PUPILS set out to prove that not all teenagers are tearaways.

Youngsters at Littlemore Grammar School in Oxford helped elderly and disabled people at home after completing their examinations.

Headmaster Mr B Halliday organised a Community Service Week for several years in the mid-1960s. His idea was for pupils to be good neighbours and do a brief spell of social work “to give back something in return for what they have received”.

Instead of attending classes, 100 teenagers put on their ‘glad rags’ and set to work with jobs such as decorating and gardening.

In 1967, six fifth formers descended on the home of Dorothy Limehouse in Forest Road, Headington. The team - Hilary Paine, Rosemary Stone, Derek Simpson, Clifford Patching, Maxim Goody and David Coughlin – first set to work on her garden.

Mrs Limehouse said: “The garden looked like a haystack when they came. They really have done a terrific job and worked very hard.”

No sooner had they got the garden looking neat and trim, they decided the house needed re-decorating.

Mrs Limehouse said: “They’re a grand bunch – they have helped me so much.”

In 1965, another team were photographed helping to decorate the home of Mrs P Gardner in Sidney Street, Oxford.

Mrs Gardner chose the wallpaper, then left the six young Good Samaritans – Victor East, Alan Langford, David Taylor, Martin Rowden, Edward Garland and Edward Bainbridge – to complete the job in her back room and kitchen.