NO-ONE was left out when this school staged a variety show. All 207 pupils at SS Philip and James School in North Oxford took part in a stage spectacular which included no fewer than three productions.

Five-year-old first year pupils put their art and craft lessons to good use by making animal masks for a tableau with animal songs.

Six- and seven-year-olds worked on a music and dance sequence based on the ballet Coppelia.

Oxford Mail:

  • Hard task master: George Dent, left, with other members of staff in the 1920s

Meanwhile, eight and nine-year-olds performed an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s story, The Happy Prince, with music and lyrics by school music teacher Veronica Bennett.

When all the rehearsals were over, parents were invited to enjoy a three-in-one show at the school in 1982.

The picture right shows pupils engaged in a dance sequence from Coppelia.

Three years earlier, the school had celebrated its centenary, with many former pupils and staff attending a fete.

‘Phil and Jim’, as the school is affectionately known, owes its existence to the Rev E C Dermer, a young fellow of St John’s College, who became vicar of the nearby SS Philip and James Church in 1872.

He found a site in Leckford Road for an infants’ school which opened in 1873, with most pupils paying twopence a week.

They left at the age of seven or eight, but while there were plenty of places for girls at neighbouring schools, there was a severe shortage of places for boys.

So Mr Dermer coaxed his wealthy parishioners to give money and built a boys’ school next to the infants. Pupils were charged nine pence a week or £1 10s a year.

He saw the school, which opened in 1879, not only as an educational establishment, but also as a recruiting ground for boys for his church choir.

Headmistresses of the infants included Anglican nun Sister Mary, Emma Mills, Lizzie Gee, Miss Bramwell (who married and became Mrs Hughes), Miss Sammons, Annie Wilcox and Miss Hodge.

Among those in charge of the boys’ school were Mr C A Payne, George Gordon and George ‘Gaffer’ Dent.

Mr Dent served the school for 45 years – he joined two months before peace was declared at the end of the Boer War and left two years after peace was declared at the end of the Second World War.

He was described as a “very tall, austere-looking man, a devout Anglican, a mathematician with advanced qualifications, a fine musician who played the organ and the piano, and an extraordinarily energetic and conscientious man who recorded his activities in tiny, neat handwriting in meticulous and proud detail”.

He was well known for his use of the cane, and boys often on the receiving end composed a ditty: Mr Dent is a very good man He goes to church on Sundays Where he prays to God To give him strength To cane the boys on Mondays.

One former pupil recalled: “Boys often used to get the cane from the Gaffer. It did them no harm – he was a man you really did respect.”

One of the school’s most challenging periods was during the Second World War when it played host to evacuees from London.

The school has undergone much change since the war, but continues to play an important role in education in North Oxford.