My memories are more in line with earlier posts. I do wonder if the view you formed had anything to do with the house you were in. I was in Shackleton, house master Stanbury later Haswell when Stanbury became deputy head. My recollection was that Shakleton was fairly academic and there were some real thugs in Harvey and Drake

I was there from 61 to 68 and my recollection is that classes were streamed for most topics and that you could be in a different stream for maths and English. When I started there were 8 streams and I fell into 1.5 but 1.3 for maths.

Whilst I cant say they were the best days they weren't that bad