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Harold Minns - Deputy Headmaster

Found this on the internet in 2016 at http://www.wilfrid.com/people/harold_minns.htm

It shows a remarkable man whereas us kids just thought he was "rotten Mr Minns"

From the Post, Saturday June 29, 1974

MR. MINNS RETIRING

NATIONALLY, the turnover of teachers in Secondary Schools is over 20%.

“This high rate is not altogether healthy for schools or their local communities,” an education spokesman told “The ‘Post”. Bognor Regis Schools are perhaps fortunate in having a number of long-serving teachers who have provided invaluable stability and continuity within their schools and also played a full part in town life. One such is Mr. Harold Minns, who retires at the end of this term after 45 years of teaching in Bognor.

Mr. Minns has taught not only the parents of many pupils at the school today but also their grandparents. He was born and bred in Portsmouth and won a scholarship to Portsmouth Northern Grammar School. When he finished there, he spent a year as a student teacher earning the princely sum of £2 a month.

From 1927-9 he attended St. Luke’s Training College, Exeter. taking five main subjects, English, Maths, Music, English and Art. At the end of his training he secured a post at the all-age Lyon Street School (Headmaster - Mr. Tommy Clarkson).

Mr. Minns’s first class had 56 pupils with an age range of 9-14; this was at a time when pupils were promoted to a higher class solely on attainment

When schools were reorganised in 1938, Mr. Minns took a post as a P.E. and Music specialist in the newly-built Senior Boys’ School in Westloats Lane (Headmaster Mr. F. G. Groves); apart from War Service he has stayed in the same building ever since, but has participated in the continuing series of change and growth in a number of roles.

In 1946 the school became the Secondary Modern School for boys and then in 1959 it became co-educational, as the William Fletcher School. “0” Level courses began under the new headmaster, Mr. W. J. Witham.

When this school was amalgamated with the Grammar School in 1967 to form one of the six biggest comprehensive schools in the country, Harold Minns took on his present post of Head of Third Year consisting of 400 + pupils.

One of his greatest strengths has always been his versatility.

Some of his busiest times were during the war, when as well as his teaching duties, he undertook instruction of the Air Training Corps and billeting duties for the evacuation took the local Home Guard for P.E., was an Air Raid Warden, and taught in the Evening Institute. When John Stanley, who also still teaches at Bognor Regis Lower School, was called up, he took over the school gardens, selling the produce for the School Fund.

Eventually, after volunteering for the R.A.F., he was called up to serve 22months in the Army, where he followed his early interest in radios by becoming a Telecommunications Mechanic in the R.E.M.E. He was based in Kenya when eventually demobbed.

After the war Mr. Minns served as a Special Constable for 20 years, and became a familiar figure unravelling week-end traffic in the vicinity of the railway gates.

He has always obtained great pleasure from music and has tried to share it with others. Many will remember in the 40’s and 50’s the massed choirs of over 120 boys which he trained from a school only 300 strong. For five to six years he also helped train the choir at St. John’s Church, and now he is still a stalwart in the bass section of the St. Wilfrid’s Church choir.

In recent years he has taken major parts in school musicals such as “H.M.S. Pinafore” and “Pirates of Penzance”.

Mr. Minns belonged to an Amateur Theatrical Group before the war and since then has produced a number of school plays.

He used to generate such interest in the Boys’ School that he would put on two separate casts for each play; one cast would perform on Thursday, the other on Friday, and the best performers from each cast would give the final performance on Saturday.

A keen athlete and sportsman himself, Mr. Minns recalls with pride the years before the war when he and Mr. Bert Meggitt trained the Bognor Boys’ Football Team, which they entered for the England Boys’ Shield. Amongst the best of the boys, he recalls Ron Jones, Norman Wells, Ray Strange and Jimmy Lloyd.

Bert Meggitt, a lifelong friend and colleague, is another who gave his whole career to Bognor Schools; he retired from Bognor Regis School about four years ago.

Mr. Minns has seen many changes through his career - some good, some bad. When he first started teaching, only three or four of his class each year had chances of going forward to Grammar School and Higher Education; now every single pupil has that chance.

On the other hand, as schools and the community have grown in size the corporate spirit has declined and many of the traditional days and events have disappeared.

For instance, many will recall how on Empire Day, May 24, all the children were “crocodiled” to the sea front when a town dignitary would give every one a bun and an orange prior to the half-day holiday.

Armistice Day each year was the most serious occasion in the school calendar.

A less serious one, although it could have been tragic, was on Coronation Day when 2,000-odd children were assembled for celebrations on the Hampshire Avenue Recreation Ground.

Among-the celebrations was a display in which the Fire Brigade was to put out a fire in the arena. When the fire was lit it went up like a torch because unbeknown, a well-meaning official had poured on petrol to give the children a bit of a spectacle.

The fire-engine arrived at break-neck speed as the surrounding marquees were peppered and singed by flaming fragments, whilst excited children milled around.

Mr. Minns lives with his wife Thelma at 7 Highland Avenue, Bognor Regis. He has two daughters; Margaret, who is married and now living in the U.S.A., and Moira, who has now happily recovered from severe injuries sustained in a car accident some months ago.

Mr. Minns will not be giving up work and interests at the end of the term.

For some time he has been both a Manager of Nyewood Church of England School and a member of the Parochial Church Council of St. Wilfrid’s, but, watch it, children, he will also be back at school again next year as a part-time Mathematics teacher, a department in which he is a successful senior member.

When Mr. Minns retires, Mr. Ron Preston will become the School’s longest serving member of the staff. He came in 1938, but that is another long story.