BFES-SCEA-Association

Welcome to the BFES-SCEA-Association

The one Association for all who currently work, or have worked, with Service Children's Education abroad.

Are you currently working as a teacher or a locally employed member of staff, have you recently left, or will you soon be leaving SCE? Have you worked for any of SCE's predecessors, such as SCS, SCEA or BFES? If so then you are eligible to join.
This is an opportunity to keep up with friends, present and former colleagues. It will allow you to keep up with what is going on in SCE around the world. There are also opportunities for you to enjoy professional and social functions. Please consider seriously joining the BFES-SCE Association! A copy of the quarterly newsletter is sent to every SCE school.

By joining the BFES-SCE Association you will be entitled and enabled to:

Maintain and revive friendships
Attend annual re-unions, local and national
Have access to the growing archive stored at the London University's Institute of Education.
Receive the termly Newsletter of the Association, and contribute to it.

To join, or find the membership form, click on 'home' and 'membership'

To find newsletters - for latest - click 'home' [on left side of homepage menu bar, above this notice] and you'll find latest newsletter [member password protected]
for other recent newsletters - click 'more' [right side of homepage menu bar]
for older newsletters [#30 to #38] - click 'Old Newsletters' [on homepage menu bar]

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Updated 8th July 2020
Correction to staffing lists of Barnes Wallis First School, RAF Bruggen and Victoria Primary School, Dortmund.

Updated 4th July 2020
item re passing of Sue Nichols
item re passing of Peter Carmichael
(see NOTICEBOARD, from 'Home' dropdown)

Updated 17 June 2020
Walter's offers

Updated 4th May
item re Jean Corey

Updated 22nd April 2020
item re Peter Bentley

Updated 18th April 2020
updated News, item re Stuart Rees-Johnson, additions to Gallery (Paul Cunningham photos), additions to Sandhurst pictures under 'Events'

Updated 17th March
Coronavirus update - cancelling events

'Events'
Latest News - see also 'Noticeboard'

(drop down under 'Home')

Events for April and May 2020 are cancelled because of Covid 19 restrictions.

We trust all members are safe in their homes and are surviving the 'lock-down' in good spirits. Should you be worried for yourself or for any of our members, please contact one of the committee and we will do what we can to help.

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BFES/SCE Association 2019 AGM and association lunch was held at Sandhurst Military Academy, Berkshire on Saturday 5th October 2019.

This was our 50th AGM & lunch (what a milestone!) and was attended by a record 91 members and guests. The agenda, previous minutes and committee reports can be found at a link under the 'List of Members' dropdown tab (click 'more' on bar above)
(members' password required).

It was a memorable day in a wonderful setting. Members and guests were treated to a tour of the old college, an excellent lunch and an organ mini-recital in the main chapel. Thank you to all involved, but most especially to Sue Adams, committee member for events and Jackie Rance, member, who arranged the recital.

Photos and any video files will be found under 'Events'

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Cambridge lunch was 7th September ...... photos will be here shortly! (really)

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Visit to the Defence Sixth Form College Welbeck

Our Chair - Ken Jones - has secured an agreement that we can both have a visit and hold our 2020 AGM at Welbeck College in October 2020. The plan is that we have an initial visit around the college hosted by students, have our AGM and then finish with lunch, again hosted by the students, with members paying for the lunch. Further details will be published in the Spring 2020 Issue of the Newsletter .

THIS EVENT IS LIKELY TO BE CANCELLED (due to Coronavirus - C19) - more information when confirmed, we hope postponement to 2021 is possible

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Gutersloh Music Centre hosted a BFG Closing Celebration on Saturday 22nd June

One of the highlights was this specially written song:
Sung here on June 2019 by choirs of Attenborough, Bishopspark, Bielefeld, Haig and John Buchan Schools .... Dave Reeves (Music teacher, Gutersloh Music Centre) composed this song especially .... the words give a pocket history of BFG and its schools. More than 90 known BFG and BAOR school locations are mentioned.

We have a video - but we are not sharing this for now, until we are sure there are no issues regarding permissions. However, we also have a great sound recording (thank you BFBS) .... click the 'go' triangle on the sound bar below.

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Good homes wanted before they become firewood!

Your webmaster was able to liberate the plaques and boards below from the 'portacabins' at Upavon, late in 2015. They are too large for our archives and good homes are sought. Offers please to the web-master. Delivery almost anywhere in UK may be possible.

stop press - the 'Alex Harvey opening of SCE in 1997' has been adopted - thank you Tom N-M

Here below is #1 of an occasional series ... 'Spot the school' !

Answers on email to webmaster, please (via link at bottom of this page ... scroll down)

For a bonus.... what decade?

We have a winner!

Tom Jordan writes ....
The school is Haig School, Gutersloh. I was therein the 80s. I think this may be 1990s?

It is indeed Haig School, but a few years later - this picture was 2003, I think. The car mirror is my 2000 purple Skoda Octavia (still running in 2018, several registrations later & recently spotted with Spanish plates in Fuengirola).

Haig's head from mid 90s until late 2003 was Brian Ashton. Mike Chislett took the school on for most of 2003/4 and then Tony Berwick was appointed from UK (Milton Keynes). Tony oversaw a major overhaul to the building, which included a new office and reception area where the blue sign and fir tree are in the photo.

Your web-site editor thanks Tom and wonders what a suitable prize might be? Perhaps one of the fine boards on the left? Meanwhile, on right is another school .... any takers?

Here above is #2 of the occasional series ... 'Spot the school' !

There were no winners to this one .... it is Hackedahl, in Detmold .... this picture dates from about 2005, long after the school and the housing estate it served had been handed back. When the photo was taken, the building was in use as a youth centre.

# 3 below - message the webmaster, if you know where and [even better] when ....

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How to add to the BFES Archives .....

when schools close, history is lost unless documentary material is collected, boxed and given to us! We (or at least, Walter - our archivist) - sift and catalogue, then transport the priceless records to the Institute of Education, in London. Once safely there, any future historian and ex-teachers, pupils, parents, can gain access, subject to data protection rules. Here are some examples from Blankenhagen's closure in 2016. Blankenhagen Primary School, had previously been named Andrew Humphrey School. When RAF Gutersloh became Princess Royal Barracks, the school changed name; Griffin School at RAF Wildenrath took on the title of 'Andrew Humphrey'.

Staff Photograph 1978

Staff Photograph 2016

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Much of the information on this web-site and in the Association's Newsletters comes from the attics/albums of ex-teachers' own memorabilia which they have kindly donated. This history of our schools eventually makes its way into our archives held at the IoE at University College London.

Below are two examples of such donations, from Marian Andrews (Nee Riley) of her colleagues at Marlborough First School, Osnabruck; 1981 - 1884.

Marlborough Staff May 1982

Peter Owens, Kate Johnson, Sheila McCafferty, Charlotte Wilkinsin, Marion Riley, Mary Brennan, Eileen Hilton, Glyn Pascoe.
Maria Wardlaw, Roisin Wellard, Patsy Hope, Eric Wilson,?, Anne Bull, Jinty Cowie

Marlborough Staff May 1984

??, ??, Sheila McCafferty, Marian Riley, Paula Clarke, Lesley Bayley, Sue King, Dawn Turner, Patsy Hope, Viv Evans, Joan Hunt, Peter Owens, Jinty Cowie, Anne Robbins, Moira Nicholl.

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Summer 2015 saw the closures of the schools in Hohne/Fallingbostel Garrisons.

A significant quantity of memorabilia, documents and photographs were collected and sent to the Association's

archivist. Much of this has now been sorted, annotated, catalogued and deposited in the Association's archives at the

Institute of Education, University College London.

The final box of material from Gloucester School, Hohne was deposited on in November 2015.

Some examples are included on our Archives page.

Staff of Gloucester School, Hohne, 1996

Association Committee

The following members were nominated, seconded and unanimously elected to the Committee in Autumn 2018, to serve for the next twelve months:
Chairman - Ken Jones
Vice-Chair - Walter Lewis
Events Co-ordinator - Sue Adams,
Treasurer - Janet Bradley,
Secretary - Lynn Marshall,
Archivist - Walter Lewis.
Website Manager - Mike Chislett,
Membership Secretaries - Hugh & Christine Ritchie,
Newsletter Editor - Tom Nielsen-Marsh

This photograph, 1964 Hohne Ladies Teachers' mess, and some others displayed on the Archives pages, is taken from " Tommy Atkins' Children" - the story of the Education of Army's Children, 1675 - 1970, by Colonel NT St John Williams BA, HMSO 1071

John Trevelyan, the founding Director of BFES is quoted in 1946 as follows:-

'Never in the history of education endeavour have people chosen so bad a time and so bad a place to begin an entirely new venture with so little to meet so many possibilities.'

This statement is made on the establishment of the British Families Education Service, BFES, Germany, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

" The new Director of BFES was John Trevelyan who was a brilliant administrator and very capable of handling Commanding Officers to secure buildings on army sites which would make satisfactory schools. We were able in the first year (1947) to establish, with the help of the army, having schools form Flensburg on the Danish border to Frankfurt in the south and Berlin in the east." - extract from the brief memories of Arabella Kurdi (nee Pallister). More on the Archives page.

The Association's Archive Page

- contains multifarious items, including documents, photographs, records, memorabilia and artefacts. This archive is constantly being added to and is proving of great interest to historians as well as to members of the Association.

As schools close, we ask staff in those schools to send log books, photographs, documents, etc to the Association's Archivist as part of the close-down procedure. This material has a significant historical interest for the future.

Your web-master has moved a number of items from this section to other pages of this site - mainly photographs to 'Archive 2', so that nothing is lost as I gradually re-organise this wonderful web-resource.

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Schools operating today - Go to the 'Schools' Page and open the link to give you access to all the schools websites showing how they operate today and catch up with their day to day activities. All the schools in the Hohne/Fallingbostel area closed in July 2015. They have contributed a significant amount of material to the Association's Archives. Much of this has been deposited with our professional archivist colleagues at the Institute of Education, University College, London.

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Committee Meeting - Union Jack Club - London 2015

How to make contact with Committee Members

Membership Secretary: Click here
Archivist: Click here
General Matters: Association Secretary: Click here
Website Manager: Click here

Just click on the relevant link to open a new e-mail message.

If you wish to join the Association, please click join us