Embedded Files
Mr Rocca pictured in Rome with a group of boys, Easter 1957
Report
In April 1957, Mr Rocca spent a week examining the books of pupils in the third year and a written report upon the work was given to the teachers concerned.
Rome trip, 1957
Such was the demand to go on this trip that two distinct travelling parties were formed, the first setting off ten days before the other. Leave of absence for the final two days of term had been granted by the MEC for the first party, which comprised “Mr F. Andrew, Mr R. Travers, Mr A.J. Rocca and 38 boys”.
One of the memories of this trip was the occasion on Easter Sunday when the boys stood in a packed St Peter’s Square to see and hear Pope Pius XII give the famous blessing “Urbi et Orbi”, meaning “to the City [of Rome] and to the World”. In addition, the boys visited many of the usual tourist sites.
Part of the return journey home was also a “first” for most if not all of the boys. The party travelled by train from Rome to Milan, then changed to a train that took them to Basle, Switzerland, for an overnight stay. From Basle they flew to Blackbushe Airport in Surrey, a tremendous experience for the boys. Few people had flown on school or family holidays in those days, so it was quite something. From Blackbushe a coach took the party to Euston, London, before boarding a train in the early evening to return home to Manchester.
After the boys returned to school one pupil remembered the occasion when Mr Rocca entered the classroom to ask if anyone had made a note of the registration of the aircraft in which they’d flown back from Basle to Blackbushe. Nobody had.
Mr Rocca told the boys that the reason for his concern was that there had been an aircraft disaster at Blackbushe and he thought “the plane involved might have been ours”.
An aircraft disaster did occur at Blackbushe Airport. The date was 1st May 1957. A Viking twin-prop plane suffered engine failure on the port side soon after taking off in the dark. The pilot attempted to turn round and land. Alas, he lost control and the plane crashed into woodland near the airport killing all bar one of the 30-odd passengers and crew. The aircraft had burst into flames on landing; the dead were mostly service personnel with their wives and children en route to Gibraltar and Libya.
It is known that the plane was flying in Europe immediately before the disaster. However, it has not been possible to research records of the aircraft’s exact movements prior to the crash. Was it ‘St Gregory’s’ plane? We will never know.
Admission to St Gregory’s, 1957
The following surviving documents are a reminder of the administrative process between when a pupil received notification of his Eleven Plus results and when he was admitted to St Gregory’s. The process, as can be seen, was carried out by the City of Manchester Education Committee which was based at the Education Offices in Deansgate. The documents provide an interesting insight into the selection and admission process as it existed at that time.
The parents of the forthcoming new intake were invited to a meeting in early July in the School Hall. The purpose of the meeting was for the parents to sign a Form of Agreement – an agreement that they would comply with the Committee’s regulations concerning their children’s education. For this, a birth certificate bearing the pupil’s full name was requested for inspection.
The section dealing with awards is also interesting. Note the Committee’s policy regarding the awarding of a free school travel pass. It was issued “if the distance between the pupil’s home and the school, by the shortest walking route, is more than 3 miles”.
Grants could also be awarded towards the cost of uniform distinctive of a particular school, “if the parents’ income falls within the Committee’s scale”.
In addition, maintenance grants could be awarded for pupils over the age of fifteen to help parents with the expense of keeping their children at school when they were old enough to be earning. The amount of an allowance varied with the financial circumstances of the family.
Mr Rocca would have taken the opportunity to address the parents and outline the many benefits of their children being educated at St Gregory’s. For those boys who accompanied their parents to the meeting, this was probably their first sighting of the school on what might have been a lovely summer’s evening at Ardwick Green. For some parents this might have been their one and only visit to the school over the next five to seven years. With there being no parents’ evenings at that time, the only other occasions when parents might have visited the school were for musical or drama productions.
Post-Eleven Plus offer, 1957
Admission document
Midsummer report, 1957
Measuring just 7 inches by 5 inches, this type of simple report had remained in use for decades and had provided teachers with an extremely quick method of reporting pupils’ progress to parents. Note that some of the details have been typed. The form class – written as Lower 2 – was, in fact, 2C. Classes throughout the school each had two names, the reference to Upper, Middle and Lower being used on certain occasions such as on reports and Speech Days. The 1957 Speech Day programme, for instance, shows that prizes were awarded to boys in Upper 2, Middle 2 and Lower 2 – meaning 2A, 2B and 2C. The same applied to each of the other years. This type of report would be replaced in 1958 by a larger and slightly modified report which measured 9 inches by 6 inches.
Manchester Hippodrome poster, 1957
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