WHEN money was needed for a good cause, these children were happy to put their best foot forward.

A new minibus was needed for their school and it would have been easy to sit back and wait for others to provide the cash.

But the pupils of Wood Farm First School in Headington, Oxford, were made of sterner stuff than that. They set off to raise the money themselves.

Lessons were cancelled one bright sunny afternoon in 1984 and everyone trooped out into the school grounds for a sponsored walk.

All 225 pupils, aged five to nine, completed as many laps as their legs could stand.

Most had been sponsored by family and friends and soon the money for the minibus fund was rolling in.

A sum of £4,000 was needed to buy the second-hand vehicle, which was to be shared by the school and community groups at Wood Farm, including the youth club and an old people’s club.

Various fundraising events had been held earlier in the year and there was already about £1,500 in the kitty, almost halfway towards the target.

The school, in Titup Hall Drive, was one of two schools which opened within 17 months as families moved on to the new estate in the mid-1950s.

The junior school opened on a six-acre site in April 1955. As soon as that had been completed, work began next door on the infants’ department, which opened in September 1956.

The two schools catered for all young children at Wood Farm and the neighbouring Town Furze estate.

The Oxford Mail published two lengthy articles coinciding with the opening of the schools.

The infants’ school cost £46,890 and had six classrooms and space for 240 pupils, who would stay for just under three years.

It had six women teachers, under headmistress Miss K Andrews.

The primary, which cost £52,000, was designed to cater for up to 320 pupils, who would stay for four years.

It had eight classrooms, a stage for theatrical activities, and an assembly hall for indoor recreation and gymnastics. It was linked to the infants by a covered way. Equipment included a sewing machine supplied by Singer and a 16mm movie film projector and another projector for film strips supplied by Will R Rose, the well-known Oxford photographic shop.

One early pupil recalled placing pennies around the school playground to raise money for a swimming pool and being an angel in a school nativity play. Another remembered being in the school choir, singing In the Bleak Mid Winter at the annual nativity – and some tomfoolery.

She tells me: “We were standing on benches at the back and several of us fell off. I suspect some pushing and shoving went on.”

* Do you recognise yourself or anyone else in the picture above? And did the school get its minibus?