Nostalgia - the best years of their lives (From Wiltshire Times)

Nostalgia - the best years of their lives

2:37pm Friday 23rd July 2010 in

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Grove Primary School in Trowbridge has overcome many challenges in the past four decades, including a fire and an influx of pupils, to celebrate its 40th anniversary this year.

Former assistant headteacher Shelagh Carpenter worked at the primary school for 35 years before taking early retirement in 2007, and recalls how the school has changed over the years.

The 60-year-old started at the school as a Year 3 and 4 teacher in 1972, three years after it had opened.

She said: “When the school first at opened it was one of the first completely open plan schools in the county with no classroom doors.

“It was built originally for 240 pupils, by the time I got there it had far exceeded that.”

The school started with three infant classrooms and four junior classes, with a main hall and kitchen facilities.

However mobile classrooms were soon in use and over the years, starting with a double classroom in the early 1970s, they spread until there were six single and double mobile classrooms in 1980, when around 500 pupils were enrolled at the school.

Miss Carpenter, of Bitham Park, Westbury said: “The school is now balanced out at 400-420 pupils. A Key Stage 1 extension was built on the old infants playground with four classrooms for Years 1 and 2 and shared facilities four years ago.”

A unit for hearing impaired children was opened at Grove during the 1980s.

Miss Carpenter feels the school has improved the facilities it provides a great deal, and is interested to see the return of former learning methods.

“The facilities are so much better at the school than when I started, they have developed over the years,” she said.

“When the National Curriculum was introduced learning became much more subject-orientated than topic orientated, making lessons a lot more rigid during the 90s.

“I think topic-based learning has come back into teaching over the past few years and children love it.

“Children change because society changes but Grove School has always been a friendly, welcoming school, which has not changed.”