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George Dixons Grammar School

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After my time when we had green blazers the school changed to dark red or burgundy blazers with black trousers. Has anyone seen the current uniform? I think is is very smart. Black Bazers with light blue edging and they have reverted to the GD shield and mural crown
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DavidGrain said:
After my time when we had green blazers the school changed to dark red or burgundy blazers with black trousers. Has anyone seen the current uniform? I think is is very smart. Black Bazers with light blue edging and they have reverted to the GD shield and mural crown
143736.png
Click to expand...

I am a traditionalist. There are cars driving round which carry an MG badge, but they are not real MGs. Equally, black with blue may look smart but, for me, this is not the school that I went to. I think I still have my Old Dixonian tie somewhere, though it is too well-used to wear.
 
It is not the school that any of us went to. It went from being one of the best schools in Birmingham to being a sink school. The City Council tried to close it at one time but the school went over the heads of the City and got the government to give it grant maintained status. This no longer applies but at one stage it was calling itself George Dixon International School with a badge saying GDIS. My sister who went to the Girls Grammar School pointed out that the so called 'international' school did not list a single foreign language in the subjects taught there. Hopefully as an Academy perhaps it will get back to being a school to be proud of again.
 
You are spot on. When it was the self-styled international school, I was contacted by the then head teacher who was trying to enlist support (financial mainly) from former pupils. As I told him then, the school that I attended had ceased to exist. I worry that this makes me sound elitist, when I am not. Its simply that if you change something beyond a certain point, it is no longer the same thing. I was by no means the perfect grammar school pupil, but I value what my grammar school education gave me.
 
BrumBum said:
I was by no means the perfect grammar school pupil, but I value what my grammar school education gave me.
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were any of us BrumBum! I think the kids who sucked up to the masters tended to get 'sorted out' by the rest of us! I was in the A stream for all but one of my terms at GD and yet I was a cheeky sod, gave as good as I got (of course within reason, or we would have been beaten to death!) and had my likes and dislikes as regards teachers and subjects. But I was proud to represent the school and wear the school colours at rugby and I felt really great if I surprised a teacher or myself with a particularly good grade in a subject I was weak at. I saddens me to read about the fate of the school as recounted above (particularly being a professional translator and interpreter, I find it reprehensible bordering on masquerading that the school could call itself International and not offer a single modern language), and I second the hope that some kind of a recovery is on the way.
Right, rant over!
 
Valmy said:
were any of us BrumBum! I think the kids who sucked up to the masters tended to get 'sorted out' by the rest of us! I was in the A stream for all but one of my terms at GD and yet I was a cheeky sod, gave as good as I got (of course within reason, or we would have been beaten to death!) and had my likes and dislikes as regards teachers and subjects. But I was proud to represent the school and wear the school colours at rugby and I felt really great if I surprised a teacher or myself with a particularly good grade in a subject I was weak at. I saddens me to read about the fate of the school as recounted above (particularly being a professional translator and interpreter, I find it reprehensible bordering on masquerading that the school could call itself International and not offer a single modern language), and I second the hope that some kind of a recovery is on the way.
Right, rant over!
Click to expand...

Valmy (et al),

Couldn't resist the urge to post an image of my well-worn Old Dixonian tie.Old Dix 001.jpg
 
I think at that time when it was calling itself an international school, it must have taught foreign languages but just was incompetent enough not to list them on its website. At least the current Academy does list French, German, Spanish and Urdu.
I think the claim to be an international school was because it was one of the first schools in the country to enter pupils for the International Baccalaureate as an alternative to the GCSE O levels.
 
must say i am enjoying reading your memories of GD...some of them have made me laugh...

note to david...david you must be wearing very well if you went back to GD IN 1906 LOL...i would love to travel back to those days how on earth did you do it:D

lyn
 
Does any one know why the Metro was so called; I know it was underground but you couldn't catch a train down there?
I remember that there were safety buttons dotted about the room so that the power could be cut if someone caught his tie, tongue, or anything else that was dangling, in the machinery. Strangely, the restoration of power needed a trip into the girls school via a locked door. In the beginning, Harry Hayes did the restoring but soon got fed up. In his wisdom, he appointed me to do it, ( I told you I owed him a lot ). My first trip was not without trepidation, (I'd witnessed a hockey match between the boy's and girl's schools where few of the boys finished in one piece, physically or mentally), but subsequent visits were fine......... and very frequent. In fact, incidents requiring power shutdowns rose exponentially until Harry thought it best that two of us should go. What he hoped to gain by this I'm not sure. He needn't have bothered because one day we opened the door and there waiting for us stood a woman teacher who looked as if she might have a job in an abattoir in her spare time. After that, visits went down to near zero. Anyone caught in a machine who couldn't reach a button for himself was on his own.
 
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No I never knew why it was called Metro. I don't know if it was some play on Metal Workshop. I think I had only one term on metal work and that was not every week as we alternated with woodwork but I was no good at either. Good job I never did an engineering apprenticeship. I think we were supposed to make a coat hook but I never got as far as bending the hook.
 
Until the day I left, I found GD to be an unfathomable maze. I remember certain areas such as the main hall with it’s ‘In and Out’ doors, (you went through the wrong door at the risk of having your forelock ripped out), the quadrangle where running was a capital offence, the Metro with it’s ’Dumb Waiter’, (was that to feed prisoners when it was a dungeon?), and the Lecture Theatre but the rest of the layout was a complete mystery.
I had good cause to remember the Lecture Theatre and not just because that was where Trout recruited me for the Danes cricket team. My father had made a radio using sub-miniature valves out of a hearing aid - in those days, hearing aids were the size of half a house brick and were hung round your neck. He managed to squeeze the radio and battery into a small, flat tobacco tin complete with volume and tuning controls. Two wires hung from the tin; one had a brown headphone the size of a small doughnut on the end and the other, which acted as an aerial, terminated in a crocodile clip. By putting the tin in the inside pocket of my blazer, dropping the headphone wire down my sleeve and attaching the crocodile clip on to any convenient passing metal structure, I could wander around with my hand to my head looking as if I was suffering from earache while listening to the radio, (sorry, wireless).
One day in the Lecture Theatre, while supposedly watching a biology film, I had connected the crocodile clip to the radiator and was listening to the test match. The volume was flat out because the film was so noisy. By the middle of the film most people had dozed off as usual but suddenly the film stopped and, apart from a little gentle snoring, the only sound to be heard was someone bellowing, “ ..and Bedser comes in to bowl from the pavilion end..” As I was frantically trying to turn the damn thing off and extricate the earpiece which had hooked itself to a shirt button, I was aware of the person who was nominally in charge of us, coming towards me with one hand extended and the other pointing at the wireless. He spent the rest of the film listening to the test match but was kind enough to pass on the score now and again. In the end I nodded off with the rest. I saw him several times in the afternoon; he appeared to be suffering from earache.

(Change is inevitable ...............except from a vending machine)
 
Moira Male said:
Hi Janet,

I also started at G.D. in 1953, in form 2a, Miss Green was our form mistress - she later married and became MRS. CHATWIN. I was in contact with her until about 2003. I remember Miss Saul - just about the best teacher in the school and your first form mistress. Also Miss Mason, English. Miss Ore, Geography. Miss Player, History. Miss Montgomery, Latin. Miss Streather (later), Biology. Miss Currie, R.E. Mrs. Evans, Domestic Science.

I have a photo of Janet Lewis and Linda McAndrew (from your form) taken on the playing field when they were in Lower V.b. From 2a you may remember Carol Brown, Penny Daly, Pauline Griffiths, with whom I kept in touch. Also Suzanne Gooden, Elinor Hockley , Monica Elton, Suzanne Bailey, Nesta Clarke, Geraldine Fowler, Norma Clark.

It is 50 years since I last lived in Birmingham, but did make a trip there a couple of years ago which included a visit to the school. It looked very small in comparison to my memory of it.

Happy days indeed.

Moira
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I haven't been on this forum for years but have just found it again. You have brought back some memories by mentioning those names. Yes, you are right about Miss Saul. She spent ages trying to instill some mathematical knowledge into me. Someone mentioned that Miss Ore became head after Miss Organ. Do you know anything about that? Do you remember Miss Barber, a wonderful music teacher? Do you remember Miss Whelan who became Mrs Fox? Who with Miss Mason and Miss Gray took a group of us to Paris and the French Alps in 1956 on a bi-lingual camp with a group of girls from Evreux. I think it included Monica Elton and Suzanne Gooden whom you mentioned.
In my class there were Judith Wilson. Mary Willetts, Joy Williams, Andrea Williams and me, Janet Williams but my nickname was Fuzzy because of my unruly hair. I would love to know what happened to Mary Willetts. She left GD after two or three years as her family moved to Oxford. I went to stay with her there once and we corresponded for some years but eventually lost touch. I left Birmingham fifty three years ago.
 
I have not been on this forum for some time, but I did attend George Dixons from 1947 -1952. Many memories, some good some bad. I did attend a reunion some years ago and was wondering if there might be another one coming up this year. I am trying to recall the full name of the woodworking teacher Mr. ?? Showell in 1947 who wrote a book on woodworking. My name is Jim Harris. (Hurricaneplanes)
 
Actongrumpy said:
Until the day I left, I found GD to be an unfathomable maze. I remember certain areas such as the main hall with it’s ‘In and Out’ doors, (you went through the wrong door at the risk of having your forelock ripped out), the quadrangle where running was a capital offence, the Metro with it’s ’Dumb Waiter’, (was that to feed prisoners when it was a dungeon?), and the Lecture Theatre but the rest of the layout was a complete mystery.
I had good cause to remember the Lecture Theatre and not just because that was where Trout recruited me for the Danes cricket team. My father had made a radio using sub-miniature valves out of a hearing aid - in those days, hearing aids were the size of half a house brick and were hung round your neck. He managed to squeeze the radio and battery into a small, flat tobacco tin complete with volume and tuning controls. Two wires hung from the tin; one had a brown headphone the size of a small doughnut on the end and the other, which acted as an aerial, terminated in a crocodile clip. By putting the tin in the inside pocket of my blazer, dropping the headphone wire down my sleeve and attaching the crocodile clip on to any convenient passing metal structure, I could wander around with my hand to my head looking as if I was suffering from earache while listening to the radio, (sorry, wireless).
One day in the Lecture Theatre, while supposedly watching a biology film, I had connected the crocodile clip to the radiator and was listening to the test match. The volume was flat out because the film was so noisy. By the middle of the film most people had dozed off as usual but suddenly the film stopped and, apart from a little gentle snoring, the only sound to be heard was someone bellowing, “ ..and Bedser comes in to bowl from the pavilion end..” As I was frantically trying to turn the damn thing off and extricate the earpiece which had hooked itself to a shirt button, I was aware of the person who was nominally in charge of us, coming towards me with one hand extended and the other pointing at the wireless. He spent the rest of the film listening to the test match but was kind enough to pass on the score now and again. In the end I nodded off with the rest. I saw him several times in the afternoon; he appeared to be suffering from earache.

(Change is inevitable ...............except from a vending machine)
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The lecture theatre you mention was used by both schools and had a door into each school at each side.
 
I just found the forum last night, but recognise some teacher/student names that have been mentioned.
I was there from 1963 until 1971 - started off in Miss Dyer's class 1D, when the forms were called after the teacher's name. Miss Organ was the headteacher, closely followed by Miss Orr, when Miss Organ became ill.
Miss Barber was the music teacher
Miss Davis taught English
Mrs Parkinson taught German
Mrs McColl taught maths
We had to do DS & needlework unless you opted to do German in the 2nd year !
We did have a reunion in Birmingham many years ago, but I only keep in touch with one friend from those days - Christine Lilley.
Have great memories of doing a Gilbert & Sullivan "Ruddigore" in 1971 with the boys school.
Very happy memories ! Can anyone remember them ?
 
Welcome to the Forum Christine. We have had a run of stories about the Boys School, hope you can bring memories of the Girls School. Wasn't 1971 about the time that they merged the sixth forms of the two schools.
 
Thanks David.
My memory is that after I left in 1971, the school became a comprehensive the following year.
A few of us went back for a visit in the late 90's and it looked so tatty & rundown that we were shocked.
Hopefully others can add onto my memories of the girl's school soon.
Did any of the boys reading this take part in "Ruddigore" with the girls in 1971 ?
 
Christine Palmer said:
I just found the forum last night, but recognise some teacher/student names that have been mentioned.
I was there from 1963 until 1971 - started off in Miss Dyer's class 1D, when the forms were called after the teacher's name. Miss Organ was the headteacher, closely followed by Miss Orr, when Miss Organ became ill.
Miss Barber was the music teacher
Miss Davis taught English
Mrs Parkinson taught German
Mrs McColl taught maths
We had to do DS & needlework unless you opted to do German in the 2nd year !
We did have a reunion in Birmingham many years ago, but I only keep in touch with one friend from those days - Christine Lilley.
Have great memories of doing a Gilbert & Sullivan "Ruddigore" in 1971 with the boys school.
Very happy memories ! Can anyone remember them ?
Click to expand...
 
Hello Christine,
We must have been in the same year but I was in 1E - Miss Sowman's form. I remember all the teachers you mention, as well as Mr Colley, the only male teacher, who taught Latin, and was teased mercilessly. Do you remember (very rare) dancing in the hall on wet lunchtimes to an old Dansette? Big green knickers for PE and being allowed to take the top off the pinafore when the form teacher conceded you had "outgrown" it
Very happy memories for me from 1963-70. I went back with my husband some years ago, told the receptionist I had been head girl there (true), and was allowed to walk around (out of term-time). I found it hard to get my bearings as it had all changed so much - no more ante-hall etc - where you used to buy lunch tickets and there was a PE office, where you went when you felt unwell. All felt very different - no more honours boards around the old school hall - too elitist, I guess!
 
Hurricaneplanes said:
I have still got my GD tie and it must be 70 years old. When are they going to have another open day
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My dad went to George Dixon's. He would have been there in the 40s I think. His name was John Mason. His best mate at school had the surname Savage, not sure of his first name though.
 
An image of the City Road Edgbaston site. (From Library of Birmingham Archives). Viv.

image.jpeg
Edit. As per #150 below :
There is actually an error in the caption as the school started in the 1880s in Bridge Street in a former Cadbury's factory before moving to Oozells Street.

 
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Christine Palmer said:
I just found the forum last night, but recognise some teacher/student names that have been mentioned.
I was there from 1963 until 1971 - started off in Miss Dyer's class 1D, when the forms were called after the teacher's name. Miss Organ was the headteacher, closely followed by Miss Orr, when Miss Organ became ill.
Miss Barber was the music teacher
Miss Davis taught English
Mrs Parkinson taught German
Mrs McColl taught maths
We had to do DS & needlework unless you opted to do German in the 2nd year !
We did have a reunion in Birmingham many years ago, but I only keep in touch with one friend from those days - Christine Lilley.
Have great memories of doing a Gilbert & Sullivan "Ruddigore" in 1971 with the boys school.
Very happy memories ! Can anyone remember them ?
Click to expand...
 
Hi Christine,

I posted a reply some time ago, but incorrectly, so that it appears later in this thread. I think we must have been in the same fo.rm. I was there 1963-70
 
Hi there
I've just found Brummy babby's reply from July - so sorry ! Yes - we must have been there at the same time - there were several girls in 1E that I remember : Penny Cleaver being one of them. Your surname must have been A to G, because 1D started at H.
We did have a reunion about 20 years ago in Birmingham - did you go to that ? It was organised by Sally Hyde.
I still have my straw boater - remember those ?!
I'll see if you reply to this before writing any more obscure memories !
 
Christine Palmer said:
Hi there
I've just found Brummy babby's reply from July - so sorry ! Yes - we must have been there at the same time - there were several girls in 1E that I remember : Penny Cleaver being one of them. Your surname must have been A to G, because 1D started at H.
We did have a reunion about 20 years ago in Birmingham - did you go to that ? It was organised by Sally Hyde.
I still have my straw boater - remember those ?!
I'll see if you reply to this before writing any more obscure memories !
Click to expand...
 
Indeed it was - I was Cynthia Cottrell - does that ring a bell? I remember Penny Cleaver, Noelle Bott, Pamela Forrest, Diane Crocombe - and so many others! Good to hear from you!
 
Vivienne14 said:
An image of the City Road Edgbaston site. (From Library of Birmingham Archives). Viv.

View attachment 119404
Click to expand...

Thanks for that photo Viv. Actually I found a copy of it earlier this year in Staffordshire Archives (no idea why it was there as that area was never in Staffs).

There is actually an error in the caption as the school started in the 1880s in Bridge Street in a former Cadbury's factory before moving to Oozells Street.
 
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