AT Horndale infants and nursery school, rated “outstanding” by Ofsted and pretty much saturated by superlatives, it’s a day for dressing up – children and teachers – as characters from literature.

Mrs Copeland, taking a class of six-year-olds, wears a curly wig and asks her charges who they think she looks like.

A couple of them suggest Mrs Brown. Mrs Brown’s Boys is a foul mouthed, post-watershed television programme in which the title role is played by a bloke.

“I’m not sure you should be watching Mrs Brown,” says Mrs Copeland, gently.

Margaret Courtney, the headteacher, is watching from the back of the group. “Some of the children can be quite challenging,” she says.

“Some of them even swear in the nursery class, but we tell them it’s not what we want to hear in school and they forget it.”

She retires on Friday after 47 years in teaching, 29 as head of Horndale, in Newton Aycliffe, and not far short of her 68th birthday. “I just didn’t feel ready to stop. I didn’t feel old enough,” she says. “The staff are very strong and committed, we were proud of those Ofsted reports and I wanted to help sustain it. School’s a generally joyful place. I’m going to miss it very much.”

BORN and raised in Bishop Auckland, she returned there – Etherley Lane primary – for her first teaching post after college. It was a class of 42, seated at orderly rows of desks, subject to what she calls a daily regime of chalk and talk, pencil and paper.

“The headmaster walked around with a cane in his hand and occasionally he would use it. Things were very much more formal in those days.”

She taught subsequently at Sedgefield and at Ox Close primary in Spennymoor – the school where her husband George later became headteacher, though many might better recall him as an international football referee. They met at a dance to find Miss Byers Green.

After deputy headships at Broom Cottages, near Ferryhill, and at Bessemer Park school in Spennymoor she was appointed to Horndale at the age of 38.

The school’s mission statement talks of nurturing the child’s social, emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual growth; Ofsted suggests mission accomplished.

“Parents are highly appreciative of the individual care and attention their children receive and of the outstanding progress they are making,” said the last report.

“The school’s continued success and maintenance of high quality provision are down to the total commitment and dedication of the headteacher, staff and governors.”

Mrs Courtney, in her office by 8am as usual, says that she feels a loyalty both to her 150 children and to their families. “We find that social services are much more involved with families than they were previously.

“There’s so much that walks through that door, so much that needs your attention. The biggest satisfaction is seeing children achieve all that they can do.”

EVEN the little ones have a School Council, elections held at the same time as their parliamentary elders. “I will take you inside if you have a bad knee,” promised one aspirant, adding that she would also buy a huge climbing frame for the playground. Cause and effect? You just can’t trust these politicians.

IT’S the second of two schools on Scholars Path. Whether Scholars Path should have an apostrophe – yes, it should – is not a matter likely much to engage the reception class nor indeed the ladies and gentlemen of Ofsted, though the local government Ombudsman may need to be informed.

The school seems remarkably quiet, disciplined, respectful. The head’s office is quite small, desk and bookcases piled tidily with paperwork, two CCTV screens underlying the constant need for security. Administration has increased enormously, she says.

Electronic communication is wonderful, says Mrs Courtney – even the nursery has access to computers, to tablets that know nothing of GP surgery, to the inter-active white board – but it still hasn’t toppled the paper mountain.

Much of it cascades from on high, successive Secretaries of State for Education. “Let’s just say that some of the initiatives have been more successful than others,” says Mrs Courtney. “I’ve been lucky, I’ve been able to tackle them one at a time. People becoming heads now have to face them all at once.”

One of the national initiatives is the Pupil Premium, paid to schools for every child considered to be vulnerable, to have special educational needs or who receives free meals. The latest statistics show that almost half Horndale’s children qualify.

“One of the most noticeable changes is that in the parents themselves,” says Mrs Courtney. “When I started, many mothers stayed at home through choice. Children were often more sensible and more mature than sometimes they are today.

“Parents had more input, they were more supportive. We get a lot of children into nursery who can’t even tell you a nursery rhyme. Most parents when I started made sure that their children were very well mannered. That isn’t always the case today, either.

“In many ways life was simpler then, there wasn’t so much pressure. We have lots of support staff. You can’t necessarily rely on parents to help their children to read or with their homework. It’s a very well resourced school.

“You need to be patient, understanding, always available for parents because some of them aren’t very good at making appointments.

SHE has little interest in football, not much more in golf, her husband’s twin obsession. “I tried golf once, took lessons, but they said I hadn’t an eye for the ball. I just might try it again.”

Together they plan to see the world, separately to keep fit. She’ll most miss the children and “some” of the staff, least miss what she calls the aggravation, the parental misunderstandings and teachers who aren’t quite as good as they think they are.

In the hall the tables are being prepared for lunch, in the adjoining classrooms Horndale’s children are quietly being brought to books. It seems somehow to be new old school, and much to be learned from it.

RECORDING the passing of Ian Allan, a train spotters’ icon, last week’s column ventured right back to Timothy Hackworth Junior Mixed, Shildon in the mid-1950s.

The column was garlanded with the story of the 7/6d book token for finishing top of the class and illustrated with the “combined” Ian Allan Abc from 1962-63. So how come, asks the observant Neil McKay, it said £3.65 on the cover?

It was a facsimile, produced much later, that’s how.

Neil also works out, correctly, that in 1962-63 I’d have been 16. “I would imagine your ma would have been pretty disappointed if you hadn’t made top of the class at Timothy Hackwroth by then. It may well explain why the lass Margaret Wanless decided to emigrate, however.”