History

Torquay Rotary Award Presentation at Upton St James CofE Primary School

 

First opened in 1896 the Upton St James CofE Primary School is now under the leadership of Head Teacher, Mrs Mardon.  Her philosophy, and that of her school, is that pupils are encouraged to ‘rise to their best’ by being enabled to learn and achieve.

 

To help support the school in this endeavour two members of Torquay Rotary, Lorna Milnes and Graham Doodson, attended the July end of term awards ceremony where they had the pleasure of seeing so many delighted pupils receive awards for their hard work and achievements.  Lorna, as Torquay Rotary Youth Lead, has been a long-time supporter for several local schools by organising Safety Books for children, inter-school competitions and presenting dictionaries and prizes donated by Torquay Rotary.

 

On this occasion Lorna and Graham presented pictorial dictionaries to Year Six school leavers and book token prizes to Pupil Leaders and Deputy Pupil Leader.

 

An additional and much welcomed visitor was Lorraine Edwards who was Head Girl at Upton St James in 1952.  She took along some photographs of her time at the school where she passed her eleven plus and then went on to attend Torquay Girls Grammar School.  Having looked around the school Lorraine explained to the pupils how it had changed since she attended.  The rooms were more or less the same but virtually everything else had been altered and improved.  She recollected that pupils had to climb the stairs to the Head Teachers office where the ‘nit-nurse’ would inspect all of the pupils and also that pupils were provided with a bottle of milk each day that froze in winter and was very warm in summer!  Another very noticeable change was that in 1952 the only way to get to the ‘lavs’ was to go through a dark air raid shelter!  

 

Thank goodness those days are over and that this popular and successful school has a bright and rewarding future to look forward to!