Mr D Woosley

"Downer Grammar School started in 1952; I don't say opened for that happened some four years later (actually nearer two years) and looking back over the last eighteen years it is the first four that I would prefer to forget, and yet these years are the most vivid.

We assembled on the first morning, 19 staff and 400 pupils, in the main Classroom Block.  To get there we had to climb over mountains of rubble and builders' litter and once we were inside, there we had to stay, because this was the only part of the building that was finished.  The Hall, Gym, Science Block and Art Block had not even been started and no playground space was available at all.

Lunches were brought in containers and the present Library was used as a Dining Hall and as an Assembly Room.

The only warmth in the building came from paraffin heaters in each room.  We worked as best we could to the accompaniment of concrete mixers, circular saws ripping through half-inch thick asbestos and heavy lorries delivering the ever mounting supply of builders' materials.  We had a sense of elation as each new building was handed over.

Finally in 1955 the school was officially opened by The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Stepney, Joost de Blank, M.A.  (see 'opening ceremony' cutting).  Our peace was very very short-lived as it was found that somehow eight classrooms had been omitted and these were then added to the existing classroom block to be followed by the building of the Physics Block and the Lecture Theatre.

Staff and pupils were very hard pressed and our first examination results were understandably mediocre but these rapidly improved in quality and now we are well above the national average.

Shields in the Entrance Hall indicate the Universities from which pupils have graduated and the Academic Honours Board indicates the great variety of subjects that have been read.  We have been fortunate in the quality and the dedication of the staff in these formative years; there has always been a most friendly atmosphere in the Common Room and this I feel has permeated downwards through the school.

On the games side we have held our own with schools much larger than ourselves and we have established a good tradition in Music and Drama.

I have always been impressed by the way in which the senior pupils and especially the Sixth Form have accepted responsibility and have become stable and complete individuals with minds of their own.  They have shown discerning judgement and are not merely 'yes men'.  My Visitors' Book indicated how regularly former pupils return for a chat or to talk over problems and this to me is probably the most rewarding part of my job.

The school is now a thriving entity; opportunities are there for the taking.  There is scope for individuals to make great contributions to the communal life and to receive much from it, but how much benefit is derived from it depends upon you.

I am looking back nostalgically over eighteen years; I see some failures, I see many successes.  You should be looking forward to the rest of your stay here, confident that you can achieve even greater things, so that when the time comes for you to leave you may feel that you have enjoyed this phase of your life, that you have gained a great deal in every way from it and that you have in some way, however small, enhanced the good name of the school."

In 2007 one of Mr Woosley's staff said that he had been "a Solomon".