Nature and Scope

The school, which is pleasantly situated on rising ground at Northwood Hills, was opened in September, 1955, with an initial intake of 193 boys divided into six forms, of which two had been recruited the year before and had been housed temporarily in another school. For the first four years of its existence it regularly accepted four entry-forms, but since 1959 the annual intake has been of three forms only, which in each of the last two years have amounted to rather less than 90 pupils. At present, the total number of boys is 691. Of these, 197 are in the sixth form: among them are 20 in the upper (or third-year) sixth, the majority of whom entered the sixth form after a preliminary four-year course.

Of about 70 boys who entered the second form in 1955, 19 have already gone, and two more are hoping to go, to universities or colleges of further education. Forty-five of the 1955 entrants to the first form are applying for university entrance, and so far 20 of them have been accepted definitely or provisionally. Two of those who have already left won state scholarships, and two others. have won awards tenable at Nottingham University.

When the school started there was only one other maintained grammar school, a mixed school, in North-West Middlesex. Since 1955. two other grammar schools have been built, one for girls and the other for both sexes. The girls' school, St. Mary's, is situated close to the boys' school.

Premises and Equipment

With buildings devised for an annual entry of three forms, but with forms above the thirds representing the product of a four-form entry, it can occasion no surprise that the accommodation should be grossly over-taxed at present. Some of the difficulties will no doubt be less keenly felt when the last of the overlarge entries has worked its way through the school. Some, however, are likely to persist, in particular the shortage of laboratories and of division rooms for sixth-form groups. At present the general overcrowding is such that almost every space within the buildings has to be pressed into service for teaching, including the rest room, the geography store-room, and the English book-store. If, as seems inevitable, these rooms must serve as division rooms for a time, they should be put into reasonable condition for the purpose, especially as regards heating and artificial lighting. Other rooms, suitable in themselves, have to be used for unsuitable purposes: for instance, the art and craft room is used for languages teaching and sixth-form general studies, and the metalwork room for science; even so, four periods of teaching have to be given in the girls' school, which may well be unable to offer this invaluable assistance as it achieves its own full development. The inadequacy of the laboratories is serious. The two advanced laboratories, for physics and chemistry, were designed for only about eight boys each, but there are in fact no fewer than 86 boys engaged on advanced work in physics, and 58 on similar work in chemistry.

One other unfortunate result of the overcrowding is that subjects such as languages and mathematics are deprived of subject rooms where special teaching aids and books could be displayed or kept convenient for use.

2