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by
Alf Wilkinson
There
are lots of Victorian School buildings around - many of them still
in use today. What was it like to go to school in one of these,
and how different would it have been from school today?
A good
starting point is school today - use the room you are in or the
buildings themselves to describe lessons, the shape of the day,
facilities, etc. You might even use the Government's electronic
blueprint of the school of the future, recently announced, as a
high-tech place to start! Whichever starting point you choose, the
buildings and the facilities tend to reflect the experience of children
while at school today.
 Many
Victorian school buildings have been long closed and now have other
uses.
This
one, in the tiny little village of Burton Pedwardine, is an office;
the school in Heckington hosts an archaeological unit; the school
in Great Hale is being converted to a private dwelling and the one
in Little Hale is an activity centre for Lincolnshire Brownies and
Guides.
The
school in the next village, Helpringham, is still in use as a school,
although much altered inside. So what would it have been like to
go to school in a Victorian Board School?
These
photos show the interior of a Victorian school at the Black Country
Museum, Dudley. Many museums have reconstructed classrooms even
if they do not have a school. Many County Record Offices also have
lots of photographs of local schools in use. The photos can be used
alongside, for example, extracts from Dickens where he describes
schooling in Victorian times. Or you might be able to get hold of
extracts from old Log Books that should be in the County Record
Office. Local Trade Directories usually give a brief description
of the school, its size and who the teacher was. This is Kelly's
Directory for 1913. The extract refers to Great Hale and Little
Hale.
Perhaps
not going back quite so far, old people in the village will almost
certainly have some old school photographs. This one is from Little
Hale in 1932.
Over
a couple of coffee mornings people were able to identify almost
everyone in the photograph, fill out their family and other details,
and remember lots about school life and especially the strictness
of the teacher! You may even persuade one or two of the older villagers
to come and talk to your pupils, or be able to make an 'oral history'
interview of their reminiscences. Interviews like this of course
always need careful preparation to produce good results, but old
people are a most valuable resource for local history.
Of
course there is also census data. The 1881 census for Little Hale,
for instance, lists 44 scholars, aged from 3 - 15, all in one class
and presumably with only one teacher.
What
must it have been like going to school in a situation like that?
And why is it that some pupils were still at school at the age of
15 in 1881?
Were they 'pupil-teachers' assisting the teacher? We can only guess.
One thing that has emerged recently is just how many children did
go to school long before 1870 and the advent of Board Schools.
A
survey of one Bedfordshire village, Cardington, in 1773, discovered,
perhaps unusually, that every child in the village went to school,
and if the parents could not afford the fees then two wealthy philanthropists,
John Howard and Samuel Whitbread, paid them. In Scotland every parish
had to have its own school from the early 18th century and many
had schools before then.
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