FORMER pupils of St Peter’s Secondary School, Blackburn, who were the first to sit the new GCE exams in 1954, met up again 60 years on.

The old lads held their first reunion 10 years ago, to mark the golden anniversary of passing the newly introduced educational assessments.

This week five of them, now in their mid 70s – Bill Greenhalgh, Keith Whittaker, Ray Holt, David Howarth and Ken Ashby – met for lunch at the Bonny Inn, Salesbury, along with their old physics teacher, Fred Harrison, who is now 85.

It was in 1952, when nine of the school scholars, were invited by the school to undertake two years’ study for the new exams, rather than leave lessons for the world of work at the age of 15.

The other four were the late Brian Atkinson, along with Stewart Walsh and Paul Youd, who have both moved away from East Lancashire and Roy Benson, who the group have never been able to track down.

Indeed, they would be interested if any readers had any information about him.

The lads each studied and sat around half a dozen GCE subjects; Bill, who has sent us these photographs, passed his GCEs in maths English, English literature, art and machine drawing.

After school he went into engineering and took a student apprenticeship at Northrop in Blackburn.

St Peter’s School, which was the forerunner of St Wilfrid’s, and the adjacent St Peter’s Church, were set at the end of St Peter Street.

Bill remembers that the following year, in 1955, two pupils who took GCEs continued into further education and then on to university.