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These remarkable pictures represent a small sample of an archive that I inherited from the 'old school'. I've had them for about 11 years, carefully stored at the back of a filing cabinet in my office. The celebrations this year have prompted me to get some of them scanned and this is the result. As a photography teacher, I'm impressed by the quality of many of these pictures. Some of them have a surreal charm. Some are hilarious - the children rolling around in the snow, for example. Some have a purely documentary interest. One or two of the portraits are striking. They capture a variety of activities - school trips to Scotland and the Alps, cooking and eating, DT projects, sports days. They remind us that the school used to have cherry trees on the concourse and the Ferrier Estate once loomed over us.
Many of the individuals in these pictures must now be grandparents. As I'm never tired of telling my students, (mis-quoting Roland Barthes) photographs remind us of things lost. My favourite image is of a young boy wearing flared jeans and Doctor Marten boots gently extracting something hot from a school oven with the aid of a tea towel. He doesn't yet know whether what he's cooked is beautiful or edible. I can't help thinking that this is the perfect visual metaphor for education. -- Jon Nicholls
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 This is a story about loyalty, from my first year of teaching at Tallis. '96 or '97, I forget now. In the dreadful old building, but with the same fantastic South London children. I think about the cast concerned, M and N, and W, from time to time. They are of an age for their children to come here now, and I think that some do.
Inspections from OFSTED back then were multi-day affairs for which a number of weeks’ notice was supplied, generating large amounts of paperwork in response. A school lived or died by the aggregate score of lesson observations as the main measure of teaching quality, together with the proportion of GCSE students awarded 5 A-C grades including English and Maths. Both measures since utterly discredited, although they ruined many a teaching career. Schools stank of new paint and desperation when the Inspectors came calling, as they did to Tallis that summer. The English department was under the cosh over the exam results from the year before. I can still recall the (feigned, we felt) surprise of the Lead Inspector, his face pursed like a man sucking a Werther's Original on the top deck of the 286 whilst taking himself to Queen Mary’s for treatment for his prostate difficulties. The Year 9 class I had that year were sufficient to generate a measure of anxiety about the likely findings of the Inspectorate. I was a newcomer in these matters and Year 9 students, delightfully, are on the cusp of late adolescence and early young adulthood - 13 going on 14, or rather older (it might appear) in some cases. There had been a number of trials to face over my successful delivery of the curriculum and relationships with some of the students had been rocky. One girl, N, had just taken violent exception to my contacting her parent to express distress at her forthright manner in class. Mum had not been entirely supportive on the phone and it was clear that full and frank discussions of the neophyte taking English lessons had occurred at home. Even shaving my head and bulking up by going to the gym six days a week so that I resembled, vaguely, N's scary older brother - the lad had been removed from Tallis by mutual agreement just after the start of the year - was no longer cutting it and resentments were reaching a rolling boil amongst N's crew, all of whom sat, pallid but with striking maquillage, along the back row. “Why,” N had yelled the week before, fixing me with a gimlet eye, “d’you got to bring my FAMILY into it?”. Subsequent pique kept her at home for a period and I was hoping that there’d be a continuing series of no-shows for the inspection. And then there was M, out of school more than in. He was a slight lad with an extraordinarily loud voice for someone with his frame. I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered the like in the 25 years since. His family all had very significant hearing impairments but I don’t believe they signed, so M communicated with them simply by raising his voice. Schooled in this from early childhood, he knew no other way of speaking than by doing so at the most remarkable volume. He had a diaphragm like a blacksmith’s bellows and great autonomy at home because his parents deferred to him in all worldly matters, such were their communication difficulties. He was self-made, it appeared, in most ways. Writing was challenging for him and so it was a thing he refused to do, although on occasion I wrote at his dictation whilst the rest of the class grudgingly got on with something. The endpapers of his book were full of scurrilous neon felt-tip illustrations and although they were torn out with rigour on my part wherever I came across them I was in a double-bind about it as the only way of preventing them recrudescing was if he did not take his book home - making him therefore unable to complete any homework. The wry humour of my predicament both over this and over his conduct in lessons was not lost on him as M was a keen observer of my many failings as a classroom practitioner, even liking to end lessons with exit-interview comments: “I DIDN’T GET ANY OF THAT.” or “S**T LESSON SIR. JOKE.” - even though it clearly wasn’t. (A joke, I mean. The lesson I can’t speak for now, actually.) Death in Terry Pratchett speaks only in majuscules, and so did M, and both were equally fatal to a calm state of mind. His views on any matter tended to the extreme and this and the volume with which they were presented usually instantly derailed orderly learning. Remonstrating with him was utterly without point, as was setting a detention, as he just stayed at home until the dust had settled. Calling his parents was useless for obvious reasons. During lessons M drew smut in his book, whilst occasionally putting his hand up to chip in, a hand I was usually too craven to pick for fear of what might be said. Not that it made much difference: even M’s sub-rosa mutterings of discontent were quite audible as his whisper was at normal conversational volume for a mortal. Now terror was abroad. Some lessons across the school earlier that week had failed to make the grade and that and the statistics showing us up meant it was coming down to the wire. The final lessons that Friday needed to be decent or the school was for it. I was hoping the Key Players would be out but honesty has always been our leitmotif at Tallis and we resolutely refused (as other schools did, and do, one hears) to send the naughty kids home on gardening leave any time we were inspected. And the week of the inspection both N and M were in every day. I didn’t quite understand why. My heart was in my boots - I hadn’t yet been seen but knew I would be. N bore grudges I was certain and was sure to play up; M was quite simply indifferent to what anyone else thought. He liked to call a spade a shovel and had previously shown that he was almost entirely indifferent to authority, for to him no power was legitimate but his own. Luckily, though, the inspectors knew enough not to appear in the classroom of a Newly Qualified Teacher it seemed, and I’d been spared a visit, perhaps also for reasons to do with the way that class’s timetable worked. During Monday morning’s lesson the inspection team had been setting up their workroom, and the midweek lessons were last thing in the day, when Findings were being Written Up. The school only had to make it through to Friday lunchtime without terminal mishap, as the final debriefing session with the inspection team occupied Friday's graveyard slot. I had the Year 9 class period four, the last possible time for a visit, and of course the door opened after the first ten minutes of the lesson and the Lead Inspector came in with the Clipboard Of Doom and took a seat at the back, began flipping through the lesson plan. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and the lesson was potentially a cup of lumpy cold sick with a spoon shoved into it. If N or M wished to show me up and take the school down too, this was their time. I can’t now remember what the topic was - something from Blair's National Literacy Strategy probably - Writing to Focus Group, a thing of that sort. Well now. I didn’t fancy my chances but of course I didn’t know then that the students here might hate the teachers, or say they do, in normal circumstances, yet the agio pneuma descends when interlopers come calling. The comitatus was everything: the tribe fought off Tacitus's men at the gates to the hilI-fort in the Downs, piled up the breach with their English dead at Agincourt, and played up and played the game at Wadi Rum in the Age of Empire until the sand of the desert was sodden red. Honour is more than a word, I now know, and loyalty was the thing. As far as N and M were concerned, the honour of the school was at stake and they wished to play their part. I had taken the advice of the wily Head of Faculty when preparing for the ordeal - we all had - and the steer was to get something set up and then get the kids to knock on with it, on the basis that OFSTED's judgement allegedly hung solely on the charisma of the performer plus a bit of vox pop with the kids. (OFSTED were obsessed with lesson ‘pace’ as well - ‘Mush! Mush, children! We have life-changing exams to prepare for!’). To this the counter was: twenty minutes setup, give out the resources, twenty-five minutes of writing, wrap things up, done. It might throw the inspectors off the scent: if the Sage On The Stage wasn’t performing, it tilted them into a Book Look - and I had diligently been marking the kids’ work, when not tearing it out - or they had to talk to the students. Ranks might close up - that was the hope, anyway. A high-risk strategy with my lot, I felt. So as long as M’s book was free of pornographic depictions, it might be fine. And that particular kindergarten had been weeded of things rank and gross that possess’d it merely the week before. More, I'd called in a favour with his Head of Year, the only person M rated in the whole school, who'd instructed him not to say a single word if the Inspectors visited. The fix was in, probably one involving fags. N was fond of incorrect verb agreements - we was always doing this that and the other in her biographic writing from earlier in the term - but she was caught up in the drama of her own life with rare intensity and her book was voluminously if inaccurately scripted. As long as no-one wound her up, she might do. The other kids were smashers and the weakest in the class, W, loved WWF. His piece about Wrestlemania 13 was a terse masterpiece of action description, which even though it sometimes lacked even spaces between words (sample: 'TheUndertakerwasdonein') could not but impress even the hardest heart via its innovative use of scriptio continua to convey the feverish excitement of the mash-up being described, one circulating at the time in school on dodgy VHS tapes bought from Lewisham Market. I finished the set-up, and set them to it. Chop chop. Andiamo. M seemed to be keeping to his word, and N and her henchwomen were getting on with the task: they had strong opinions to defend. I toured the room widdershins speaking to children as, clockwise, did the Inspector. How would things turn out? At first, N stared him down, but then showed her book. Nods of engagement. All the students had a ‘Writing Frame’, a Wizard Wheeze that I had picked up during teacher training the year before. It was writing-as-colour-by-numbers, but also at the bleeding edge of pedagogical refinement. If a child was stuck, they could dip in to help themselves craft a sentence, that was the theory. Or copy out verbatim, that was the reality. Pens were moving, matters were going along. I was beginning to feel a rising confidence, until I saw that the endpapers of M's English book were being scrawled in with his felt-tips, the lad doing this with an oddly stilted body language, leaning in over the desk whilst his pen moved frantically, the leaves of the book not opened fully, hiding what was being produced, yet working at blistering pace. Shading in, not writing, was happening. What was going on? The Inspector worked his way round to him whilst a sense of creeping dread began to grow in me. Christ, what was the boy doing? But the pages were flipped back before the Inspector could get to them, and M wasn’t for sharing. A headshake. Would he say something, kill the mood of fragile scholarship? I tried to make eye contact with M to warn him off. Nothing doing. Nada. Zip. Nowt. Studied avoidance of interaction. So: on. Select a few students: oral feedback to individuals, then read the best bits aloud to the class. Take volunteers. Dole out grudging praise. Sing for your supper you buggers. Studiously ignore M and N, praise the behaviour you want to see more of, just like in the teaching manuals. The clock was ticking down and we were nearly there. Then we were. The Inspector came to the front to thank the class for being so helpful to him in his deliberations. This brief farewell from the Man From The Ministry and then the students were dismissed and began to filter out. N and her shipmates departed. A loud shriek from one as they left, a scuffle. M remained. He had found a Thing To Do. He began to beckon from his seat in the gloom at the back. His gestures, at first shy, intensified. He began to smile. A rictus developed. His wiry hand scooped the air. Yes, you, you there - come and see. Enter freely and leave something of the happiness you bring behind. Like Jonathan Harker at the threshold, the Inspector knew something was up, but could not prevent himself from approaching M for the Big Reveal. And there it was. With a flourish the book was flipped open on M’s desk, and the Inspector flipped off: M had spent the entire lesson crafting in garish capitals the instruction F**K OFF, neatly laid out across an entire double A4 spread. An illustrative finger indicated the imperative and M made eye contact, nodding excitedly as he did so. Yeah? Yeah? He seemed mute with delight; the inspector was mute for other reasons I think. No-one spoke, a relief. The tableau unfroze and the parties departed. I packed up my things and left for the English Office, inwardly composing my letter of application to the Audit Commission, a public body my mother, a former headteacher herself, had always favoured over education work. Office stuff, away from the general public. Yes, that was it. Secluded back rooms. Yes. She knew best. Later the Head sought me out. The Inspection team had turned out to be one of the good ones - they weren’t, always - and the Lead Inspector was a HMI appointed in the days when that actually meant something. My lesson hadn’t saved the day - the other, vastly more experienced English teachers had done that - but I had been mentioned in dispatches for a brave job in trying circumstances. M hadn’t even needed to speak, at the end, because his single contribution said all. No exit interview required. Loyal to a fault, our lot. Loyal to (a) T. -- Jon Bradshaw  Down stage left huddled in the wing. Submerged in darkness as the house lights reverberate with a resounding clunk! The light melts away. Only the sound of gentle, slightly heightened, breathing and the palpable blend of excitement and fear, laced with a tinge of adrenaline, fills that cocooned space. A cast waits in the wings ready to make their entrance into the performance space. All the work here is now done. Characters developed, lines learnt, staging blocked, set and costumes designed and made, lighting and sound set. Months of rehearsals in preparation. At this moment I am redundant. It is now totally theirs as they get ready to step into the space and shine ... and so many have shone so very brightly . So many plays devised and scripted have begun life from that womb-like corner. From the legendary Cabaret, Romeo & Juliet, Abigail's Party to the magically chaotic and anarchic year 7-9 showcase evenings when improvised pieces were selected from Drama lessons and performed in front of huge audiences. Not for the faint-hearted or those who hoped for an early night! From that corner I remember hanging onto Leeroy’s (cast Threepenny Opera) pots and pans strapped around him, so they would not jangle. He whispered in my ear, "I’m scared!" I whispered back, "So am I!" Gently sprinkling water on Emily’s (Sally Bowles, Cabaret) face and hair to give her that ravaged streaky mascara look, while simultaneously doing a ten second full costume change. Trapped with the head of Drama, Ginny Lester and a ginormous chair donated from Emma Jeff’s parents' front room in the Life and works of Oscar Wilde, our response to Clause 28. Telling Colin Yardley (the then headteacher), who had agreed to take on the role the prince in Romeo and Juliet in full doublet and hose, to under no circumstances break a leg as we would all be in the quagmire! This was after he had gamely taken part every night in the full cast warm-ups, which included saluting the sun, in said full costume with a dodgy leg. Many students from Tallis have had interesting and successful careers in the performing Arts - Sam Spruell, Kat Joyce, Dominic Cooper, Ezra Godden, Hannah Chiswick, Marney Godden, Lisa Cowan, Hannah Gittos, Liam Mayasaki-Lane, Will Beer, Ihsan Rustem, Chenai Takundwa, Graham Rinaldi, Kae Tempest, Max Key ,Joe Kerridge, Kemi Nzerem, Nathan Cooper - as actors, directors, designers, writers, musicians, dancers, community arts facilitators, journalists, presenters and artists of the spoken word. These are to mention just a few. Apologies if you are not listed here. You are not forgotten!
Drama should promote confidence, teamwork, empathy, the ability to listen, critique and negotiate, an appreciation of aesthetics, voice projection, discipline and belief. It should be a safe space in which to take risks, make mistakes, play, experience that "Wooohoo" feeling, be challenging whilst also having fun. I think that Drama has impacted on many students outside of the industry and in so many different walks of life. Tallis has always invested in the arts in its broadest sense. I believe this central focus and its rippling effect is one of the many ingredients that attracted interesting members of staff. It was one of the key reasons I stayed for so long. Arriving on supply, to pay an electricity bill, I hung around for 31 years. Drama is just the best subject to teach and I was honoured and privileged to have taught such talented, intelligent, creative, witty, fine young people .
I have many warm, funny and occasional tough memories of Tallis. Many tales could be told in my role as a tutor, Head of Year and head of the Sixth Form. But the place that I always zoom back to when thinking of Tallis, and the feelings that have never been recaptured and that are still missed, is always being squashed up in that darkened corner downstage left, huddled in the wing.
-- Cath Barton  “At Tallis, everyone dances.”
When Jon Nicholls reached out to me on Facebook to ask if I'd like to contribute to the Tallis Tales, he wrote that he often says this to visitors. This not only brought a smile to my face, but took me very much back to 1993 and the first time I danced at Tallis... Reading many of these Tales, what truly comes out is the spirit and heart centre of the school, often naming individual teachers who, quite literally, changed lives. There were many during my time in which I can say truly impacted my life - our year head Tim Joyce, who led with compassion, laughter, music and the best kind of tough love. Our Head Teacher Colin Yardley, who 'quietly' offered a safe space for the LGBTQ+ kids at the school to meet one another under the guidance and supervision of the school counselor (in the 90's, there were still a few dusty and very dangerous Thatcher laws in place, Section 28 being one of them, which 'forbid' the 'promotion of homosexuality' by local authorities). That 'safe space', which we named 'The Library Club', was our saviour. Around 10 of us would meet up once per week, and a bond and support network was created that I'm sure must have saved lives. We remained friends for years (reunion time??). The teacher which planted the seed for what would end up becoming my career, was Deborah Khan. ‘Boys Dance’, read the flyer for an after-school activity. Ms Khan wanted to remove the stigma surrounding boys who dance. There I found my love of movement and creativity, and I also choreographed my first work here, at the grand old age of 12. In addition to the Boys group, we often had dance for PE (I hope this still continues... it was quite rare back in the day!) and professional companies that were performing locally at Greenwich Dance Agency would be invited to come to Tallis and give workshops. I was so inspired. Ms Khan was a bit of a rebel pioneer (that's how I remember her!) with her plans for the performing arts at Tallis, and in 1995 she staged a school production of Cabaret. I remember it being so brilliant, with a touch of scandalous excitement! I played a bisexual dancer in the Kit Kat Club. At 13. In the 90's. Brilliant 🙂 I was not the only one that Deb Khan encouraged and saw potential in. That same tiny school production of Cabaret included Dominic Cooper and Sam Spruell, who are both Hollywood stars today. That same year, she took a few of us to Sadler's Wells Theatre to see the inaugural premiere season of Matthew Bourne's all male Swan Lake. Deb had trained at Laban Centre with Bourne, so she pulled a few strings. This performance changed my life. I never knew you could fly like that. The feelings I had when I left the theatre I shall never forget. I thought to myself, 'That's what I want to do'. Five years later, in 2000, Matthew Bourne invited me to join the cast of Swan Lake. I was an original cast member his production of The Car Man. In 2010, I was awarded the Sadler's Wells Global Dance Prize, given to one choreographer per year. These two moments, and the career I continue to enjoy today, were only possible because of Tallis. -- Ihsan Rustem  The habits and characteristics we teach at Tallis are, at face value, obviously good. Imagination changes the world and honesty is proverbially the best policy. But what when they go wandering? What when imagination leads to suspicion or paranoia, or honesty leads to hurt and lingering distrust? It is possible to model nuance, and fine distinction, or just to be glib?Some colleagues and I had a sit-down last week to clear the air. We’d found ourselves singing a bit disharmoniously from a range of hymn sheets and this had led me to an outburst of asperity. We decided honestly to air it all in the hope of moving on united by our commitment to the Tallis cause. The meeting was long but productive and we all felt better afterwards. As the next crisis was already waiting impatiently in the wings stamping its hooves and hissing a bit, it was just as well. We’d mended the roof during a lull in the storm and commended ourselves nicely on our construction and constructiveness. This little summit came between a formal procedures including an interview for Deputy Head. Unlike the sit-down, both of these come with fancy structures to support, validate and protect correct and complicated decision-making. In both processes, some people are made happier by the outcome and others are made unhappy. It is difficult to get this quite right, so the formalities and conventions help, giving a language wherein honesty may nest. And at the same time, I’ve been listening to the most extraordinary podcast. It’s about the Trojan Horse affair. For readers in far posterity, this was a letter alleging wrongdoing in Birmingham schools that led to the imposition of the bizarre fabrication known as ‘Fundamental British Values’ upon us all. Who wrote the letter, why, what it meant or whether it was true are still largely unknown. There were inquiries, reports, disbarrings and sackings, but no real statement was ever given – and if the podcasters are right, justice is yet to be served. Yet the application of the controversy to schooling has changed the tone for a generation of schools and school leaders. It would be good to know the truth, that the knock-on wasn’t purely political exploitation. Without it, imagination is left to its own devices to the detriment of our national life, wrecking what we used to call community coherence. And in the papers and on the ground a thousand and a half miles away, the war rages in Ukraine. Does Putin lack the imagination to see the world as it is now? Or does he imagine it would be better with a Greater Russia, soviet-style but without the soviets? Our children at Tallis have walked for Ukraine so that that they may express despair for the children there. Closer to home, the story of Child Q and her appalling treatment at the hands of those whom the state pay to protect her. We simultaneously sentimentalise and demonise children in this thoughtless country. Was no one, in school or police station, able to say ‘Honestly, that’s not right. This is a child.’? Are our agents unable to imagine themselves or their own children in that position? Our children at Tallis have stood in solidarity for Child Q so they may express despair for her, and for themselves. Thomas Tallis survived a dreadful time in English history, of religious wars, summary executions and blood feuds. We know so little about him that imagination must lead to speculation. How did he survive? He probably stayed true to the Roman church and he probably hid it, daily. Does that count as dishonesty? What did he imagine he was doing? Or was survival his only priority? Tallis’s polyphony - different voices making glorious harmony and so on - is a gift to any cheesy assembly-giver. Tallis’s Canon is a lovely exercise in continuity and trust in those who follow after you, also useful for assemblies and other occasions for uplift. His most famous piece, however, takes more unpicking.
When I use a bit of the great man’s 32-part Spem in Alium at the start of the year, I fudge it a bit. The text is from the Apocrypha, the Book of Judith. It is a bloodthirsty tale itself of a heroic widow who charms and then kills the leader of an oppressive army, to save her people. She’s irritated with everyone else’s weakness and reluctance to act and, once the nation is saved, also refuses to marry anyone else. Her words at the root of the timeless music are pretty uncompromising: I will not trust in any other, but only in thee, the God of Israel. This is not a community-building sentiment so I just tell the children it is about trust, sticking to the polyphony and the music of the man as my theme.
I can imagine why this might have been important to Tallis. He probably couldn’t trust many people in the entire course of his life. His faith must have been at once endangering and sustaining. My fear for our young people is that they feel the same, though fewer have his metaphysical support. They see dishonesty in national life and they imagine the worst (which comes true for too many of them). It undermines everything we say about the value of a good life in community if we constantly put them in danger. Who can they trust? Let’s hope that our Tallis values and Habits are not easily shaken off. Let’s hope that the clarity and free-ing-ness of honesty and its siblings, transparency and trust become habitual. Let’s hope that the energy and renewal of imaginativeness and its siblings, creativity and progress will help us, but especially our children, to become better people. I’m sorry this is a bit gloomy. The other tales on the website are so happy and interesting that it seems churlish to allow the parlous state of the world to intrude. I do it because I think that the record should show the good ship Tallis sailing through some choppy waters as we search for an understanding of the world and a change for the better. Glad to have you all on board, shipmates old and new. CR 31.3.22  I write this as part of a celebration of 50 years of Thomas Tallis School in 2022. This reminds me of 1997 when, as Head of the Staff Association, I organised the 25th Anniversary event, held at The National Maritime Museum Greenwich. Former and current staff came together for a wonderful evening of celebration in a tremendous setting; indeed a perfect metaphor for Tallis - the centre of the world, the Mean Time. I worked at Tallis from 1985 to 2019 under all its Headteachers, whilst fulfilling a wide range of roles and responsibilities - Head of Pavilion (On site Unit); Youth Centre worker (in the early days Tallis had both a Youth Centre and a Community Centre where on most days OAPs were welcomed – this later became the 6th form base); Deputy Head of Year; SENCo – I have probably done more IEPs, (Individual Education Plans) than are healthy to do – one year they took 400 hours+ at home and they were still not completed; Head of Citizenship and PSHE; teacher of Social and Religious Education (SRE), Pastoral Studies, Humanities, A-Level Sociology, A-Level Psychology, which I introduced into the school; Chief Invigilator/Exams once I retired from teaching; and also Parent Governor. Our son, Lewis, went to Tallis and his words are salient: I went into a tutor group, year 7, where there were 30 pupils and for about 10, English was not their first language. I was so lucky to have that, such richness of diversity. The school portrayed the best of humanity. All children were given a chance and it was so wonderful what it stood for, in its inclusivity, collaborative learning, every child being given a chance, and demanding and producing excellent results. At its best, people were not allowed to fail and there was a focus on the Arts - and winning football teams!. A child was allowed to be! In its early days, possibly due to the rather unfortunate reputation of the Ferrier Estate which was on its doorstep, Tallis was certainly not the flavour of the month. However, by the 90s, according to National league tables, it was considered to be in the top 200 schools in the country, at least for A-Level. How did this ‘bog standard comprehensive’ in SE London attain such pre-eminence? No doubt the headteachers: Beryl Hussein, Colin Yardley, Nick Williams, Rob Thomas and more recently Carolyn Roberts, and key Deputies – Allen Skuse, Agatha Maguire (who sadly passed away so young), Spyros Elia and Rosemary Leeke, all helped set a tone and create an environment where teachers and pupils could thrive. However I am sure that they would all say that it was everyone - all teachers, pupils, support staff, even the building itself that helped make and ensure that Tallis was a very special place. While always maintaining respect for others, Tallis was an institution that had a clear sense of confidence in itself, its identity and practices, and this led to creative innovation, self belief and solid teaching, and dedication that demanded the best from its teachers and pupils. There was envy around. I once heard a teacher from another school say in a public meeting, “Oh, Tallis, you have to be a girl with a double barrelled name, play the cello and live on the Cator Estate to go there”. And such myths were marvellous because the facts were quite different. Indeed as SENCo, each year, I organised reading age tests for all incoming pupils, and generally at least 75% of the year were at, or more usually below, their actual age. Obviously as a local comprehensive we had no say regarding entrants, even our own children. Lewis was initially 93rd on the waiting list. Only the parents of Statemented children had that right and many, many used it, no doubt attracted by the overall success of the school and because Special Needs had a very good reputation. The school was the first in London to gain the prestigious ‘Basic Skills Agency Quality Mark’. Also, the Local Authority chose Tallis as the home for the Speech and Language and Hearing Impaired Units. So success must have been due to the practices developed once students arrived. The old school was crumbling but not in spirit! There was a clear sense that both the pastoral and the academic – the whole child – were important. Great emphasis was given to extracurricular activities - after all, if you ask a student about memories it is usually what went on outside the classroom that first comes to mind. For myself, I am very proud that as football manager for the older students I managed to get to a few London Cup Finals, including beating private schools on the way, and winning the competition later became the norm under Richard Ankar. Also, when I moved into Debating after an invite from a competition the day after I was sacked as Football manager by the inimitable Terry Richards (after a couple of sendings off and the worst refereeing display I had ever witnessed, including a goal being disallowed for offside after our captain, in his anger at decisions, had dribbled from just outside our penalty box past every one of the opposition team and put the ball in their net). Not only did we win various debating competitions but we were also asked to represent London in Paris as part of the Entente Cordiale celebrations. Various public schools requested that we join their Debating League. Turning up to compete at Westminster School will be remembered by us all as one the scariest moments of our lives. John Bradshaw’s generosity of spirit also led to us to representing the school in a discussion group at 10, Downing Street for a meeting with Tony Blair and George Brown. Wow! For a mixed comprehensive to be successful it has to ensure that all abilities want to go there and that it maintains a healthy mix of girls and boys. Colin was brilliant in managing to get middle class parents to demand and trust Tallis instead of sending their children to private or selective schools, of which there are many locally. This was achieved not only by going on a ‘Ferrier Watch’ every lunchtime and chasing after any miscreants, but also emphasising the importance of Art, Drama, English and Music, ably assisted by people such as Howard Nicholson, Cath Barton, Geraldine O’Mahoney and Keith Lark, in leading their subject teachers; too many people to mention, all brilliant. Speaking of Colin, as a ‘Gooner’ I always saw him as George Graham, with Nick Williams as Arsene Wenger – keeping up the great defence but with a bit more style. Indeed the old school could be seen as Highbury, without the grandeur, and the new build as The Emirates. It looks good but perhaps something is missing. Some stories: When every teacher left they were given a farewell speech and if they had been there for a couple of years they were expected to reply with their own. When Colin left it was a bit more special… far more song and dance, including a rendition of ‘Love Letters’… In the breaks I read out, totally flat and without dramatics, words from the many disciplinary letters he gave to me. I don’t think anyone could fully understand why I got so many. One was because I had been absent – in fact I did not have a day’s absence for more than 22 years. On the day in question I had organised paternity leave anyway; however, sadly, on that day, my mother died… and yet there was his disciplinary letter! But I loved the man. A few more words about The Pavilion. It was the on-site unit for pupils who were struggling, or creating struggles in the classroom. One boy ‘just’ came to the unit for drama. That subject ruined his entire week. Another could not face any ‘normal’ lessons. Each student had their own reasons, their own stories. I came with quite a therapeutic, psychoanalytical background, and it was interesting to introduce these approaches both in the 'Pav' and in training sessions in the school. I grew to be doubtful about the convergence of therapy and teaching, but it was really fascinating at the time. There was only one pupil who frightened me in over 45 years of working with young people. I interviewed them all on entry to the Pavilion. He sat so tightly, saying nothing. I was quite fearful that he might suddenly explode and attack me. My dog Charlie came in and rested by him. I was very afraid for my dog. The boy did not move and did not respond to my words. Charlie’s head rested next to his knee. This seemed to go on forever, and then the boy’s hand moved and he started stroking Charlie. Symbolically he was joining the group, and Charlie had done all the sophisticated work.
Beryl Husein was invited to a pupil-cooked lunch at the 'Pav' a couple of weeks after I started. From day one, without asking, because I thought if I asked then refusal would have been the only reply, my dog Charlie (golden retriever/border collie mix) had come to school with me, as he had in my previous place of employment. On her return to the main school Beryl said, “I was given two wonderful pork chops”, whereas what I remembered most was the incredible lick that Charlie had given her and her look of bliss. Charlie worked there for the rest of his life. Interestingly the whole area was an RAF base during the war, with the Pavilion being a hospital for injured airmen. Charlie seemed to feel their ghosts.
There was something wonderfully ‘Napoleon’ about Beryl, diminutive but colossal. Indeed when I arrived a couple of minutes late for my first SSC (Senior Staff Committee) meeting, having in that short time sorted and cleared up the blood after a very rare contretemps in the 'Pav', she said very clearly and firmly “Richard, I do not want to hear the reasons why, but if you are ever late again, do not bother to come ever again”. Clear messaging! I was Deputy Head of Year to ‘Mrs Tallis’, Margaret Young, another wonderfully formidable woman – there were so many at the school. Pupils thought her very hard, but she had a very kind heart; indeed she was often soft cop to my hard. She would have hated the pupils realising this. Every day she wore her ‘Thomas The Tank Engine’ apron. It always seemed incredible to me that by the end of the first week of term she could put names to faces of all the 210 children. Our year base overlooked the concourse; marvellous for her to keep an eagle eye over all proceedings! Indeed, one summer, Colin and I knocked down the dividing wall between classrooms so as to make a proper sized year base. Not sure too many headteachers would do, or be allowed to do that nowadays. The NRA, annual National Record of Achievement Ceremonies, probably called ‘The Prom’ nowadays, were started by Margaret but evolved into the most wonderful events, especially led by Tim Joyce and Cath Barton, when all the leaving Year 11 students, their parents and special guests came together in celebration. In 1992 Margaret asked me to ‘run’ it. No Deputy had ever done this. I bought a special Hugo Boss cream linen suit. Everyone wore their finest. I shall never forget turning around on the stage and seeing Colin in an almost identical outfit. It was also raining heavily, and totally worryingly I had lost my speech – I had raced home twice to try to find it, which I did 3 weeks later in my car - and the moment for coordinating and giving the welcome and core speech of the evening was getting ever closer. One of my tutees, Chris Williams, said, “Don’t worry Sir, you will do fine”. I didn’t feel it. Pastoral issues were always taken very seriously, and Tim, Cath and I had counselling training. I became a sort of specialist in working with older students, Year 10/11 and 6th formers, writing all the key reports and testimonials and supporting them in putting together their UCAS statements. And over the possible 5 years of staying with a tutor group one had the privilege of getting to know the parents really well, always phoning home that day if their child was absent, and it was embedded in the culture of the school that one worked alongside the parents in getting the best for their child. Special times were the ’Reading Weeks’, held every year, where literature and reading took pride of place, largely organised by the English faculty. I was very pleased when Nick Hornby, of ‘Fever Pitch’ etc fame, and the future Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, each accepted my invitation to spend a day with staff and students. Carol Ann was a close friend of my wife’s family; indeed the poem ‘Warming her Pearls’, studied by so many pupils, is dedicated to Sara’s mother Judith, who had first alerted Carol Ann to what became the central theme of the poem. Neither writer demanded a fee. Geography field work weeks are also fondly remembered. Many staff took part, although Stuart Turpie, another who has sadly passed away, and the Darenth/Dartford studies plus Margate trips remain vivid in the memory. There we were on top of a huge vacuous, empty gravel pit and Mr. Turpie says, “This is going to become a huge shopping centre”. Oh yeah right!? – and now it is: Bluewater! Coming back from Margate and the coach full of kids and breaking down on the M2 will also not be forgotten. Inverliever Activity Centre in the Highlands of Scotland became a regular venue for students, massively encouraged by Colin, Tim Joyce and Keith Lark; although for me, travelling up on April 15th 1989, and desperately trying to keep up with the Arsenal game I was missing, all became largely irrelevant with the news from Hillsborough. Activity weeks were fantastically enjoyable with everybody undertaking incredible adventures out of school to all manner of places and things. Except, of course, for the day of the 7/7 bombings, when hundreds of Tallis kids and their teachers were stranded all over London, miles from Kidbrooke, and everything shut or closed down, and they all had to walk home safely. Elliot Furneux and Martin Collier were two teachers who enthusiastically promoted pantomimes by the teachers for the kids at Christmas time. So many took part, but without their drive it is doubtful they would have happened. Very firmly in my memory bank at least is my ‘Loads Of Money’, (Harry Enfield) and Mr Blobby, but I am sure all teachers have their own stories. What is worth highlighting is that there were many times of fun, laughter and enjoyment alongside all the academic hard work. Have times changed? Jamie Oliver’s TV series based on improving nutrition and school meals was filmed at Kidbrooke School and Tallis, and I remember Jamie serving me my lunch. Interestingly, because Tallis students took to his dishes so positively, and there were no parents lobbing chips over the fence to their distraught sons and daughters, the series seemed to be ¼ Tallis and ¾ Kidbrooke. There is a message there somewhere. Because I worked most of all on the Pastoral, SEN, Arts and Humanities side of the curriculum my insights into Maths and Sciences are limited. They can tell their own stories. However Mr Carvin must be mentioned. He was so wonderfully old school, always in his slippers and his white lab coat. He was totally feared and totally loved. One look achieved impeccable behaviour and for this he was respected. The students felt absolutely safe in his company. They were going to learn. There are so many stories that could be told: In 1990, With Colin’s agreement, 9RS set up a business - ‘DK Enterprises’, with pupil Sonya Reader as CEO, a sort of lunchtime tuck shop. Soon we were making over £400 a week. Every child in 9RS was involved and paid for their work, and we had more money in our business bank account than the school had in theirs. Colin demanded our closure and put all the money to school projects such as Martin Dean being paid to restore the school exam tables! Other memories include the introduction of formal organised counselling, headed by Jane Weinberg; ‘Red Rum’, perhaps the greatest Grand National horse ever, visiting the school; Fred the groundsman and his 32 procedures to create the perfect wicket; Sports Days and student/pupil games; uniform innovations, later followed by almost every school; Friday lunchtime football in the old sports hall, with year 11 for many years, each week a mini/massive epic which all ended with the a/b weeks; close links with the National Theatre; Brian Jones and my A-Level group achieving 100% pass and all A* or A; Nick Williams and his superb managing of the school throughout his tenure, especially during times of crisis, including tragically a murder; Nicholas Serota of The Tate Gallery being headteacher for the day; the move to a new build. But, most of all, every teacher in every department and every student everyday and their hard work to achieve success and often with a smile on their faces. So here’s to 50 more years! -- Richard Stubbs |
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