Maylands Primary School Reports

I attended Maylands Primary School for the seven years 1949-1955. I was surprised to find, after my mother's death in 1988, that she had kept every report I'd ever received. I show them here, not because I think I'm important or even interesting, but because it may be useful for some researcher to have such a group of documents, as it's probably unusual.
One overall note: all of my class teachers were women. I can only remember one principal: he was male; I suspect that was usually the case.

In 1949 the first year at school was called 'first infants', now Year 1. I turned six years old during this year. I believe there was neither pre-school kindergarten at the time, nor a pre-primary year.
I note that Ms Ogilvie spelt my first name wrongly. She didn't pass Spelling.

This is dated June 1950. I'm halfway through Class 1 aka Standard 1 (now Year 2). My teacher, Mrs Davies, also fails Spelling (as did Ms Ogilvie the year before), getting my second name wrong.

At the end of Class 1 (aka Standard 1 = Year 2) I'm still in the 'Infants School' building on the eastern side of Sixth Avenue. (We called it 'Bubs'.) I am about to cross the road to attend the Maylands Primary School proper and enter Standard II (Year 3).

This is the worst report I ever received, not in terms of my results but in terms of paper it's written on and the penmanship of the reporter. Although we had to use pens with nibs dipped in ink, Mrs Enright has used a cheap ballpoint pen, and shows some confusion about the difference between cursive writing and printing in upper and lower case. My own handwriting throughout my reports is consistently negatively criticised.

This is the only report unsigned by the class teacher. As I remember I had a teacher called Edeline Lutz (who, like me, attended Perth Modern School) it's likely that this report was written by her.
As I recall, there were two classes in each year, and they were streamed. From this year on, I am in the A grade.

Mrs Brinkworth has written this half-yearly report with a ballpoint pen, and failed to cross one T (on 'studies'). Both she and Mr Gibbney spell my first name wrongly. My mother has been asked to sign the report. I note that three girls got better results than me. My handwriting let me down again.

This is the most detailed school report I ever received. Mrs Brinkworth clearly cared about her work.

This is the first appearance of Mr Beckett as Principal. I can only remember being caned once in my life. It was he who did it, in 1955 - out of spite - just because of his interpretation of the look on my face.

My half-year primary school report for my seventh year. These days only six years are spent in primary school. I turned 12 at the end of this year. As I recall poor Miss Ellis had to dealt with 55 students in her classroom.

I gained entry to Perth Modern School at the end of this year. Only one other student from Maylands also did: Dale Swepstone, so maybe she was one of the two people ahead of me in this class. Pity about my handwriting (again!) It's much worse now.
I doubt that Miss Ellis was actually writing reports on New Year's Eve.

See also: all my reports from Perth Modern School.

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 7 January, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/maylands/img/reports.html (it was last updated on 29 October, 2023). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.

Maylands/img/reports.html

Maylands Primary School Reports