Agricultural History Review, Volume 57 Part 1 (2009), p. 144

Before the local education authorities took over most aspects of elementary school finances under R.A.Butler’s celebrated 1944 Education Act, schools were supported by church foundations (of various denominations), local families and charities, school boards and County Councils. Between 1860 and 1902, when the school leaving age was raised to fourteen, elementary school grants were awarded on the basis of attendance and the ability of children to pass tests administered by Inspectors on their regular visits. There is little new, then, in the notion of payment by results. A generation later, efforts were made to extend the activities of the larger ‘Type B’ elementary schools to embrace such excellent subjects as needlework and hygiene for the girls and science classes for the boys in which gardening played a prominent part. While Dr Roberts’ finely illustrated book does not offer a picture of the lads at work in the garden or out on an improving ‘nature walk’, there is an edifying photograph of the spotless girls of Otterburn School making what appear to be good wholesome mince pies. The illustration of the tawse in use at Billingham Council School in the 1930s and the discovery that the highlyrespected headmaster of Otterburn School steeped his strap in vinegar to harden it remind us, like the cookery and nature lessons, that common sense rather than expediency dominated educational thought at primary level. A couple of generations ago the idea of ‘pupils’ rights’ would have been dismissed as absurd beyond belief while the prospect of sex education and ‘civics’ would have been greeted with incomprehension, if not horror. You learned about the former in the farmyard and the latter in your history lessons.

Preceded by two brief introductory chapters setting out the geographical and educational background, the book comprises detailed sections covering the history of seventeen schools. Files from the National Archives, Inspectors’ reports, school Log Books, Admissions Registers and Managers’ Minute Books have been trawled to provide data, while structured interviews with surviving scholars offer fascinating detail of the daily life of the schoolchild in the inter-war and wartime years. Each school has been researched by Roberts’ WEA students, a cohort of mainly middle-aged and older people, who, under their tutor’s watchful eye, have produced a volume which will be of interest both to historians of the North and to students of education more generally.

Virtually every aspect of school life is covered, from curriculum to playground games and from morning prayers to evening hymns. We read of scanty resources, earth closets, seasonal absences linked to the farming year, of slates and ‘dip’ pens, and of epidemics of measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria. There were teachers of varying degrees of eccentricity and competence, some of them loved and others passionately loathed. Either way, they often had to deal with uncomfortable situations as they confronted petty rivalries and rural jealousies linked to local management of the school. If teaching itself could be a challenge, so was the almost daily problem of working in buildings, many of which remained relatively primitive even into the 1950s. Hott School had no flush lavatories or wash basins before 1958; Kielder School was so cold in January 1945 that ink froze in bottles, as did the Elsan lavatory and its contents. As the children snuffled with colds, the east wind blew beneath the floorboards with such keenness that lessons had to be regularly interrupted so they could exercise and warm their feet. But everyone soldiered on; they were tough up North. Perhaps tobacco helped? In 1914, the headmaster of Plunkett’s Colliery School managed to get hold of a football and he fervently hoped that enthusiasm for the game might ‘counteract cigarette smoking which is still prevalent among the boys’.

Books like this should be read by trainee teachers and those in post who are in the habit of moaning about their working conditions. In common with teachers in many less-developed countries who manage extraordinary feats with negligible equipment, the old-style village teacher understood not only how to instil respect among his charges, but how to get the best out of them despite limitations of resources and a tough working environment. This worthy study has much to teach us, and, in supporting the publication, the National Lottery is to be congratulated on allocating funds to so admirable a cause.