Lessons often take a back seat at this time of year as pupils rehearse and perform their Christmas shows.
Over the years, the Oxford Mail has featured hundreds of school productions which have delighted families in the run-up to the festive season.
Picture 1 shows a ferocious dragon which was the centrepiece of Brize Norton Primary School’s mummers play in 1972.
The school had chosen to tell the story of St George and the dragon and a Turkish knight, hoping it wouldn’t frighten too many people in the audience.
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Our sister paper, the Witney Gazette, reported: “A vicious animal that has been terrorising the Brize Norton area will be methodically tracked down by a gallant gentleman and righteously slaughtered. Justice and right will triumph in the end.”
The play, written by headmaster Mr Upjohn and a colleague, was so popular that in the two weeks before Christmas, the young cast – and the dragon - performed at schools in Alvescot, Aston, Bampton, Clanfield, Filkins and Longford as well as their own. Wolvercote First School’s choice of Christmas production in 1986 was Roald Dahl’s children’s story, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Adam Dale and Hannah Beardsworth, both eight, as Willy Wonka and Charlie, are seen in Picture 2 with the Oompa Loompas – from left, Peter Marlantes, Jon Parsons, Raphael Barnett, Adam Scaldwell, Keith Smith, J K Charlesworth and Mark Strong.
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The show, with a cast of 30, was produced by the school’s acting headmistress, Caroline Wynburne.
The pantomime at New Marston First School in Oxford in 1984 was Little Mookra, a Middle Eastern tale of a boy who is robbed of almost everything.
All he is left with are a donkey, a dagger and a pair of magic slippers. All 155 pupils at the school in Copse Lane, Headington - some seen in Picture 3 - took part in the production. They gave one show to elderly people in the local Silver Liners club and another to parents.
There were plenty of bright colours at Garsington nursery school when 58 youngsters, aged three to five, in Picture 4, entertained their families with their Nativity play in 1978.
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Picture 5 shows pupils at Lawn Upton School at Littlemore performing Prince Aladdin in 1976.
And in Picture 6, we see the cast of the Nativity play at Finstock Primary School, near Witney, in 2001.
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