JIVE classes, rock ‘n’ roll music echoing around the school, pupils learning about the space race and roast beef and syrup sponge pudding on the menu all helped to recreate the era of 1957 as Anstey Junior School in Alton celebrated its 60th anniversary.

The whole school entered into the spirit of the birthday celebrations on June 16.

The women teachers wore flowing, summer print, 1950s-style dresses and the masters donned leather jackets or suits and ties with waistcoats, while each class was set a project to work on a different period of the 60-year history of the junior school.

It’s hard to believe that the school building is 60 years old, because with its light, bright architecture and large windows it looks like it has just been built.

The reason it was built was to ease the overcrowding of existing schools in the town and it opened with 316 pupils – against a capacity of 320 – with children from town schools as well as outlying villages such as Shalden and Beech.

The first headmaster was a Mr Kerridge and the present-day headmistress – few women were appointed as head of schools in the 1950s – is Jenny Jones.

Recalling that first opening day, deputy headteacher Rachel McGrath said: “Pupils who came from Alton Infant School had to carry their chairs up to here so they could start lessons.”

Although the school building is unchanged, much of the way education is now delivered has and, sadly, some of it reflects the times we live in.

Security on the front gates and doors means you can no longer walk into a school, there is no more free milk at playtime, and a health and safety protocol is in place to govern what playground games can be played.

And discipline has to be maintained in a different way as teachers can no longer smack or cane children or keep them in after school.

But teaching is more relaxed and pupils have more freedom to express themselves in airy classrooms. Or during break time, if they don’t want to go out and play, they have quiet, colourful areas where they can read or catch up on homework.

Free school lunches were introduced so that children from poorer backgrounds had a good midday meal and school menus now have imaginative and healthy multiple-choice selections.

During the celebrations, as they had stepped back to 1957 the pupils and staff had to ‘make do with’ roast beef and all the trimmings, plus syrup sponge pudding and custard. That said, bowing to 21st Century trends, there was also a vegetarian toad in the hole.

It was Fifties-style lessons during the day, the youngsters outside in the sunshine making rockets to introduce them to the early beginnings of the space race between America and Russia.

Indoors, pupils studied photographs of the school over the years and were asked to compare life their lives now with those of their 1957 counterparts. In the school hall, the youngsters, and some of the teachers, enjoyed a dancing lesson ahead of a jive session to which everyone was invited to join.

There was also a competition among the classes challenging pupils to design a school uniform to be worn 60 years from now – in 2077.

Adding to the special nostalgic feel of the day were visitors Malcolm Vincent and Averil Mangan, who were two of the original intake of pupils in 1957, and Dorothy Messingham and Christine Weeks, who taught at the school in 1959.

In the evening, the school’s parent teacher association put on a birthday barbecue and disco for parents.

Paula’s Vintage Parlour was also on hand re-create 1950s-style hairdos for the ladies.

It was a day that none of the pupils will forget but, just in case, they were each given a permanent reminder in the form of a commemorative badge presented by the parent teacher association bearing the dates 1957-2017.