The Gateway School, Felpham - 1948 - 1954

Starting School

Early School Days and Grateful Thanks to Chicken Licken 

An energetic and capable pair of women, Miss Millicent Glencross and her life partner, Miss Spence, ran the Gateway School. I started there at in 1948 aged 4½ and travelled with my brother on the 50a bus, which ran along the Sussex coast to Pagham, west of Bognor Regis. For years I was fascinated by the bus’s ultimate destination ‘á Becket’s Ave though had no idea who Becket was with that funny á and what was Ave? Did it rhyme with Save or with Have?

The Gateway was a traditional, tightly organised prep school where mastery of the basic skills was paramount. The teachers ,were kind and caring, the school routine was unvarying. The classes were named after characteristics for us to emulate; the Reception class was called Happiness then we went on to Kindness, Goodness, Unselfishness, Courage, Truth, Loyalty and Perseverance. I can recall the formica-topped table and the tiny chairs and can see the first sum written down on the board. If you gave me a couple of sweets and then a couple more, it would’ve been the simplest calculation - but I was baffled by seeing numbers on top of each other so guessed the answer must be five. Also, I’d wrongly assumed that I’d be able to read on my very first day though I can remember the precise lesson when I got it. We were reading round the class from the same cloth bound book and I usually dreaded my turn, as despite daily drilling in phonics I never had a clue where we were and certainly couldn’t decipher whole words. But one morning in Kindness Class aged five, we were droning through the tale of Chicken-Licken in which a fluster-prone bird is knocked on her head by an acorn and instantly assumes that the sky is about to fall. She flaps off to alert Cocky-Locky, Ducky-Lucky, Drakey-Lakey and Goosey-Loosey to their imminent doom. Suddenly I got it, spotted the patterns and instead of trying to slide under the table to avoid my turn I rapidly became a bookworm, one of those swots who answers by raising her hand unnecessarily high whilst emitting annoying grunts.

The insightful teachers summarised my four-year-old character straight away and not much has changed since. In my first report we read:

Bible Lessons:  Jane thoroughly enjoys all these lessons and has a surprisingly good memory for one so small although some of her narrations are rather “embroidered.”

The Head remarked that I had settled down happily and

“has quite outstanding confidence for one so young!”  Teacher-speak for a right little bumptious upstart?  They also got it right with:,

            “Jane is a dreadful fidget and a chatterbox.”  Spot on to this very day as is “gives in with rather bad grace when checked.”  Which is exactly how I react as an adult even when caught speeding, “But Officer, I was definitely only doing 28 mph….”

            I was pathologically prone to exaggeration especially when there was an audience.  Mum had been poorly and had recently returned from Eastbourne where she’d spent a few with an old friend for a short convalescence.  She’d been put on Warfarin tablets and I overhead some garbled tale about thin blood and rat poison. It was not long before I held the rapt attention of audience of the class at News Time  as I told them that my mum was in very ill hospital in Eastbourne as she’d eaten rat poison.  The news was instantly relayed to Miss Glencross who adored my mum and phoned our home to be surprised to hear the fit, cheery tones of my mother on the other end of the line. The tendency to exaggerate has passed down the family line.  When she was four, my granddaughter Harriet longed to hold the floor in Show and Tell.  When her turn eventually came to stand in front of the class, beaming proudly at the novelty of having a rapt and captive audience, she solemnly announced that all four of her grandparents had died at the weekend.  Her teacher approached my daughter at home time to offer sincere condolences on such a sudden shocking loss.

            We had a weekly assembly in the hall and would file in to music played on the gramophone.  This was usually a military band playing the march Sussex by the Sea.  We’d sit cross legged in rows and I haven’t retained a single memory of what was actually said by Miss Glencross and her staff but vividly recall the little wooden slide that was placed in front of the hall and anyone who’d had a birthday was allowed to gather by the side before taking it in turns to climb up and slide down.  I remember having a series of weekly “birthdays” before someone caught on that my appearances on the slide were a weekly feature. 

Every single day we chanted our tables until there wasn’t the slightest chance the numbers could escape from the wet cement of our young minds. We spent hours on perfecting our handwriting. History began with the Roman invasion of Britain, Nature began with a dusty branch with catkins placed on the Interest table and the rule of thumb for writing Compositions was, “two adjectives to every noun.”  The atmosphere was friendly and supportive; Miss Field was the kindest of all the teachers yet it was a highly competitive school with its achievement ladders, stars, stripes, house points and prizes.  My next school was very different.