Tuning in to time when Jane hit the big screen

Mrs Yates was one of the pupils filmed by Pathe News for a cinema feature around 1955-57 about life at Barnham Primary School.

The long-forgotten seven minutes of history was recently discovered during a trawl through the company's archives and turned into digital film for modern screening.

The treasure trove of facts revealed in the colour film enabled the present-day pupils to go travelling back in time to the Fifties this week.

They dressed in clothes of the era, interviewed pupils from that time and took part in a period sports day with three-legged and egg and spoon races. All of this is being captured in a follow-up which the children are making using video and still cameras for broadcasting on the internet.

Among those to bridge the gap between then and now was Barnham resident Mrs Yates (63). She said: 'It's good to see the Pathe film after all these years. I'm the girl measuring the concrete mushroom. I can still recognise many of the other pupils in the film.

'The school took us to the cinema, probably the Picturedrome in Bognor, to see the film when it was released. It was an exciting time because I never went to the pictures much.'

She attended the village school between the ages of five and 14 before she went to the new Westergate Community College for her final years of schooling.

The discovery of the Pathe film was a surprise to everyone at the Elm Grove school. It was made to show cinema audiences the progressive attitudes of a village school in making maths, history, geography and English exciting.

It followed headmaster Mr HS Hooten and his pupils as they toured the village '“ with the churchyard, windmill and a local farm on their route '“ to turn their lessons into practical skills.

They also set up their own Barnham Broadcasting Corporation to transmit outdoor programmes.

The film was based around the original school site in Yapton Road. It was discovered among more than 6,000 hours of Pathe News footage after the rights to use it were bought by the regional broadband consortia which supply schools with IT links.

SE Grid for Learning project officer Chris Davison said Barnham's work was a trailblazing project to show other schools how to harness IT and creative skills with more traditional schoolwork. The finished work would be ready for viewing on the grid's website in September.

Teacher Tania Spicer said 51 children aged ten and 11 were heavily involved in recreating a slice of Fifties life. 'This newsreel is bringing history to life and gives it meaning to them.

'They are visiting the places which the children went to in the film, and our old school site, and interviewing the vicar, the Rev Simon Holland, for their own film,' she said.

One of the pupils involved in the project, Shannon Parrott (11), dressed in a red polka dot outfit, said: 'It seems strange seeing the school in 1957 because schooling has changed so much.

'It's interesting meeting people who came here then because they have so many memories to tell. It's really good.'

Freelance photographer Tim Hall is also making a photographic record of the project for the internet.