The slick salesman who lives in the corner prefab on Woodhedge Road was always in pole position in the race for top prestige position on the estate. This financial colossus did not just have a telephone. He had a Ford Popular car and a television set as well (which made it the estate's one and only 'triple crown'!) A squad of post office engineers was sent to put up a telephone pole up just for his prefab. This made it 'pole' position twice over.
Everyone expected the son of the slick salesman to sail through the eleven plus examination and win a scholastic 'gold' (a place at the grammar school.) And sail through the eleven plus he did. Our own platoon on the estate won two 'golds', two 'silvers' (places at the technical school), and six 'bronzes' (places at the secondary modern schools.) "Both the prefabs and Britain always punch above their weight!" said the slick salesman's son to Stan Malcolm from Camelot Green. (From then on Stan, who goes to school which is 'approved', would call him an "Irredeemably elitest swine!")
When the time came for us to leave what the slick salesman's son called "the gemeinschaft world of our small primary school" for "the gesellschaft world of the big secondary school" it was like moving from a classless utopia into a quasi-fascist state. Friendships were broken up, and former pals like Len Flanders started to hurl bitter canards at his ex-buddies who sported blazers from the technical and grammar school. "You lot think see yourseves as being oh so superior to us sec. mod. types!" When his schooling was completed Len pinned his certificate of secondary education (CSE) up on his bedroom wall (he called it "the poor man's consolation prize") and plotted revenge. Soon he found a lucratve niche in the building supply industry. It was his determination to prove the mentally challenged inventors of eleven plus IQ classifications wrong which gave him an unrelenting hunger to succeed. He did not hang around his old residence in Shores Way for long. (Which is just as well as the houses in Shores Way have weak foundations and are built on top of a disused coalmine. The residents have yet to be told.)
The slick salesman's son was all for grammar schools. "How on earth am I going to escape from the prefabs without them!" he would say. "It would be a comprehensive disaster" if everyone went to the same type of secondary school. "Standards would collapse, pupils like the low-achieving Swileys would rule the roost, and civilization and culture in the Matthew Arnold sense would go to the dogs! That is why I am apprehensive about the comprehensive!" No wonder the picture above the mantelpiece in the slick salesman's prefab was that of Matthew Arnold.

Matthew Arnold (1822-88) on culture:
"the best which has been thought and said."

In 1959 the Bath & Wilting sent one of its junior reporters, an eager-beaver called Rees-Mogg, to find out how many kids on our prefab estate attended fee-paying schools. His article - "No prefab kids at Harrow, they prefer schools which are 'approved'", provoked a barrage of angry responses (Oddly enough they were mainly from people called Waugh.) The phrase "self-pitying hogwash!" was used by a Mr A. Waugh (Junior.) Mr E. Waugh (Senior) declared that prefab estates like ours "were awash with bursaries and scholarships to our top public schools. I have been told on good authority that the upper-sixth at Winchester is absolutely infested with the children of prefab-dwellers from Twiverton!"
'Ossie' from prefab number seventeen was beaten uo in Bath city centre just because he was wearing a (borrowed) Bath Technical College scarf. Who knows what these thugs would have done do he had been wearing a Clifton College scarf. Len Flanders might moan about his time at East Hill sec.mod. but at least he was given some driving lessons there. Those of us who were sent to Weymouth House Technical School (1873-1973) had to put up with having creepy woodwork lessons from a knuckle-dustered teddy boy!