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Hackney Downs School

 
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Hackney Downs School was a comprehensive secondary school, located near Hackney Downs, in the London Borough of Hackney. It was founded in 1876 as The Grocers' Company's School (official website).

Contents

History

The south side of Hackney Downs in London was once the site of the ill-fated Hackney Downs School, controversially described in the 1990s as the "worst school in Britain". The school started out in 1876 as the Worshipful Company of Grocers Hackney Downs Boys' School, later shortened to plain Hackney Downs, though it remained an all-boys school. As a grammar school, it won an excellent reputation, with alumni including Nobel prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, fellow playwright and actor Steven Berkoff and 60s tycoon John Bloom.

In 1974, it became a comprehensive school, and inherited more than its share of the problems of this deprived inner-city borough. Just before its closure, over 70 percent of the boys spoke English as a second language, half came from households with no-one in employment, and half the intake had reading ages three years below average. Things came to a head in the 1990s, when the school made national news by being described by the then Conservative government as the 'worst school in Britain'. Eventually, as a result of direct government pressure, the school was forced to close in 1995.

The decision remains controversial to this day, opponents of the closure pointing out that Hackney Downs was singled out for special treatment by the government (presumably pour encourager les autres) and that its academic results were not significantly worse than many other inner-city comprehensives, especially considering the problems it had inherited, including the steady 'decanting' of problem pupils—who had frequently been expelled from their original schools—to Hackney Downs. Ironically, this process may have started because of the school's good reputation.

The site of the old school is now occupied by Mossbourne Community Academy, founded by Sir Clive Bourne, which opened in 2004.

While the school buildings of both the original Grocers Company School and Hackney Downs School have been replaced by the new Mossbourne Academy, the Old Boys of Hackney Downs continue their interactions as alumni through The Clove Club, which meets regularly, has its own website, and sponsors a very active "e-mail list" called "The Clove eGroup", maintained by Chris Barrett (on Yahoo), and featured on The Clove Club website.[1]

An official history of the school, written by the historian Professor Geoffrey Alderman (who was a pupil there 1955-62) was published by the Clove Club in 1971.

Notable alumni

Notes

  1. ^ The Clove's Lines: The Newsletter of The Clove Club: The Old Boys of Hackney Downs School 3.2 (Mar. 2009): 32.
  2. ^ "MC" (Michael Caine), "A Message from Evacuee Maurice Micklewhite", The Clove's Lines: The Newsletter of The Clove Club: The Old Boys of Hackney Downs School 3.2 (Mar. 2009): 16. Print. (Sent by Michael Caine to Jerry Pam for publication in this issue.)

References

O'Connor, Maureen, et al. Hackney Downs: The School That Dared to Fight. London: Cassell, 1999. ISBN 0304707104 (10). ISBN 9780304707102 (13). Print.

Watkins, G. L., ed. The Clove's Lines: The Newsletter of The Clove Club: The Old Boys of Hackney Downs School. Print. (Some issues are accessible online at the website of The Clove Club.)

–––. 'Fortune's Fool': A Life of Joe Brearley: The Man Who Taught Harold Pinter. Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Eng.: TwigBooks, 2008. Print.

External links


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