A school for show-biz

Still knocked out by Pot Noodle, the ebullience of the show sent back in mind to a year spent teaching in a Primary school that had grown from about 270 children to almost a thousand. It wasn’t ‘something in the water’ but just the result of a post-war boom in new housing and the natural desire of people to start families after the hostilities ended. But the building boom happened quicker in some places than others, and as far as Crofton School was concerned, it was extremely gradual. However, the original wooden building stood in a large field, ideal for the siting of whatever temporary structures could be found. There were several ex-Army Nissen huts and a couple of large hen-houses that had presumably been rejected as not up to the standards of any decent-minded chicken. These were divided in half by screens or curtains, with a class in each end, both heated by a ferocious coke stove that probably gave off noxious fumes, but nobody cared. We hung wet coats above them on wires and worked up a good old fug, and got on with the main business of education – which, as we saw it, was the devising of theatricals.

We were blessed by the presence of a Headmaster who spent most of his day solving the Times crossword except when perusing the theatre reviews. Being about 25 miles south of London, the school offered easy access to the metropolis for a stage-struck middle-aged man who wanted nothing more than to get home, change into evening dress and set forth with his wife for dinner then a show. Nobody disagreed with his priorities. We kept half an eye on the car park and if we spotted a person with a briefcase heading towards the school office, one of us would tap on his door and say, ‘Visitor.’ The crossword would be shuffled into the desk drawer and something official-looking spread out instead, and by some miracle we were able to pursue our strange idea of education undisturbed.

Throughout the war years, Fred the Senior Master had been a producer for ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association), set up in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson. His job had been to work up shows that would then be sent off in a van-load of actors and scenery to some theatre of war to entertain the troops. In the profession it was wryly known as ‘Every Night Something Awful’, but he was undeterred, and brought the same rolled-up-sleeves approach to the thousand children he now regarded as his potential cast. The Senior Mistress, by luck or some quiet influence from the Head, was an ex- Wardrobe Mistress. Her end of the chicken hut saw teaching going on below wall-to-wall wires hanging with tutus and cloaks and spangled tights. She spent most of her time at a whizzing sewing machine, running up costumes while delivering advice on writing or (occasionally) maths.

Strangely, it worked incredibly well. The kids were still sitting the Eleven Plus at the time, but amazing numbers of them sailed into the Grammar School, and there were no problems with literacy. You had to be able to read so as to make sense of the script that was thrust into your hands as soon as you could be heard at the back of the hall. The class sizes were huge. Nobody was teaching fewer than 45 children, and those privileged to be working in a real classroom as opposed to half a hut were often coping with 60. What kept it going was the constant excitement and professional buzz of the latest show. A lazy piano could be heard from the hall (a hut) where Fred was rehearsing a chorus  line, on one occasion for The King And I. One small girl asked, ‘What do I do when the King comes in?’ and Fred said, ‘Just keep on trucking , darling.’  In the summer each year, we devised a pageant that encompassed every child in the school. Each class had to invent, write and rehearse its own scene, learning meanwhile about whatever the theme was. ‘Strange Places’ involved much research on Greece, Arabia, Africa and elsewhere, and even the spear-carriers, of whom there were rather a lot, had to take part in choral speaking or dance or mime.

They had a great head of steam, those kids. They knew the impossible could be done at once, as the old garage sign used to say, even if miracles took a little longer. The dull and frustrating concentration on exam-passing has mucked that up quite considerably, but as the players in Pot Noodle showed, you can’t keep a good Thespian down. And once excited enough, education is no problem.