Intake Years

(Starting Years)

The years we have entries for are shown on the navigation buttons up there at the top of this page in the darker brown area. Have a look, for example, at starting year 1960 where people have identified themselves on the 1961 photo or elsewhere and sent in a current picture and provided brief details of what they've been up to these last 40 years or so. Have a look at your year and see which classmates have been in touch. Why don't you get in touch? Here's the way. Click this link Contact 

 Right from the start of Gateshead Secondary School, which became Gateshead Grammar School, the form streams were not A, B, C and D as, once or still, found in ordinary schools [Rule 8 of Sykes' Eleven Rules of Life* reads "Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.] Was this a bit of political correctness way ahead of its time? Unlikely, GGS certainly embraced competitiveness and had many teachers who abided by Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. If you were bright you weren't in A, or less bright in D...but F if your form master was Mr. Fawcett and Y if you had the botanist Mr. Young (back in the 1920's). This was the system right from the start but not right to the end. Here's a Webmaster rant. How very dare Mr Johnny Come Lately known as Dr Caffrey change the system to A, B, C and D in the last 5 or so years of the (Grammar) school's existence. 

Mind you, the Webmaster is one of only a handful of people who had to face humiliation from family members who disbelieved their claim that they had done well in exams and, as a result, had been promoted from 1A to 1B. In 1960 someone decided that the top tier would have Mr Brewis as form master and put Mr Addison in charge of the second tier. Was this your little joke Mr G L R Brown in your run down to retirement?

* Often wrongly attributed to Bill Gates