Fred
Was Dennis Rd a Secondary Modern School when you were there? When I was there the years were divided into three group a b & c or 1 2 & 3 if you preferred the brightest being in group 1 or A. It was standard thing when I was there. As for the racism Mr Tebbut the deputy head master who took 4.1 was one of the most racist teachers I ever met and he wasn't backward at passing his views on,
At that time we had one Jamaican lad and one Maltese lad in our class, they had been with us since the first year so I don't know what they thought of him. But one day halfway through our final year he told us that the following week that there would be two new Asian pupils in our class and then he proceeded to let us have his views on Asians. The man was the worse bigot I had ever met. Of course in those days you couldn't say a word, because your life wouldn't have been worth living. It wasn't long after this that I stopped attending school and never went back some three or four months before I officially left,