WHEN Dave Collins applied for a post as geography teacher at Parliament Hill School in 1974, female staff and students were not allowed to wear trousers.
He said: “The girls had to wear a school uniform which was purple and grey. It was a much more formal environment.
“Teachers would not address each other by their first names, even in the staff room.”
Later this month, Mr Collins, 54, will be saying an emotional goodbye to the school in Highgate Road, now a technology college and home to more than 800 usually jeans-clad pupils. Now head of vocational education, Mr Collins says he has enjoyed every moment of his long career, but has been forced to take early retirement due to ill health.
He said: “This place is my life. I have made so many friends here. I met my wife here when she was a music teacher. But I shall be trying to keep my connections at the school and in education.”
Mr Collins, who grew up in Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town, and went to Gospel Oak Primary and Fleet School, always wanted to be a teacher.
He said: “I had some great teachers when I was at school but I also had one teacher who bullied me, from whom I had rather a rough deal. I didn’t want anyone else to go through that. I wanted to be a good teacher.’’
A degree at Oxford University was followed by a stint as a hospital porter at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where he saw the advertisement for a geography teacher.
He said: “Geography was my first love so when I saw the job I went for it. It didn’t bother me that it was a girls’ school, though I did end up starting during Valentine’s week and the girls did their best to embarrass me.
“From the beginning it was a remarkably friendly place. I have worked with great colleagues and I’ve thousands of young people and seen generations of families come through the school.
“Some of the kids who come here haven’t even been around London, so taking them to see the sights was always one of my highlights.”
While the teaching profession has seen a few changes – “it is so much more target-driven these days,” he said – Mr Collins is insistent that young people have essentially remained the same.
He added: “It’s a different world for them and there is so much more pressure on them than there used to be – to be cool, to look a certain way. The peer pressure is terrible.
“They tend to get a bad press these days but it is the same as it’s always been The majority are honest, reliable and principled.
“Unfortunately, it’s the actions of a few wayward ones that hit the headlines.”