THESE children learned the art of dancing from professionals. Two members of a dance company spent a week at Bishop Kirk School in Summertown, Oxford, in 1983 teaching them steps.

And at the end, the children put on two performances of a dance show, much to the delight of audiences of parents, friends and fellow pupils.

Anthony Waller, 23, and Jenny Carr, 22, belonged to the Little Kids’ Construction Company from Birmingham, which sent dancers to schools and colleges to work with students and pupils and produce a show at the end of their stay.

The pupils at Bishop Kirk had been studying rivers as a classroom project, so it made sense that rivers should play a part in their stage production.

They told the story of the path of a river from its source to the sea in a series of dances.

In the photograph, right, Anthony Waller is pictured with some of the 60 first-year children, aged nine and 10, who took part.

The school in Middle Way, named after Kenneth Kirk, Bishop of Oxford from 1937 to 1954, opened in 1965, but did not start too promisingly.

The 240 boys and girls started the first term two weeks late because building work was still going on.

Costing £54,000 and designed by architect Gerald Banks, of Bicester, it was the first church school to be built in the city for many years.

The official opening in October 1966 was performed by the Bishop’s son, Peter, MP for Saffron Walden, and attended by other members of the Kirk family.

School activities featured regularly in the columns of the Oxford Mail – in 1968, for example, pupils won a national trophy for collecting hundreds of two-shilling Post Office saving stamps.

Pupils took part in a sponsored swim to raise £127 for the British Heart Foundation in 1974, organised a concert in aid of Oxfam in 1975, ran a jumble sale for the blind in 1980 and walked from Charlbury to Summertown in 1986 to support earthquake victims in Mexico.

The same year, 1986, saw the school footballers finish a glorious third in the Smith’s six-a-side competition at Wembley, which attracted teams from 8,500 junior schools throughout the country.

The school’s days, however, would soon be numbered. A drop in the number of pupils meant that two middle schools in North Oxford could not be sustained. Bishop Kirk closed in 1990 and united with Summertown to form the new Frideswide Middle School off Marston Ferry Road.

Any memories of Bishop Kirk School to share with readers? Write and let me know.