Log Book for December 1957 reads: "a display of Christmas cookery was staged today, including cake made and decorated by girls and boys of the school." A 'boys only' class of Flowercraft was created for a group of boys who opted to join the flower arranging club, and the Flower Festival was revived, with Mrs AJ Cooke of Leicester returning to reprise her "Flowers Throughout History" talk.

English Grammar ceased as a formal lesson in February 1958, with the girls' scheme of creative writing being used by way of replacement.

In September 1958, French was revived for the more able 1st and 2nd years, under Mr Ramsden. German also arrived, as a club activity. Dinners and assemblies were now organised by House.

The leavers from the 1959, 1960 and 1961 13+ exams numbered as follows:
 

The 1959/60 year broke the millennium, with 1,033 pupils on the books.

The clubs available to pupils by this point were: Chess, Netball, Badminton, Wood/Metalwork, Gym, Maths (annotated in the Log Book with a bewildered exclamation mark courtesy of Mrs Goldthorpe), Pottery, French, Rambling and Spanish. They met either at the weekend or after school.

By the turn of 1963, the House names seem to have become simply Blue, Green, Red and Yellow.

Dinnington High School

The "D" System

When the school merged in 1963, it was effectively partitioned into "Lower School" and "Upper School". You spent your first three years in a Lower School Tutor Group before ascending into the House structure in the 4th Year. I would assume that Lower School Tutor Groups were principally based in Lower School, thus assuring it of its new name.

Lower School form names operated a seemingly simple system of D-letter-number, where the D presumably stood for Dinnington. The number seems to have represented the year (1-3). If this is the case, then in 1964/5 there were 12 third-year forms: DA3 to DL3. The letters presumably denoted set hierarchy. Forms were gender-mixed.

By the 4th year you registered with a House Tutor Group. I don't know whether such groups provided form names or if it worked more like the system below. If anyone can expand upon the '60s form system, I'd be happy to hear from them.

The Lower School pupils were originally intended to have a different school uniform to that worn in Upper School. Whether this came to pass, I don't know, but by the '80s only the senior uniform was in use. The prospective junior uniform used a blue blazer and shirts (rather than black and white) and included headwear (boys in caps, girls in berets) into the bargain. Both uniforms gave girls the option of summer dresses (of the Australian Soap variety) come the warmer months; a provision still available (but never utilised) in the '90s.

The 6th Form:

I don't know what naming conventions existed for the 6th Form, if there were any. The Secondary School, it seems, already had a 6th Form prior to the merger, and of that I know nothing. After the merger, 6th Form life was organised as follows: for each A-level taken there were 12 lessons per fortnight. Further to this were three compulsory Art or Music lessons, five PE or Games, and four Science lessons (for Arts students) or Language / Geography lessons (for Science students) per fortnight. That works out at 18 lessons a week for 2 A-Levels, in what was, presumably, a 20 lesson week.

The Band System

There was a new system introduced at some point between 1965 and 1967 (and still in operation in the early 1970s) which seems to have harked back somewhat to the Tripartite era. Again it operates using a divided Lower and Upper School, with the major change being to the former.

New pupils were split into three ability-based bands:

'E' Band - approximating to Grammar School ability
'L' Band - approximating to Secondary Modern ability
'B' Band - a sort of cross between low-end Secondary Technical, and special needs pupils; ultimately, vocational training

'E' and 'L' bands were each broken down into forms corresponding to the cardinal points (plus C (presumably for "central") as required), giving: EN1, EE1, ES1, EW1, EC1, LN1, LE1, LS1, LW1 and LC1. Forms were gender and house mixed. When pupils reached the 4th year, they entered an un-named, house-aligned tutor group for registration, beyond which, they were set-grouped in English, and later also Maths, to give forms 4E1 and 4M1 down to 4E6 and 4M6. Other subjects tended to be limited to a single, unstreamed class group, with academic pupils taking science and languages while vocational kids did metalwork, woodwork, needlework and typing.

Thanks to Peter Scott, and Jane Wheatley (nee Capewell (1967-73)), for the banding information.

Peter continues: "As I moved up through school, I was in EW1, EW2 and EW3 with the same group of pupils over the 3 years. Once I got into the 4th year, I was in 4M1 for Maths and 4E2 for English. I was also in a group studying O levels in Music, French, History, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. This was not house based either. Other pupils went into classes which were moving towards the CSE in other subjects; the curriculum for O level was different to the curriculum for CSE and it was difficult to move between the two. The band based classes ended at the end of the 3rd year and streaming was according to the O levels or CSEs you were taking. The house you were in only really made a difference once you were in 'Upper School' i.e. the 4th and 5th form where you registered in your house tutor group."

Mr Lewis writes: "The Leters E L and B came into use when Mr Easton was Head of the Lower School and Mr Lewis and Mr Bagshaw were Year Tutors in Lower School.This was before I became Housemaster." Claire Fowkes tells me that the teachers at the time had their own translation of the letters: "Excellent, Lousy and Bloody Awful".

The House System

This system, launched c.1976, shortly after Mr Ingham's arrival and the change of name to Dinnington Comprehensive School, provides a greater capacity for pupils than the Band System, with room for up to 16 forms per year. It maintains the cardinal direction approach to labelling but replaces the banding system with the four house-bases. Forms are mixed-ability, and the Lower / Upper School division is abandoned.

In the first year, all classes (with the exception of PE) are given in form groups. In the second year, two forms or so will be mixed at random (in my year, the Segrave forms were mixed with Athorpe forms, and the Hatfield forms were mixed with Osborne forms). This increases a pupil's social circle, but can backfire if pupils are isolated from their friends. In an extreme case (such as my Technology class), one pupil (ie. me) might find themselves the only representative from their form group, in amongst the entirety (or entirety minus one unlucky other) of an alien form. Such cases are rare cock-ups, or perhaps evil conspiracies. In the '70s, forms were unmixed in all subjects except PE until the 3rd year.

In the third year, pupils make their humanities options, selecting one course from either Classics, History or Geography. Most classes from this point onwards are streamed according to ability. It is possible to be 'promoted' or 'demoted' across set-groups. For instance, Mr Barker was stingy with his report grading, so people who'd had him might find themselves in set 2 at the start of the year, but promoted to set 1 by the second term. Alternatively, struggling or unruly pupils might find themselves 'dropped' into a lower set. These set numbers were not applied to any form or class names. You were just, say, in Mr Daborn's class, which just happened to be set 2. Registration periods were still by (the same) form.

The letters:
A, H, O, & S represent the house-bases.
N, E, W, & C stand for North, East, West, & Couth respectively. Well C probably stands for Central on an official level. Presumably, the Powers That Be wished to avoid two "S"s, either because of the repetition or because of the Nazi organisation. More likely the former. The use of C was first established under the Band system (above).

The attributing of directions to a form name seems to be arbitrary. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know. It may be some sort of convention. It is certainly a remnant of the band system, though the "C" fudge seems to make continuation of the cardinal system illogical. But what would be the alternatives? ABCD? 1234? When you look at it like that, cardinals perhaps make more sense (they certainly are free of any suggestion of ranking), even if they do have to be tweaked to fit.

I would imagine that the priority directions for one year would be those not used by the house the previous year, so as to avoid confusion as books get carried over. It seems logical that one year's 8AW would not ideally give way to a new 8AW because the old 8AW (now 9AW) would still have exercise books with 8AW written on them. However, I am not convinced that such considered allocation was practised. There seems to have been a mass move away from "W" in the late '70s, perhaps through over-use, but that seems to be the only such example. Martin Brown adds: "All books would be started afresh (hence no new books issued in the final term of the year, nothing was marked on coursework so nothing needed to be kept) the differentiator being that now there would be no Martin Brown in SC1 now (he would be SC2) so if a book had Martin Brown SC1 on it it would obviously be an old one."

The numbers:
Before 1992, forms followed the convention hdy, where h = house, d = direction, and y = year. The year was of the traditional comprehensive numbering of 1-5. So examples: SN1, AE3 etc.
In 1992, a new numbering system was introduced based on the (at least at the time) more confusing "entire school career (starting from 0)" system (Infants: 0 (Reception),1,2; Juniors: 3,4,5,6; Comp: 7,8,9,10,11, 6th Form: 12,13) which is used in other countries. For reasons best known to the school, the structure of the form address was shuffled slightly to yhd, giving 8SN, 10AE etc.

The 6th Form:
6th Form names take a different approach. Numbering mimics the lower school, but with the relevant higher numbers (ie. 12 & 13). Lettering is based on the name of the form tutor. It worked on the first three letters of the tutor's last name, so Mrs Gallagher's form were 12GAL / 13GAL, and Mr Hancock's were 12HAN / 13HAN.  Dunno what happens if the first three letters spell a taboo word... Or if two tutors have the same three letters at the start of their name... Maybe that's a 6th Form Tutor admission ruling (see below).

6th Form tutor-groups are outside the house system and are made up of members of both the lower and upper sixth, so 12HAN and 13HAN were the same form, sharing the same tutor, room and registration periods. Until 1977/78, 6th form mentor groups were single-sex.

By the '90s, 6th Formers opted for three or four A-Level courses, with General Studies available as an additional part-time course (one or two lessons a week) in the first year. Each A-Level gave about 5 classes a week, usually shared by two teachers, with most subjects running two parallel courses; courses were arranged in blocks, and you could only select one subject from each block so as to make timetabling humanly possible. This meant that some combinations of subjects were impossible (I had to choose between History and Media Studies, because at the time I also wanted to do English, Maths and Physics. There was no way I was turning down Media Studies. In hindsight I wonder if I could've dropped one of the other three for History, but that didn't seem like an option at the time. I was a triple science student at GCSE, and I seem to remember that I'd already ruled out A-Level Biology because of the way the blocks were). Of course, if you weren't some weird polymath like me, you'd have less difficulty in making your first-choice options successfully, and on the whole the system worked.

In addition to your c.15-22 hours of A-Levels a week, you were also expected to turn up for a weekly hour of PE on Wednesday afternoon (curiously, the University of York, whose campus was built at the same time as Upper School, also keeps Wednesday afternoons free for physical activity, albeit on a more voluntary basis). The sweetener came in the form of occasional trips to bowling alleys or such like. The threat was "if you don't turn up for PE, you won't be allowed to go bowling with us". The sweetener wasn't sweet enough by a long way, and the drop-off in attendance was exponential. Mr Boddie would come storming into the 6th Form Base of a Wednesday afternoon, stirring up trouble, but if you sat perfectly still he didn't seem to notice you.

It is this author's personal opinion that compulsory PE is no way to get anybody interested in physical activity. Myself and my fellow pupils played football on the coach-park every lunchtime (and in as many other breaks as was practical), during which we got plenty of exercise and entertainment without having to take our clothes off and freeze to death in wet mud. Permitting ball games in school yards and not turning yards into carparks are far greater incentives to physical activity than any compulsory Bleep Test torture. In fact, for me, it was the Bleep Test that was the final straw. I recall being herded to the Sports Hall like a Marxist to a Concentration Camp, and being forced to do that pointless running to and fro, with my shaggy hair pointlessly tied with a rubber band into a barely-present pony-tail for the sadistic entertainment of Miss Matthews. I did a token Level 6 offering and promptly retired. If I kept doing this, I reasoned, I'd be charged with murder (or, I'd like to hope, manslaughter), and while the world would be short of one or two more vicious PE teachers, I'm not sure they really need to die. What I should've done is not gone. Or told Miss Matthews, as politely as I could, where to twang her rubber band. Or just walked the Bleep Test at a healthy but desultory pace. I did the next best thing and vowed never to do PE again.

What might've worked would've been to give us access to the sports equipment, supervising where necessary without contriving a lesson structure. So if me and my mates fancy a knock about at cricket, let us change into tracksuits and take the spring-loaded stumps out to the all weather crease. Perhaps, had we persevered with the PE session, it might've gone that way.

So you put your A-Levels together and find that once you've ditched PE, and got General Studies sewn up, you're doing 15-20 hours a week, leaving 5-10 hours of free periods. Hallelujah. A free period at the start or end of a school day doesn't really count as a period at all. It just means you turn up later or go home earlier. Officially you were meant to attend all registration periods (morning and afternoon) but most if not all tutors were sensible enough to let you off if you had a free. And often if you didn't. I had a far from perfect assembly attendance record, and rarely went to afternoon registration because I was usually occupied in Segrave (be it editing Media work or messing about in the Physics Study). If you had a hammocking free period you had a choice. Is it worth it going home and coming back again? Probably not. So either you could take it as an hour long break, or you could do some homework. My A-Level Maths group, for instance, tended as a whole to do a good proportion of our Maths homework in that PE slot on Wednesday afternoons. Media Studies students might cash in their free periods for a stint in the Editing Suite.

The Current System

From September 2007, coinciding with the arrival of Mr Blackwell as Head, the House naming system was replaced with a new system similar to the old 6th Form mechanism but subtly different: a form is named after its tutor, taking the initial of the first name and the first two letters of the surname. So for example, Mr Nye's form would be RNY. If anything, this seems even more at risk of producing unfortunate naughty words than the 6th Form system, and is even more at threat from the predicament similarly named teachers would cause. For instance, if Mr D Morgan is a form tutor, does that prevent Mrs D Morton from having a form? Or will she just be given a form group from a different year, rendering forms 7DMO and 8DMO (as different as ON1 and ON2)? Problematic names from previous staff would include Mrs Addy (SAD) and Mr Pepper (APE). If Mr Imeson had been called Dave, his form would be DIM. Let us hope a Tanya Itchens never joins the staff.

From September 2011 the house pastoral system was revived alongside the vertical tutoring system of 2007. Each form currently has about 30 students from years 7-11, and is allied to one of the houses, with 6th formers tied to Athorpe.

The Mechanics of Form:
At the turn of the millennium there tended to be about 10 forms per year, over five years. That gives us 50 forms in the main school. Then there's the sixth-form. I don't remember how many form groups there were in the sixth-form, but it must have been only about five. (In 1990 there were 1474 pupils altogether, so the sums seem to add up). Now by a quick comparison with the list of teachers on this site, we can see that only about half of the teachers are tutors. What are the rest? Well, part-timers, admin, heads of house etc...

The structure under Mr Forster seemed to be:

Did this system mean that PE teachers (then with no classrooms to call their own) got preferential treatment when it came to administrative positions (observe Messrs Lovett and Woodhouse)?

Tutors tended to be stuck with their forms for the full five years (unless they left and got replaced, or very rarely promoted). 6th Form tutors also served set periods (again five years?). 6th Form tutoring seemed a preferable status. After n years of lower-school tutoring, a tutor could be considered for 6th Form duties. Examples are Mrs Gallagher and Mr Randall who progressed into the 6th Form along with some of their tutor groups.

When a teacher entered the sixth-form, they left the house system. But there seems to have been no longstanding allegiance to houses for staff. A tutor of a Segrave form could transfer to become a tutor of a Hatfield form, etc. Therefore there was no requirement for a 6th Form tutor to return to their old House after their spell. In the '70s, many admin positions were outside the house system too, and a year-based pastoral system was in operation (see below). No such system was apparent under Mr Forster.

After Mrs Nicholson took over the reigns, and DCS got a shiny new building, the House system was effectively abandoned as a pastoral regime, having been seemingly on its last legs since the departure of Mr Bamford, and the post-fire emergency division of Athorpe's ground floor. A year system was re-adopted in its place. So Mr Fox moved from being Head of Athorpe to Head of Year 10, etc.

What, then, has happened to the Butterfield Cup (traditionally awarded to the house with the most merit cards)? Has it been retired, or is it still contested somehow? Merit cards are still issued to lower school pupils, and competition would appear now to be inter-form, so presumably the Butterfield Cup is now held by a form rather than a house base (unless, as I say, it's been retired).

Despite this organisational change, the House system still exists in the naming of forms, though even that seems to be undergoing some amendment.

The current hierarchical structure, then, is something like this:

Whether form tutors are now answerable to their year heads or not is unclear. What does a Head of Year do, exactly? What did a Head of House do for that matter? Well both of these would have pastoral duties... talks with unruly students etc... But more intriguing is... what did house admins like Mrs Gladden and Mr Woodhouse do?

Faculties were introduced into the mix in April 2003, so in addition to departmental heads (ie Mr Daborn: History), there are now faculty heads (ie Ms Grasmeder: Humanities) who the departmental heads are answerable to. Bloody middle-managment...

I've got a recent list and it sorts itself out like this:

Presumably the faculty / department system is the hierarchy of relevance to the staff, while the pastoral system relates mainly to students.

Some teachers have smaller administrative side-duties as specialist-field "coordinators".

Aside from the dissolution of the housebases, this system is rather similar to the '70s organisation of the school.

The current size of the school (c.2003) is 1,469 pupils (so it's gone down slightly since 1990's 1,474, but up since 2000's 1,328). The sixth-form is 179 strong (up 3 since 2000). When the school first merged in 1963, there were 1,633 pupils. The drop in numbers since then is thanks to Wales High School.