School celebrating 70th anniversary opens doors to former pupils
Former staff and pupils from a Derby primary school are being invited to help celebrate its 70th anniversary. They will be able to take a tour around, look through old photographs and reminisce about their time learning and working at St John Fisher Catholic Academy in Alvaston.[1]
One of the school’s longest-serving members of staff, Elaine Sanger, is looking forward to the anniversary celebrations. A cover teacher at the school, Mrs Sanger teaches classes across the school. Next year, she will have been at the school for 30 years, plus two years before that as a volunteer.
She said: “Children have been my life. When I joined the school as a teaching assistant, the head teacher at the time was a nun called Sister Laetitia, who founded the school at the nearby Convent of Mercy in January 1953.
Later, Mrs Sanger became a higher-level teaching assistant and studied for a degree in education whilst working at St John Fisher, which is now part of the St Ralph Sherwin Catholic Multi Academy Trust.[2]
She said: “I see parents who I used to teach picking their children up from school. It’s nice to see the generations come through. Lots of children here will say to me ‘you’ve taught my mum or dad’ and then they ask how old I am. I’ve worked for 11 head teachers and I have seen lots of changes but I’ve also seen things come full circle.
“This school is very important to the community and the children, we are like one big family. We are one of the smaller schools in Derby and we all work together, it’s great and I can’t imagine life without St John Fisher. I’ve still got the drive in me and I want to carry on learning. I am looking forward to the anniversary and it will be nice to see some old faces.”
Sue Paxton started school at St John Fisher in 1965. She went on to become a teaching assistant there and her own children attended the Alvaston Street school.
Sue said she has some great memories of school, including a visit to the Tutankhamun tomb in the early 1970s at the British Museum in London, with the nuns who taught her. She said: “We did lots of fun stuff, it was really, really good, I remember from my first day to my leaving day, it was really good fun, I loved it.
“They took us to Wembley. To watch the ladies’ England hockey final. The nuns took us, we’d all been knitting a long scarf, and we looped it between us all so we could all hold onto it in the crowds, so nobody got lost. I remember Sister Gertrude hanging on at the back.
“One of my favourite memories was school dinners. If you got the monitor job at the table, you knew you were going to have the biggest dinner out of everyone at the table.”
Current head teacher Saul Ratcliffe is hoping many people will come along to celebrate the school’s platinum anniversary. He said: “I feel extremely privileged to be head at this historic time.
“Having been involved here since September 2020, I have seen a number of changes, mainly from the pandemic, however, one thing that stands out is the support of the staff and parents. It will be a great opportunity for the children to be part of this historic event, something I hope they remember for a number of years to come, maybe even as a part of the 100th celebrations in 2053.”
The event will take place from 4.30pm to 7pm on Tuesday, June 20 and earlier the same day at 2pm, the Bishop of Nottingham, Patrick McKinney, will celebrate Mass with current pupils and staff in the school grounds.
References
- ^ St John Fisher Catholic Academy in Alvaston. (www.derbytelegraph.co.uk)
- ^ St Ralph Sherwin Catholic Multi Academy Trust. (www.derbytelegraph.co.uk)