ON a day blessed with spells of sunshine interspersed with some very "beefy" showers, 27 members gathered at Downes Crediton Golf Club for the February meeting.

Grace was said by David Dornom and after Burford Cropper had delivered the loyal toast, Reg Nott gave the month’s quotation.

This posed the question “What is a senior citizen?”.

Reg, who is 90 and as a retired farmer has seen more transformation than most of us in his lifetime, gave amusing instances of changes in the way that we talk about everyday things during the past 20-30 years.

After the draw (won by Brian Healey), our guest speaker, Wilson Forster, was introduced by Russ Ballard.

Wilson was for more than 25 years head teacher of Sandford School. In a talk full of amusing quips, he gave us an account of his life and his career in teaching.

Born in Durham, and after passing the 11+, he studied music in a technical college.

From here he moved on to the Dartington College of Art near Totnes, where he studied music, photography and dance.

From Dartington he went on to teacher training at Rolle College, Exmouth.

His first appointment was to a school in the Torquay area and within three years of qualifying, he was given an acting headship in an Exeter school.

He and his wife decided to move to the Crediton area so that her children (his step-children) could be better educated and in 1984 he was appointed head of Sandford School.

When Wilson started at Sandford, 80 per cent of the parents of his pupils were employed in agriculture in some way; he told us that when he retired a few years ago, about 20 per cent were involved, so a real sea-change.

Among his other recollections the storm of January, 1990 stood out for him. Many of his school’s buildings were made unsafe and completely unusable by massive wind damage. The village of Sandford came up trumps by offering all sorts of temporary accommodation to classes so that education could continue uninterrupted.

Wilson has had a continuing interest in music, being involved with the re-establishment of Crediton Town Band and then playing in the band for many years.

He has always had an interest in international affairs and tried to introduce both a diversity of music and a world view of life to Sandford School.

Under his headship the school received an outstanding rating from Ofsted and pupil numbers spiralled during his tenure.

Whilst he made many observations on the current state-of-play in English primary education and the vastness of the changes (not necessarily for the better) since he started out in the field, he left us with the comment that in education we now tend to lose sight of the riches that it can offer and that we have become completely data-obsessed. Teaching has become a much more difficult job in the last 30 years.

John Hutton thanked Wilson for the many insights that he had given to us on primary teaching and the meeting closed with the usual toast of "To the next time!”.

KB