I attended a secondary school in Liverpool called Our Lady of Fatima, a Roman Catholic institution on the outskirts of the city centre. In 1997 (when I would have been in Year 9) it was named and shamed by the new Labour government as being one of the 18 worst schools in England. Later that year when school league tables were published, Fatima was actually 5th worst, so just outside a Champions League place. Rather comically it still wasn’t the worst school in Liverpool as Campion Boys school, just down the road from Fatima, was ranked 3rd.
At Fatima, just 2% of students achieved 5 A*-C grade GCSEs that year. From memory there were about 100 pupils per year so that equates to…(reaches for calculator)…about 2 pupils. This was down from the giddy heights of 7% the previous year which would have placed the school around 30th worst. I couldn’t find what the results were in 1999 when I left as I think the government realised shouting ‘You’re shit…..aaaahhh!!!’ at the worst schools in the country was not quite as helpful as, say, sending people in to help. So I don’t think they were published again. Results did rise over the next few years to about 25% before the school was closed and merged to become an academy trust. The school was demolished and a new housing estate was built on it. I would show a picture of the school at this point but there doesn’t appear to be any on Google, as if the shitness has been airbrushed from history.
When the school failed an Ofsted inspection in that same year it was told it was shit (aaahh) one of the reasons was that truancy rates were exceptionally high throughout the school, as much as 20%. I do remember taking the register took ages with awkward silences after loads of names, like the class had been to war and lots were missing, presumed dead. Kids would just walk out of school and they wouldn’t even be sneaky about it and climb over fences. They would just walk out through the main reception, just seeya later bye.
Anyway, for those who stayed, here are some of my memories:
Religious Education
Despite not having an ounce of belief in any standard mystical, made-up religious bollocks I actually enjoyed RE in school. I enjoyed the stories even though my timetable meant truth (science) followed bollocks (RE). I do have a fond memory of a mate answering one of the ethical religious questions with ‘…if you tolerate this, then your children will be next,’ from the famous Manic St Preachers song at the time (it would have been decidedly trickier to wedge ‘motorcycle emptiness’ into an answer). He actually hoodwinked the teacher into believing it was a genuine answer until he was asked what it meant but couldn’t elaborate.
Our teacher was not to be messed with. He was a former rugby player who retained the brick shithouse dimensions of one. He was also from the era where physical violence as a means of discipline was encouraged and although the cane had long gone and teachers were no longer able to simply punch kids in the face, the lines were occasionally blurred. One famous example was class school photo day in the gym hall when one kid decided to fuck about just as the photo was being taken. After several warnings said kid was removed from the room; about ten seconds later a rather loud scream emanated from just beyond the door. The teacher and the kid returned to the hall with the kid’s ears looking noticeably larger and redder. We discovered later that he had been lifted off the floor by his ears, presumably in an effort to make his ears larger so that he could hear teacher’s instructions more clearly.
He was not to be messed with even when it wasn’t his class causing problems. In Year 10 there were two RE classes in two separate rooms separated by a partition rather than a wall. For whatever reason he was away from our class for a few minutes and the class next door took this opportunity to open the partition and shuffle their softly spoken Irish teacher into the gap where the partition was stored. And then sealed it back up. For the next thirty seconds all you could hear were some polite requests to be let out followed by some scratching, like a cat putting on an accent. Her pleas were ignored until our teacher came back into our classroom. When he heard the scratching and noticed there was laughter coming from the class next door he went to investigate as studying the Bible is generally not renowned for generating mirth. He looked to the teacher’s desk where he saw a distinct teacher-shaped gap before thundering over to the partition handle and wrenching it open. Roaring like the Incredible Hulk in an incredibly bad mood after stubbing his incredibly big, big toe I thought he was going to start launching children across the room (our class had a tremendous view of proceedings now that the partition had been reopened). Eventually he calmed down, closed the partition again (with no one inside) and our studies resumed. There was no more laughter heard from next door.
I remember him for one more reason that has stuck with me. I did like and respect him, if you didn’t arse about he was great to listen to and was the main reason I enjoyed RE despite having severe doubts. Until one day, and I don’t think he was even angry at the time, he said to the whole class ‘none of you are likely to ever get off the bottom rung of life.’ Thanks for that, shall I start shoplifting and injecting heroin today? It may have been a subtle attempt to motivate us to get off the bottom rung, whatever that actually fucking means, but again, I didn’t think so. And the fact it wasn’t driven by anger somehow made it more powerful.
Art
I liked art. I didn’t think I could draw or paint at all until I reached secondary school and a nice teacher thought I could. Sadly she passed away while I was there but she was a genuinely nice person who believed in people (fuck the rungs, so to speak). However it has to be said that the school wasn’t blessed with funds and some of the equipment was sub sub-standard. For example, the desks in the art classroom. As you will know, traditional desks consist of legs, a frame and a desktop surface to work on. Simple. For whatever wonderful reason, the desks in art had legs and a frame but the desktop was not attached to them in any way. I am not joking. It was two to a desk and you sat at opposite ends like a seesaw. And much like a seesaw it was all about balance. It was fine if you and your companion seesawer were both leaning on the desktop and working away. But, and this is a big but, if you were planning on relieving the pressure on the desktop you had to give notice to the other seesawist, otherwise the desktop at your end would fly up and twat you in the face, as well as launching your work and any implements skyward.
Similarly if the teacher had just finished talking and you were about to start work and apply pressure you had to synchronise with the other seesawee so you both began at the same time. Otherwise your side would slip down and yes, physics happened at the other end where that edge would fly up and concuss your buddy seesawologist. It was like a weird duel and certainly added an exciting element of danger to the lesson.
Music
Music education in school consisted of learning the following list of instruments:
Keyboard.
That was it. The only thing I ever remember learning was Love Me Tender. Mostly we just sort of sat there while the teacher played his own keyboard. My only other memory is that in Year 9 the one music lesson per week fell into some weird timetable blackhole. What I mean is that the pupils were there, the classroom was there, but the teacher was conspicuously absent. As in, just never turned up. So we would all sit there for a couple of minutes just in case he did arrive but when it was clear he wasn’t the tension would start to build. This is because the room was neatly intersected into two halves because of the way the (normal) desks were arranged. And the room had a very healthy supply of stationery, from various pens and pencils to rubbers and rulers (non-shatter!).
It would always start off slowly. Just one little thing. A small, rectangular rubber would be casually lobbed from one half into the other, almost like a challenge. It would bounce off someone’s head, not enough to hurt but just enough to make a few other kids notice. And then it would be on. Within 30 seconds all of the tables would be upturned into makeshift trenches as the middle of the room was transformed into no-kids land. A cloud of various pieces of stationery would envelope the room as each side tried to gain the upper hand. Occasionally some daftie would end up with stapler shellshock and wander confused into no-kids land where they would be pelted with the full stationery armoury. On and on it would go, usually until the volume of warfare rose too high and a teacher from next door would storm in or some numpty ran out of rubbers and launched one of those big fuck-off school pencil sharpeners across the room, splitting someone’s head open.
We never did find out where our teacher was. But I like to think we learned more from that lesson than we ever would playing Love Me Tender in a bland symphony.
Coming up next time: weird, awkward sentence lessons, moustachioed frogs and concussed teachers.
Daniel McChrystal 