Hymers Goes Co-Ed!

Soon after Bryan Bass (Headmaster 1983-90) arrived as Headmaster of Hymers in 1983, he envisaged the need for the school to become a successful co-educational establishment. Single-sex institutions were becoming rarer – witness the move towards mixed colleges at Oxford and Cambridge – and it seemed only right that boys and girls should experience in their schooling the kind of mixed environment that they would eventually encounter in the outside world.

However, Bryan was to encounter hostility from many in the Old Boy Community and Governors. There was also concern among potential parents that competition from girls would mean that their sons might not gain a place at the school. And surely the quality of the sports teams would suffer with fewer boys from whom to select? If I remember right, twice the proposition was put before the Governors that the school should go co-ed, and twice it was voted down. After the second time, I remember bumping into Professor Patmore, a pro-co-ed governor, on Brough Station who said how tired Bryan Bass looked having ‘lost’ yet again. One influential governor publicly denounced Mr Bass for what he was trying to do. 

During the 1980s, I did some work for the Cambridge Examination Board visiting and advising schools on their proposals to submit coursework for one third of the A-level assessment. While spending days in several co-educational schools in various parts of the country, I invariably felt that the atmosphere was happy and relaxed in the right way, and seemed natural. This was most apparent at Oakham School which gave me an insight into what a co-ed Hymers might be like, and persuaded me when Bryan Bass asked the staff their opinion to support co-ed. Only one member of staff was adamantly against it. Eventually, partly through the patience and careful guidance of Stephen Martin, Deputy Chair and then Chair of Governors, the Board voted for co-ed. Did they do it for educational reasons? I am not sure. I suspect that the more powerful argument was that Hymers is run as a business that requires fee income, and what business thrives that refuses to do business with 50% of the population?

I was delighted that Georgia, OH 1989-91 and Philippa, OH 1989-95, two of my daughters, could join the school as it began to go co-ed in 1989, with my third daughter Eleanor, OH 1993-98, joining four years later. As Director of Sixth Form from 1990 to 2006, a period when co-education at Hymers was settling in, I was in a particularly good position to watch how it was going: and what I saw, especially after the completion in 1995 of the new JCR with my office and classroom adjacent to it, was how boys and girls became used to working and recreating with each other in a natural environment. The cliché is that the boys become less physical and the girls less spiteful. I’m not sure about that; but what I did notice - as well as the natural physical attraction between the sexes – was the building of healthy working together and platonic relationships which have endured long after leaving school. These things I know as facts from the many OHs of both genders with whom I have kept in contact over the years.

I bear in mind in particular one occasion when I knew that co-education had become a natural way of being. It was during my 1995 production of Guys and Dolls that we had a big cast and used the sports hall as an extension to the green room. As part of a large cast, there were a dozen or so girls from Years 11 to 13 who made up the chorus of ‘Hot Box’ girls, and they had to do a quick change behind a curtain. Where were the chorus of boys? Not trying to get a surreptitious peep, as my contemporaries might have done, but up the other end of the sports hall playing football. They had simply become used to each other.

Before co-education, the examination results were good, but as Bryan Bass predicted, with co-ed the academic education and quality of examination results flourished. And the sports teams? Far from suffering, not only were the boys' rugby and cricket teams as strong as ever, but we were fielding girls' hockey and netball teams which were beating the best of their rivals. Music and drama went from strength to strength. All these things have continued over the past 35 years.

Neil King, Director of Sixth Form and Head of English, OH Staff 1974-2006

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