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There are six pages in this section on education in the early 1900s
* This is Page 1 of
6: The school system *
Page 2 of 6: Classrooms
Page
3 of
6: The curriculum
. Page 4 of 6: Extra-curricular
activities.
Page 5 of 6: Schools: less
pleasant things
Page 6 of 6: Education after elementary school
All based on experiences at
Silver Street School,
Edmonton which was built in 1900 to earlier Victorian
specifications.
My mother wrote as if her school was a Board School. However the Balfour Education Act of 1902 abolished school boards and put education in the hands of local authorities. I have been unable to establish whether this meant that Board Schools were also abolished. It is possible that my mother's terminology was a widely used hangover from the Victorian era of a few years earlier or that the act took time to enforce. My mother referred in her writing to the man who visited homes to check on absenteeism as the School Board Man and when she was alive she often mentioned the Board of Education. Whatever the facts of the matter, her writing is nevertheless informative and insightful about life at the time. Pat Cryer.
Like other children from working class backgrounds in the early 1900s, my brothers and I started our education at what was called a Board School because it was under the Middlesex Education Board. It provided free education designed to equip boys for earning a living and girls for keeping house. It was therefore hardly surprising that boys and girls were taught separately.
Our board school was Silver Street School in Edmonton. It was well situated, being at the edge of a housing district, in our case the Huxley Estate in Edmonton.
There were three floors to the school building. Infants were on the ground floor, girls on the first, and the boys on the top floor. There were two playgrounds. One for the infants and girls and the other for the boys who had to be kept separate even at playtimes, according to the norms of the time. There was a small field or playing ground at the end which was turned into an allotment during the 1914-18 war, and worked by the boys. There was also a cycle shed for the staff as they mostly arrived by bicycle. I like to picture them. No cocking a leg or dashing along for them. The women would cycle along at a dignified pace with their cycle baskets on the handlebars in front of them, and the headmaster would get on to his bike elegantly by stepping onto a little bit of metal on the middle of the back wheel to go raise himself onto the saddle. He was a well built, grey headed, imposing man who looked as though he was in command of any situation.
We were called to school by the school bell which could be heard quite a distance away. It was in its own bell tower, like church bells.
We started school at 9.00 am. Dinner-time [lunch-time] was from twelve until two, and home-time was at four. Most children brought a slice of bread and butter to school to eat in the playground at morning break, but they went back home for dinner. No food or drink was provided.
If you have an old photo which illustrates the way of life that my mother describes, I would very much appreciate a copy. Pat Cryer
Checks were made on absentees by an inspector known as the School Board Man. He would make enquiries if a child was absent for any length of time, then send in his report. The School Board Man who came to our house was respected. He always wore sombre clothes and lived in a very nice house. Like everyone else, he went around on a bike.
These childhood recollections from around the time of the 1911 census are of elementary schooling for working class children in north London (then Middlesex): the buildings and site and attendance / meal breaks.