We have found a pile of old newsletters, the Parkdale Post, dating back to the 90s and early 2000s. They’re a fascinating read and we’ll try to digitise them for the archive. Here’s the first, Volume 1, Issue 1, November 1996. How times have changed. This appears to be completely typewritten and physically cut and pasted.
Also interesting to note the Y6 SAT results above national average at near enough 50%. We’d be disappointed (and surprised) if we were ever under 70% these days and the tests are certainly harder now! The modern ‘expected’ is broadly now considered equivalent to the old Level 5, which very few children got back in 1996.
There’s a wealth of sports news, visits and camps, much like today but we’d suspect they didn’t have to do quite so much lengthy risk assessment back then!
We like the sound of 1970’s caretaker Mr Pykett, having the cleaners on parade with their mops at the end of the week – something for Mr Chell to contemplate, perhaps!
Headteacher Mr Collins was here until Mr Hillier’s arrival in 2012-13. We’re grateful for his meticulous record keeping and archiving, but more importantly for being the driving force to get the school buildings modernised. You’ll see lots about that in future issues! That and traffic/parking. Some things never change!