Cllr Michelline Ngongo, Rayaan, head Denise McCarney, Year 2 teacher Rebecca Turner and pupils Cyril, Joel and Grace

“THE primary school classroom of the future will be part-carpeted, split-level, open plan, and equipped with kitchen sink and dining area, to judge by the new Vittoria primary school in north London.”

Such was the fanfare that greeted the newly built Vittoria primary school in 1968 – according to national newspapers at the time.

Last Thursday the school community in Barnsbury held a last-of-its-kind party, complete with donkeys Taffy and Rocky, to say goodbye to the building it has called home for more than 50 years as they prepare to move into nearby Copenhagen primary school.

And when the school gates close for the final time next Friday, the pupils also will be saying farewell to headteacher Denise McCarney who is retiring after a 35-year career in teaching and nine years at Vittoria.

She said: “It’s just a beautiful school with a great community, and I’m sure we can replicate that when we merge with Copenhagen.”

The Vittoria school building’s official opening in 1968

Of her future plans, she added: “It’s like a new world and new opportunities will open up to me. I might go on a round-the-world trip. I mean, that’s what retirement is all about! Someone said to me once, it’s like being a teenager but with a little bit more money.”

While Vittoria was once housed in a redbrick three-storey Victorian building, it was pulled down to make way for a radical new design that in the 1960s was at the cutting edge of education. A notice in an exhibition about the history of the site, currently on show at Vittoria, said: “When the ‘experimental’ school opened, the classrooms had three split-levels; bottom level for heavy, creative work such as carpentry; middle level for painting, cooking or needlework; and the top level for more formal work with tables and chairs.”

Another article from the time breathlessly des­cribed how Vittoria’s new layout was “explored and praised by a horde of enthusiastic Pressmen and photographers”.

While the split-level classrooms with cookers did not last as an experiment, access to outside space from classrooms and carpeting for children to sit together, as well as sinks, have become an educational mainstay.

Adam Islam on Rocky the donkey

Another emerging trend in the 1960s that has lasted in Islington and in cities across the country, as immigration became common, was a rise in pupils with English as a second language.

But unlike now, where teachers are expected to plan for all students and rarely have more than a day’s notice if a new starter is joining their class, back then everything was very different.

Vittoria employed a speciality English teacher, Gwen Davies, who would spend a year helping new arrivals learn the language and then another two years teaching them “before they are able to take part in normal classes”.

For 144 years there has been a school on the Half Moon Crescent site. That will end with the merger with Copenhagen, in Treaty Street, in September. Islington merged them after a fall in rolls at both schools led to funding issues; a deepening crisis in the borough as more schools face deficits to their budgets. The shift, seen across central London, is blamed on falling birthrates and families moving out of London to seek affordable housing.

The new school will be called Vittoria and the new uniform – a hotly debated topic among parents and pupils – will be purple, “because blue and red make purple”, explained Ms McCarney. Blue is, of course, Vittoria’s uniform colours while Copenhagen’s is red.

Copenhagen’s current head Matthew Akinnayajo used to be deputy at Vittoria, and will be leading the school next year. Ms McCarney plans to stay on one day a week for the first term to support the transition.