Pupils at Headington Secondary School in Oxford made frequent appearances on television.

School work was regularly featured on the screen, according to Reflections, the school magazine in 1957 when the school was celebrating its 21st anniversary.

Ken Hudson, of Waverley Avenue, Kidlington, whose father Robert Soapy' Hudson taught maths and woodwork at the school, sent in a copy, It revealed that TV had shown pupils making a metal weathervane, Christmas cakes, an electric kiln and pottery, and weaving, spinning and morris dancing.

There had also been a programme on the school's adoption of an Arctic trawler.

In fact, the school - better known as Margaret Road School - was the first in the city to have a television set.

It was chosen to take part in an experiment because headmaster Cyril Eason was a member of the school television sub-committee of the School Broadcasting Council.

It was investigating whether television had a part to play in teaching.

Headington children had been able to see explorers in the Antarctic, rockets in the United States and cricket in England.

At that time, the Independent Television Authority had been screening experimental broadcasts for schools.

The magazine reported: "The school programmes have helped both schools and the programme planners to find out how television can best be used in schools.

"The programmes have dealt with observation in science, leaving school, the International Geophysical Year and foreigners who live in Britain.

"Television can do things and show us things more vividly than any other way.

"But a television set will be used to poor purpose if it is merely a little window looking into a studio classroom where the same things are being done that can be done in our classrooms, with the disadvantage that the set cannot answer questions, while a teacher can.

"When television shows us the wonderful works of nature and of man, then it is enriching and helping our school experience."

The school was looking forward to the following term when programmes would be available every day from both the BBC and ITV There was further excitement in the school when another example of modern technology was presented by the parent- teacher association - a tape recorder that pupils used to compile their own radio shows.

More from the magazine soon.