BRIGG GUINEA PIGS

Hands up if you were at Brigg Grammar School in the early 1970s and became an educational guinea pig.
Economics was introduced as an A-level subject. The two-year course involved us having only two lessons a week in the classroom, taken by a visiting lecturer from North Lindsey College, Scunthorpe.
The bulk of the course was by correspondence. Parcels of work arrived by post and you worked your way through the syllabus. Distance learning?
We spent most of the free time which resulted from having only two set lessons a week playing darts and cards in the sixth form common room.
However, great credit is due to the lecturer. Even one of his least able students managed an A-level pass. If only of very low grade.
It was a very interesting subject, overlapping into history and geography. So if you knew a bit about those, it certainly helped.
Elastic demand for goods and services and the influence of John Maynard Keynes' theories on the British economy are topics covered that spring readily to mind, even after all these years.
We are pleased we took the course. This showed forward-thinking on the part of Brigg Grammar School, which was so traditional in many other ways. 
We were also at BGS on the final day of Saturday morning school in July 1968. Pupils  used to get Wednesday afternoons off but had to go in from 9am to 12.30 on Saturdays, which everyone hated. In this respect we envied our former Glebe Road Primary School friends who had gone to Glanford Secondary Modern after the 11-plus!