In my class 4 of the 15 boys were allowed to leave at the end of 4th year which was unheard of at that time.
Goodness - 15 + age bracket. Must have wanted to get out and start earning a crust, or maybe it was a necessity based on family circumstances. Such a shame, KHS had a great reputation, and was co-ed too. Some fantastic characters in the ranks of the teachers when I was there: Large, Hicks, "Bill" Sykes (my favourite of the bunch), Foster, Forster, "Neddy" Nettle, Miss Warburton, Dr Gilbert Fielder ( a regular on "The Sky at Night" on the Beeb with Patrick Moore as he was a world expert on the Moon. I mean he wasn't living on the moon, he just knew a lot about it. Think he was from Mars personally. "Fuzz" the geography teacher - can't recall his actual name - but he had frizzy hair. Think he had an other nickname - "Brillo". Miss Dunne the French teacher. "Toady" the chemistry teacher. Right sod he was. Apart from Nettle there was another latin teacher who was a right nasty bastard - his name escapes me ( just remembered - Rothwell). Oh aye, Miss DeVelling - straight out of a Charles Dickens novel - daughter of a headmaster who was there before my time. "Sadie" Thompson/Thomas (edit: Sadie Trotter ?) - a strange one too. Great times.
Not sure about the great times TC, I hated it! Agree about Toady, utter ****. The latin teacher I had was Rothwell, I had grudging respect for him looking back. I had a maths teacher called Chapman and there was a metalwork teacher called Jackson both of whom were ****s. The only teacher I liked was Ernie Riley, French and Spanish. Strangely enough I now can't add up, do chemistry or bend metal but I can speak French and Spanish.
It was Fuzz Dennison. Fiona Dunn(e) was lovely - she was my first French teacher and, apparently, was rather older than she looked. Bill was my German teacher and a firm favourite, he also used to look after the school's stationery store and was so skilled at handling exercise books that he could immediately tell if anyone had removed pages. I had Mr Nettle for Latin (his one joke was "Tempus Fugit - you can't they fly too fast!) so was never taught by Mr Rothwell who, by the time we were in the sixth form, seemed to be a nice enough bloke. Miss Poole for maths, Miss Sanderson and Josh Large for English, "Toady" and Doc Blackburn for chemistry, Miss Warburton, "Benny" Goodman...….so many memorable teachers and I can't think of any that I really disliked.
Wow I had forgotten about Sykesy and the exercise books. Having to queue up and have the big "exchanged" stamp across your old one. He was a bit eccentric often wearing his gown but i also remember on a summer day when we were getting the stink from the fish docks, he wandered around with one of the cloth dusters tied around his nose.
I cannot say many of the teachers were particulary inspirng. The likes of Molly Johnson and Miss Collingwood were just incapable of controlling my class. I liked lovely Miss Metcalfe/Mrs Bullock who was my form teacher for two years and taught me Spanish. I also had "Fred" Riley for french. I hated wobbler Warburton and Dick Emery was the most boring biol teacher ever.
He was also the head organist at Holy Trinity I recall. Good cinema that was, or was it a strip joint ?
Just recalled (I think ?) Toady's name - Taylor ? Doc Blackburn was our form teacher in the 6th form - decent he was. Rothwell always had it in for me and a couple of mates- and I was never even in his classes. Might have been the smoking I suppose ? In the year we had to repeat the 6th form, my mate Steve & I took "German for Scientists" with Bill Sykes, and he held it in the stock room. Seem to recall we spent 40 minutes reading glossy German mags rather than learn anything remotely useful. Great character he was. Ex-spy in the resistance in France as he spoke perfectly fluent colloquial German & French.
He was also the "City Organist" at City Hall. He was rubbish music teacher. He would just put a one of his classical records records for 40 minutes and expect us to be happy listening to it.
This reminds me of the old joke: Q, What's better than daffodils on your piano? A, Tulips on your organ. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
We did A level Biology with "Dick" - he was OK but when we started on this conversation I couldn't even remember his name, so I take your point about him being boring.
Miss Younghughes ( spelling ) who was at court for shoplifting a jar of coffee, she was acquitted, put down to absent mindedness, I'm sure Miss DeVelling was not one of the Magistrates on the bench that day, conflict of interest.
I was living in Spain around 2006 and sitting in the restaurant was Benny, other than his massive volume ofhair being grey, he hadn't changed a bit. I spoke to him and asked if he remembered always telling me to, " Stop Assing about. " it always sounded like Arsing, he didn't.
Was Kingston a posh school? We didn't do half of the subjects mentioned at our school. Sir Henry Cooper.
When i started it was a very good quality grammar school which took its intake from all over the city. Probably the best co ed in Hull. By the time i left it had become a awful comprehensive and its intake included some bad characters.
Very true, similar thing happened at my wife's school Newland High, my wife says it drove some of the teachers there to tears. Reason the 11+ was abolished.