ABSTRACT
It was a traditional girls’ grammar school with a high academic reputation. As such, it attracted pupils from a wide area. Now it is in the process of becoming comprehensive, and as a result the catchment area has been reduced somewhat. The school is located on the outskirts of a large conurbation. An arterial road passes close by. Well kept parks give it almost the atmosphere of being within a green belt, marking off the city from the dormitory towns beyond. Housing is estate, both private and council. As population has moved further out from the conurbation there is a sense in which the estates, built in the 1920s and 1930s, have been left behind. Elsewhere, the phrase ‘lacking a pulse’ has been employed to describe this. The school is an imposing building, red brick and porticoed, within its own acres. Over a thousand pupils attend the school, of which only 5-10 per cent may be classified as coloured. These are mainly of Asian origin. There is some correlation between the comprehensive intake and the latter.
