Category Archives: education

John Mason Charter Day

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John Mason Charter Day
The Town Crier was outside the Guildhall to welcome teachers and Year 7 students from John Mason School. Every year Year 7 comes to the Guildhall to learn about some of Abingdon’s important buildings and some of their history.
John Mason Charter Day
The Mayor, Duncan Brown welcomed everybody, then the students split into 9 different groups, and were taken on a tour of 9 different locations in the Guildhall itself, the Abbey Buildings, St Helen’s Church and the almshouses.

The Mayor held court in the Guildhall’s Council Chamber, an oak panelled room rebuilt in 1733, where he entertained the students with a talk that began with the picture of Mad King George III who lost the American colonies … looked at many other seemingly uninteresting pictures in a fun way … discovered a statue outside riddled with civil war musket fire … and ended with a picture of the town council in 1878. The students had to say what might have changed between 1878 to 2010. For a start the council in 1878 were all male, looked elderly, sported a lot of facial hair, and did not smile.
John Mason Charter Day
I have a copy of the leaflet and questionnaire the pupils carried round during the morning. It says at the start “Have fun and be a credit to John Mason“.

It was. They were.

Launch of Trinity Learning News

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Interviewing the mayor
Reporters interviewing the Mayor of Abingdon aren’t usually treated to juice and biscuits, but then the six young people who visited Duncan Brown weren’t usual reporters. They were pupils from Carswell Community Primary School, there to launch Abingdon’s new Heritage Lottery funded project Trinity Learning News.

The children took notes as the mayor fielded questions that ranged from his educational background to the work of his charities and his future hopes for Abingdon. The children’s reports will appear in their very own newsletter to be distributed free to care homes and day-centres in Abingdon.
Interviewing the mayor
From content to format and distribution, the group will make all the decisions and do all the work – in just six two-hour sessions. Besides putting classroom skills into practice, they’ll be learning about team-work, responsibility and working to deadlines.

When their time with the project finishes, a new group of youngsters from another Abingdon primary school will take their place. (Thanks to Rosemary from the Trinity Church Learning project for this report).