Jimmy Emerson was a student of the South Shields High School from 1928 to 1933.

He didn't go to university straight away, instead taking a substitute teacher's post at Mortimer Road Senior Boys' School, from August 1933 to July 1935.

It wasn't until 1936 that he took a place at Armstrong College, University of Durham, where he read Geology and Geography (with Mathematics, Physics and Botany as subsidiary subjects), staying on an extra year to gain his teacher's certificate.

A few years after leaving university, in 1946, he was appointed to the Stanhope Road County Secondary Boys' School , where he stayed only a year, leaving in 1947 to join the staff of the South Shields High School for Boys where eventually he became Head of the Intermediate Department and then, in September, 1970, Deputy Head, following the retirement of Alf Headley.