FILM star Miriam Margolyes joined former classmates for a 50-year reunion as ‘old girls’ paid tribute to the life lessons they learned at school.

The Harry Potter star was joined by 40 fellow former Oxford High School pupils who enjoyed a return to the “sisterhood” of their old playground friends.

The Form of ’59 travelled from as far afield as Australia, America and Italy for the event, which was organised at the request of the Bafta award-winning actress.

Oxford-born Ms Margolyes, whose parents lived in nearby Banbury Road, joked to former classmates of the girls’ private school: “We’re all here because we must have liked each other once!

“I wanted this to happen because the school was such a massive part of my life.

“However, there’s a moment of panic when you look at each other and think ‘who is that?’”

The former Blackadder star travelled from her home in Clapham and spent four hours with her former classmates before being whisked back to London where she is starring in Samuel Beckett’s play End Game in the West End.

Speaking to the Oxford Mail after her speech, she said: “This isn’t about me, it’s about the power of friendship and the bonds that were forged 50 years ago.

“Even though some of us haven’t seen each other since we left school, the school had the power to bring us back. It was a sisterhood, absolutely. I didn’t have brothers or sisters, so it was an emotional place for me.

“We had a great education here in the days people were taught things.

The teachers we had usually had lost their partners in the war and they were maiden ladies totally focused on teaching.”

In a time when a lot of women were expected to become housewives, former pupils said the school empowered them to go out into the world and achieve things.

Video footage showing school photos in the ’50s and ’60s played across TV screens in Crush Hall where ex-pupils were greeted by a portrait of their former headteacher the “formidable but kind” Violet Stack.

The former pupils then sang in Latin before sitting down for a gourmet school dinner.

Anna Truelove, who co-organised the event at the school in Belbroughton Road, North Oxford, said: “It’s been extremely enjoyable. Miriam was exactly the same as she is now – bouncy, irrepressible, but she didn’t always have very good judgement about what not to say!”

The 68-year-old, from Osney, added: “At school she was very good on stage, extremely versatile, and she was a lot of fun to be friends with.”

Fellow co-organiser Rosalyn Roulston, nee Staveley, 68, from Bladon, near Woodstock, said: “The school made me very prepared for life.

“It gave me a broad education, everything from making bamboo pipes to dress-making, to the social aspect of it.”

“Miriam was a big influence on my life. She allowed me to be a bit naughty.

“For someone whose parents are conservative with a small ‘c’, that stood me in very good stead.”

Felicity Lusk, current headteacher of the school – which this year scored the eighth best GCSE results in the country – said: “A lot of these women were enormously successful in their chosen fields, be it doctors, civil servants, the legal profession or acting.

“We have no rules here but we expect everybody to have an innate sense of self-respect and that way we look after each other.”