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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: elfinblues on Tuesday 05 June 18 22:03 BST (UK)
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Hi everyone. I'm trying to write an account of my grandfather's life, but with almost no primary material available from him (he passed away many years ago) I am trying to reconstruct what it would probably have been like. As part of that, I'm trying - without much success - to find an account of what his school years would have been like. He attended school in the Rhondda valley, in Wales, between about 1922 and 1931. To be honest, though, any account of school life from that period - however generic - would enable me to at least give some impression of what he might have experienced, what he would have studied, and so on.
Does anyone happen to know of any good sources of information about 1920s/30s school life (preferably online)?
Many thanks in advance,
Steve
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In a mixed school in the 1950/60s (me) the teachers called the girls by their first names and the boys by their last. Presumably the same in the 1920's.
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A few random thoughts:
Inkwells set into the desks
Corporal punishment
Left-handed children being forced to write right-handed
Outside toilets (bl**dy cold in winter!)
Classmates whose fathers had died in the war
Classmates whose fathers died or were injured in mining accidents.
The General Strike of 1926
Wearing clothes handed down from older siblings
Leaving school at 14 to find work
The "three Rs" - Reading wRiting, aRithmetic
Reciting the alphabet and multiplication tables
Learning the capital cities of every country in the Empire
The British Empire ruling beningnly over ignorant savages
The Boys Brigade (free uniforms - Boy Scout uniforms had to be paid for)
Adult life expectancy probably under 50.
Philip
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Not much help but...
When having a conversation with a 'new found relative' (sadly now passed) & born 1930 we spoke of life in general way back where my ancestors grew up etc...
I do recall him telling me when he was at school there were no 'Jotters' all their work was done on slate with chalk!
What made me laugh was when he told me he would get 'homework' which he would duly do for the following day on the slate but...
As there were no buses (where they lived), school was quite a walk from home & if the weather was wet then inevitably his hard work was washed off ;D
I don't know when jotters & pencils became the norm?
Add...They would also take Peat for the fire at school for heating (Highland Scotland) i.e. it's possible the same happened England/Wales/N Ireland but probably using coal rather than peat?
Annie
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THE LEA WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN AROUND THEN, you would have been caned for doing the slightest thing wrong on your rear-end or your knuckles.given a showing up if you wet yourself and made to stand in front of the whole class in your wet clothes. thank god, I was born in the 50s' still had to leave school when I was 15 yrs though, to support my mother and my half-siblings' all named Burke.
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My mum was born in 1927,she used to tell me about her very strict headmistress at the junior school who used to stand on a chair at the front of the class to sing hymns!
The toilets (outdoor) were across the yard in the playground and torn up newspapers were on string by the side of it. If it was frozen you couldn't flush it!
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All sounds like my infant school in the 1960’s. Toilets outside writing on small blackboards, no paper till the last year, reciting times tables and corporal punishment. So not much changed.
Regards
Panda
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Outbreaks of measles, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough etc
polio and TB cases.
Lice infestations
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Deducing from the village school I went to in the 1950s, there were still outside lavvies then and the cane was used when required. The building had clearly once just one biggish hall/classroom with newer additions.So I'd guess the one-room school might have existed in the 1920s.
One interesting fact is that certainly at Hade Edge school, West Yorks, very young children even toddlers and babies seemed to "attend" school in some circumstances. I have been told that photos from the 1920s and 30s of this school exist where the aduts are holding very small children. And in fact my father went to Hade Edge school from the age of 3, mainly as he recalled playing in the sand pit and with toys. I don't know how common this early schooling/childminding was but in dad's case it could well have been because his mother was 'not a well woman'.
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I cannot give you the dates but in rural areas children were absent from school at harvesting times including strawberry season as they had to work with their parents. It was becoming a big problem as some days there were very few children in class so I assume Parliament or the Ministry of Education introduced 6 weeks school holidays in the summer to prevent bunking off to the fields etc
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Yes, in the 1950/60s, the October half term hols were always called " potato-picking".
As in " we're off school next week for potato picking"
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I remember it like it was yesterday. Now, the only thing is, what wizz I dein yisterday??
Malky
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My father was born in 1912 (mother born 1918) and nothing much had changed when I went to school. The pupils wrote on small chalk boards, Discipline was everything, thus you'd find boys had to duck missiles thrown at them by their male teachers such as the wooden blackboard cleaner, or a piece of chalk. Boys earlobes were favoured by teachers wanting to get a pupil's attention.
There are still old school buildings remaining where you can see two playgrounds to segregate boys from girls and inscribed over the doors "Girls Entrance" and "Boys Entrance". The first thing on the schedule of the day was a teacher would blow a whistle in the playground and pupils would have to form up in long lines before orderly walking into school. The first thing I noticed in the classroom was the large Dunce's Cap in the corner, which was reserved for some unfortunate child who had to stand in a corner wearing the tall pointed white cone with a black "D" on it, on his head. . Every morning teacher called out a list of names and ticked off those who answered "Here sir". Then it was an orderly file on the left hand side of the corridor to the Assembly Hall wherein stood a piano, to listen to the headmaster and then finishing off with the hymn of the day accompanied by the pianist. Each morning there was a daily cleanliness inspection (cleanliness is next to Godliness) for first year pupils where we had to extend our hands to make sure they were clean, and that we had some form of rag or handkerchief and also that our shoes were clean. Each primary school had a nurse and annually there would be an inspection by the "nit nurse" who inspected pupils' hair for infestation. If you look at old photos you'll see girls with long hair had to have it tied back neatly with a ribbon and boys hair had to be kept short.
Desks were in neat rows and if it was a mixed class boys would sit at one side of the classroom and girls and the other side. First year childen were expected to have a half hour nap mid afternoon on top of the desks (!)
School reading books for the young didn't have pictures, so you had to use your imagination, but I do remember one book had a black ink drawing of three rabbits called "Nig", "Nog" and"Nug" - We had regular classes where, starting from the child in the back row, we all took turns reading a few lines of a book.
As my parents knew the same songs that I sang at infant/junior school, i'm assming they had the same sort of lessons I had. For instance in history lessons we'd sing a song pertaining to that era which was probably sung by roving minstrels of the day (Greensleeves, Raggle Taggle Gypsy O", etc. - or, as I was brought up in a port, we'd sing sea shanties that sailors would sing when they worked on masted sailing vessels.
As already pointed out, leaving age was 14 in the 1920s-1930s, which meant that the 11+ exams I took were taken when my parents were aged 10. Both my parents took entrance exams for their senior schooling, which shows that there was selection for either a child going on to a technical or academic education.
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I am not sure if it I available for Wales, but some schools in Ireland appear on the census forms and give details of the size of the building, number of rooms etc
There is also an ongoing project in Ireland to transcribe children's school books from the 1930's
https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes
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Yes there was indeed selection for secondary school in the 1930s. But the often untold truth about passing the 11 plus was that you had to pay to go to a state grammar school. That along with travel and uniform costs meant that most working class children who passed the exam could not go to grammar school, tneir places being taken by less intelligent wealthier pupils.
My dad was able to go to grammar school, thus opening doors to a much more prosperous life, only because he was an only child and his grandma and some childless neighbours helped with the costs.
Totally free access to grammar schoold only came in the 1940s, no doubt because of the disproportionate losses of men from the professional classes in the early part of WW2 ( RAF being the service of choice for these young men). The government feared a future lack of people educated to a higher level. Added to this reason was the fact that people enlisted for war service were tested for their IQ etc. This would have revealed that many from the lower social classes were in fact very intelligent ie a lost ressource for the nation.
I was one of the many who benefitted from this huge surge in social mobility for working class children educated in the 1950s.
There are those who have an opinion about what effect comprehensive schools had on this short-lived opening up of the doors of opportunity.
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He attended school in the Rhondda valley, in Wales, between about 1922 and 1931.
A few more ideas if you know the name of the school-
- is it still in existance? contact the school to see if they have any old photos, registers or information from the period (many schools have websites, Facebook pages, etc.)
- still in the same location or the building still standing? get a picture of what it looks like now and describe what can be seen in the picture ('the door on the left was the boys' entrance...' etc.)
You might be able to get enrolment figures (in N.I. the Public Records Office has such material) so that you can compare number of children with say 1911 census and say if population was stable or went up or down during the period, etc.
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Milk bottles. Gardening.
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Assume it was the same in Wales, all schools in England had/have a Headteachers Log book for recording briefly what happened in school. Often small things like a deep clean during the holidays.
The school logs are often held in local authority records or archives.
I tracked down the logs for a school near Dunford Bridge Yorks. They were kn the Barnsley records office. I found what I was looking for: mention of evacuees who arrived from London in 1940.
Worth a look ?
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My Mum was born early 1920's and went to school when she was 3 - as did all her siblings. At that age school consisted mainly of being told to lie down on a camp bed and go to sleep for a couple of hours both morning and afternoon.
Much like now probably she was always tarred with the same brush as her naughty elder sister and expected to misbehave even though she did not.
Classes had about 42-45 children in them, with one teacher, and there were never enough books and other commodities to go around. As her surname began with W rarely did she ever have her 'own' version of anything and nearly always had to share.
Mum did pretty well at school and won a scholarship for the next stage but wasn't able to go. Although the scholarship meant that all commodities were provided the uniform was not - and that couldn't be afforded by her family.
Pheno
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I found the log book for a school in Pembrokeshire on FindMyPast, because it mentioned a girl in my One Name Study who was a teacher there for about a year.
It was fascinating reading, with details of attendances, and how they dropped when fish needed to be dealt with, or potatoes picked (Just seen my first "Pembrokes" of the year in Lancashire). Occasionally classes were outside the building because there was no space inside!
School in the 1920s would be little different from the 1890s, with the exception of not leaving until aged 14, though in my part of the world from the age of 12 "half timers" would work 6 a.m. until 1 p.m. in the mill and then head off to school.
Of course, education in Wales was then entirely in English, and until quite recently pupils would be punished for speaking Welsh.
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There would be what did they have for lunch? Did they go home if they were close enough to school, soup/stew for winter etc.?
Cheers
KHP
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... what did they have for lunch? Did they go home if they were close enough to school, soup/stew for winter etc.?
Cheers
KHP
I don't know about other places in the U.K. but being from north east England we had breakfast, then dinner, then tea.
My father (born 1912) had several older siblings and their meals were cooked on an open fire on one of those old fashioned cast iron stoves which had gadgets to swing the kettle and a large pan over the fire. Bread, meat and fruit pies; cakes and milk puddings would be baked in the oven that was heated by the fire. From my fathers description of his mother always "adding to the pot every day" I assume he meant there was often left over stew in the pot which she added extra vegetables to. You didn't need expensive meats for a meal, the local butcher sold various animal marrow bones and the nearby abattoir sold blood with which to make black puddings. There was no school during the hot summer months , so all midday meals were usually hot meals.
His father served an engineering apprenticeship (paid for by his own father) and became a steam boiler inspector for an insurance company who had eight children to feed. His five sons went to tech college (grammar schools) then left school aged 15 to serve apprenticeships, one daughter became a nurse, one became a teacher and unfortunately one daughter died aged seven. On the other hand my mother's father was a labourer who had four children to feed, he had an allotment and supplemented his wage by selling produce that he didn't need for his own family. Of his four children, two went to grammar school, which meant two of his children left school aged 14 and two at 15 - however, my mother decided that she didn't want to stay at school until she was 15 and left grammar school as soon as she could. Both men had stay at home wives who made their own preserves for winter, e.g. pickled onions, beetroot, cabbage and fruit preserves/jams.
Both my parents went to different schools but they only had less than a mile to walk each way.
One of my mother's cousins (born 1918) told me that she wanted to train to be a nurse but her father insisted she look for a job when she left school aged 14. His reasoning was that she had to pay her way at home and besides that, she'd get married and it would be a waste of money to pay for the training.