W H AT F E E A S S I S TA N C E MEANT TO ME Over 375 students have benefitted from a bursary since the campaign was launched in 2002. Thousands more have benefitted from government fee assistance before this. Just a few of these grateful ONs reflect on the difference the support has made to them.
T
he Bursary Campaign is such a wonderful and worthy cause, and it enabled me to experience things and open doors which I would never have had the opportunity to otherwise. LIAM BLACKBURN (99-06) Former Bursary student and now Graduate Sports Assistant
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y time at RGS was overwhelmingly positive; I have great memories and remain good friends with many from the class of ’99. Art and rugby were my main passions. I still play for Novocastrians RFC and have gone on to teach Art and Photography (inspired by the great double act of Mr Crow (93-02) and Mr EganFowler (76-13). I am now Assistant Headteacher at Queen Elizabeth High School, Hexham and hope that, as a Teacher, I can inspire young people in the same way that I was at RGS. RICHARD ZABROCKI (92-99)
I
was one of the last boys to get a Direct Grant place and, reflecting on this just days before my 60th birthday, I instinctively feel RGS made a huge difference to my life. Yet I find it hard to express why. It couldn’t have been the academic side, since I left with only two A levels. Neither was it sporting success, as I was overshadowed at school by future international players. It was something far less tangible; a confidence that –
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fter more than 40 years living in Oxford, I moved back to Newcastle after retirement. Oxford is nice enough, but has nothing close by to compare with the Cheviots or the Northumberland coast. The miracles of remote access means that I am still working on a stream of papers and books. However, with extra spare time I have been able to restore a tangible legacy of my time at RGS: a coffee table made during Woodwork classes in III.1. In retrospect it amazes
I hope – was self-assured but not too cocky. Deep down I was shy, but I desperately wanted a career in TV. My moment came during a phone call less than a year after leaving university. The Head of London Weekend Television, Michael Grade, personally telephoned to praise my audition and to offer me work. First though, he had a question: Was I good enough to present live television to an audience of eight million people? I’m certain the confidence to say, “Yes” at that moment, and at others throughout my career as a BBC Correspondent, came from my time at RGS. SIMON WILLIS (70-77)
me that ‘Bill’ Elliott (52-88) got a group of 12 year olds to master the skills required to produce tapered and chamfered legs, a dovetailed frame and a top rounded with a spoke shave. More broadly, I am eternally grateful for the social mobility promoted by the Direct Grant scheme. Without the opportunities provided by RGS I doubt I would have embarked on an academic career and life would have been very different. RUSSELL EGDELL (63-70)
I
have very little idea whether my social background matches anyone else’s during the school’s Direct Grant phase, though I already knew Henry Whitfield (57-64), from the same primary school in North Shields. Let me just say that hardly anyone on either side of my family had any experience of secondary education, none of higher. Without (I hope) sounding like the Northerner-on-Hard-Times caricatured in Monty Python, I came from a house with no inside toilet or bathroom, a situation that never changed on the wages paid by Swan Hunter to dad in the shipyard. GLENN DAVIS (57-64)
