Nice view - for some of us

[Katharine]

Just edited it, Maggie, it should have said Upper Sixth, not Lower Sixth.

My 18th birthday was the last day of the holidays so champagne at home!!!

[Angela Woodford]

When I was in the Flat, there were six of us in the Senior Sixth and six places in the Flat - so all the rest of our year group had left school but we hadn't. I did not feel that it was unfair to anyone else that we were there.

I cannot defend the creation of the Flat, but I did enjoy it while I was there - but still felt I was a member of 6s. By the way, there were so many of us in my year that I was still sleeping in a dormitory of 16 while I was in the Upper Sixth, that I did resent. It hadn't happened to any other Sixth Formers in my time!

I don't think you could have felt you were still a member of 6s Katharine - or else you would have realised the misery your still-in-House peers were inflicting on the youngest members! I remember you breezing in and out during one of those agonising report-to-the-Study sessions. I was nearly in tears, but had managed not to break down.

To me that Flat represented the ultimate school apartheid.

The A and B streams. The labelling of one's abilities at a much too early age. The way that genuine talent and ability was ignored unless in a universally recognised good-at-something girl! It still makes me mad.

And to top it all, the most favoured were granted privacy and, as you have mentioned previously, the freedom to be themselves for part of the day. You have posted before that you used to say "If they could see us now.."

However, I do see that you must have hated sleeping in a dorm at such an advanced age - I don't blame you personally for feeling pleased at being a Flat member. It's just the principle of the whole thing that was so wrong.

Munch

[englishangel]

My final year only Carolynn was in Senior sixth, becasue she changed courses, and she stayed the entire year. By then Oxbridge Entrance was done in Upper sixth.

Strangely several of my children's contemporaries are staying on at their Upper School becasue they have changed their A Level subjects.

[icomefromalanddownunder]

quote="englishangel"]My final year only Carolynn was in Senior sixth, becasue she changed courses, and she stayed the entire year. By then Oxbridge Entrance was done in Upper sixth.

Strangely several of my children's contemporaries are staying on at their Upper School becasue they have changed their A Level subjects.[/quote]


What about Alex?

She was in the flat when Mary Mc and I visited at Christmas 72.

[icomefromalanddownunder]

PS:

Dear Mary (V), please hurriedly confirm/deny, as I am in one of my 'Ooohh, er, other people are online at the same time as I' moods, and I really need to head off to the supermarket to purchase cat food.

Public holiday here today to celebrate Lizzie's birthday. Quite a laugh, really, and I wonder whether we will lose this privilege if we ever become a republic.

So far I have written increasingly sarcastic comments over boring, boring assignments I have been given to mark (the undergrads are told that they will get them back, marked, within 2 weeks of submission. They submitted them two weeks ago last Friday: the day on which they were passed to me for marking) and managed to put my monitor to rights. Swish (Burmese), not content with leaving a dead mouse on my desk chair, tapdanced on my keyboard and, somehow, turned the display through 90 degrees.

But enough whingeing - need to see whether you have replied yet