WHAT FEE ASSISTANCE 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.

The 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

My 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) A 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

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)

Iwas 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 far less tangible; a confidence that –I hope –was self-assured but not too cocky.

Deep down I was shy, but I desperately wanted a career in TV. My international players. It was something

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) 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)

From the very first day at RGS, if it were ‘sink or swim’, I swam. The variety of experiences we underwent was phenomenal, whether academic, sporting, musical, dramatic or extra-curricular.

Although we Direct Grant boys were all put into the same form, we felt fully integrated into the life of the school from day one, although it might be more accurate and fair to say that I certainly did. If I were to list the never being fully aware of the ins and outs of the system, although it seemed that there were specific categories of people who were eligible for awards, and that these were predominantly boys from state schools. There were two ‘Governors’ Scholarships’ awarded each year based on performance in the entrance exam, and I was granted one of these.

I only spent three years in the Senior School as my family moved away from Tyneside in 1961, and I spent the rest of my school career in the state sector. There's no doubt in my mind that what I received in those three years, in terms of the education itself without the vision of my parents and the good fortune of having an inspiring primary school Teacher in Morpeth. I sat the RGS entrance exam and was awarded a scholarship that enabled me to take up the place. I loved Maths and Physics and, to the amazement of my more sportingly gifted contemporaries, was good at rowing! These were areas where going to RGS made a huge difference to me. benefits, which accrued to me/us as a result of seven years in the school, it would be almost never-ending.

Statistics show that social mobility has decreased in recent years. I frequently ask myself whether children today whose fathers are postmen, clerks or manual workers will finish up as well educated and qualified as we, who were from that very background. Sadly we all know the answer.

We were never allowed to become arrogant, but I have always felt that those years at RGS gave me a selfconfidence to pit myself against anybody; certain that I would be as good as them and quite possibly, better.

Dei gratia novocastriensis.

Iwas awarded my Direct Grant in 1958,

DAVID KEMP (53-60) and the competition that existed among my peers, stood me in very good stead later on when it came to O levels, A levels, and Oxford entrance.

I suspect that without the fee assistance my parents would have struggled to meet the cost, and I also suspect that the fee inflation of the last 20 years or so has meant that many parents today face a significantly greater struggle. So I’m grateful for the privilege I received and the opportunities it opened up for me, and I’m pleased that, 60 years on, young people still have the chance to benefit as I did.

JOHN SMITHSON (55-61) Without the breadth of opportunity offered by RGS, which at that time fortunately included rowing, I would have missed out on something that has been, and still is, a key part of my life. Whilst my work took me away from the North East, my roots are there. I am pleased to be able to make a contribution through the Bursary Campaign to help give other students access to a great school of the North. JOHN TURNBULL (60-67) M y mother was frustrated by her lack of a formal education and her efforts at self-improvement were extraordinary, it was clear how much education meant to her, not only as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. I always knew that I was attending RGS not only for myself, and the life opportunities it would give me, but as a vicarious means for her to experience a grammar school education. The debt I owe RGS and the debt I owe my mother only became truly apparent when I was in the process of establishing my own school.

RICHARD LORNIE (57-62)

Ivery fondly remember my school number, 6375! I was very fortunate to attend RGS 56-64 which was my passport for life. It was a life-changing event during which I made lifelong friendships and developed an enduring love of learning and sport.

My gratitude goes to all those who cared for and educated me, particularly Messrs Don Meaken (24-65) and JC Nicholls (53-86), who fostered an interest in geography and the environment. This provided the bedrock for my life-long career as a Chartered Town Planner (including a spell as a Fife Council Chief Official) and later as a self-employed planning consultant. I hooked for the successful First XV 1963-64 coached by John Elders (57-82 and 9296) (which included the likes of: Steve Lawson (53-64); Vic Crew (58-64); George Hogg (5764); Brian Briscoe (56-63); Ian Cheyne (54-64) and the Hazelwood twins – David (57-63) and Johnathan (57-65) would field high balls as we forwards tried to hit him simultaneously!

Iwould never have gone to RGS

BRYAN WALLACE (56-64)

Having had a career as a Nuclear Submarine Engineer Officer, I retired from the Royal Navy in the rank of Vice Admiral as Chief of Fleet Support and Chief of Materiel Fleet, responsible for all the Navy’s new equipment and support of existing ships and submarines. I was knighted by the Queen in March 2013. All down to the opportunity that my reserve place at RGS created.

SIR ANDREW MATTHEWS (69-76)