SECONDARY modern schools are long gone, along with the days when a child’s future was largely defined by how well they did in an exam at the age of 11.

But they are certainly not forgotten, as the memories collected together in Van Wilson’s excellent book The Best Years Of Our Lives? demonstrate.

We’ve dipped into Van’s book, which gathers together the recollections of pupils and teachers at York’s secondary schools between 1900 and 1985, a couple of times before. But it’s so good we make no apologies for doing so again.

Often, the 11plus exam was pretty arbitrary. Eileen Carter was a teacher at Derwent Secondary Modern School in York in the 1970s. “When I came into teaching, you could see there were a lot of children at the top end of secondary moderns that were just as good as kids at the bottom end of grammar schools,” she says, in an interview recorded for Van's book. “You could have interchanged them without any problem.”

A lot of children who went to Derwent actually did very well at their O-levels, Eileen recalls. But there was no doubt that secondary moderns suffered compared to grammar schools in terms of resources and facilities. “We taught the bulk of the kids and got the least resources,” she says. “The money should have been evenly spread and we should all have had a fair crack of the whip.”

Nevertheless, teachers at Derwent did their best, Eileen says. “A lot of secondary moderns did well because they were smaller, there was a lot of dedicated teachers and the kids responded.” There were some excellent sports teams, and teachers such as Eileen took children youth hostelling, and did other activities. “I taught a lot of kids who weren’t academic and some of them struggled but we did all sorts of things with them,” she recalls. “We took them to Hull Docks, Bradford Industrial Museum, The Treasurer’s House, on river trips. We did traffic surveys, job interviews, a lot of music and shows and plays.”

Neal Guppy, of Guppy’s Enterprise Club, also taught at Derwent in the early 1970s, before his club took off. He loved the fact that it was a mixed school, with boys and girls together. “It takes men all their time to understand women, through the whole length of life,” he says in Van’s book.

To Neal, schools which separated boys and girls didn’t make sense. Having both at Derwent made it a happy school. “I think the girls softened things.”

Not that the two sexes were really interested in the same things, he admits. Neal taught physics, chemistry and biology. “Lads enjoy mechanical things, electrical things, gadgets,” he says in the book. “Girls are more concerned with the biology and the animal side of things, by and large. I was teaching how fuses work… and this girl was taking no interest whatsoever. I said, ‘You want to learn this. You’re at home, you want to iron your dress before you go out on a Friday night, your parents are out and a fuse goes. What are you going to do?’ ‘Oh, that’s easy sir, I’ll go to the next door neighbour’s and ask him to do it!’”

Douglas Church went to another York secondary modern, Manor, from 1930 to 1934. He remembers learning to swim in the basement pool. “You’d to sit on the side of the baths and Mrs Gibson would push you in. She was in charge of swimming and also PT. I must admit some of the men teachers were chasing her and thought her attractive, very well made.” Then there was the chemistry lab. “The teacher, Stinky Bell, looked as though he was dying on his feet. He looked like Gandhi… he had Bunsen burners and different equipment and made smells, but he never showed any enthusiasm.”

• The Best Years Of Our Lives? Secondary Education In York 1900-1985, by Van Wilson, is published by York Archaeological Trust, priced £9.99. It is available from good local bookshops.