Education in Cardington
Early Education in Cardington
The Bishop of Lincoln carried out visitations to Bedfordshire in 1717 and 1720 and for both of these a list of questions was sent out in advance, one of which enquired about the provision of schools in each parish. At both visitations it was recorded that no schooling of any sort was available for poor children in Cardington. By 1802 Samuel Whitbread II was endowing a school in the parish, a report on 27 April that year by Thomas Lilburne reported [W1/849]; "Mr.Evans's School consists of 18 Boys taught to Read and wright. 12 of whom are annually cloathed; the Expence of their Education per Annum is about £25/8/-. The Annual Expence of their cloathing is about £16. The above school I believe to be well attended to".
In 1818 a Select Committee was established to enquire into educational provision for the poor. This was no doubt prompted, in part, by the recent foundation of two societies promoting education and specifically the building of schools. The Society for Promoting the Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor was established in 1808 promoting schools run along the lines pioneered by Joseph Lancaster, who had himself copied those of Dr.Andrew Bell, in which older children taught their younger fellows. The Society was renamed the British and Foreign School Society in 1814,. It was supported by a number of prominent nonconformists, Lancaster himself was a Quaker, and sought to teach a non-sectarian curriculum. In answer to this perceived nonconformist takeover of local education the National Society was formed in 1811 to encourage the teaching of poor children along Anglican lines, including the catechism. The Select Committee sent a questionnaire to all parishes in the country asking for: particulars relating to endowments for the education of children; other educational institutions; observations of parish needs etc. Rev.Frogmore Cumming, the vicar, reported the school in Cardington as maintained by a ‘principal inhabitant’ and the parents of the pupils, of which there were about 24. He felt that the poor would have sufficient means of education if the new system was introduced.
In the country generally the number of schools built continued to grow over the next fifteen years so that by 1833 the government agreed to supplement the work of the two societies, and local benefactors, by making £20,000 per annum available in grants to help build schools. It also prompted another questionnaire to be sent to each parish in England asking for details of local educational provision. In Cardington there were two daily schools; one in Eastcotts which taught 40 boys and 40 girls, the other containing 2 boys, and 9 girls who were educated at the expense of the parents. In addition there were four Sunday schools; the Church of England School was attended by 60 children; in the others there were 81 boys and 114 girls supported by voluntary contributions from the dissenting congregations. A report of 1844 by an inspector noted that the ‘Master appears to me sadly deficient in temper and skill’. In those days a Sunday School was just that, a school which met on a Sunday, usually in the church or nonconformist chapel or other similar building, teaching more than the religious topics with which they are associated today.
Cardington School around 1900 [Z50/24/76]
Cardington Parochial School
A new school was built by William Henry Whitbread in 1849 (as reported in the Bedfordshire Times) as a Parochial School and was used by both boys and girls in separate departments. An Inventory of books and apparatus from 1852 [SDCardington2] included a school library consisting of 60 volumes; 8 large maps (World, Europe, Asia, Africa, America, England, Ireland, Scotland) and slates for writing on.
The first Education Act was passed in 1870 (more correctly it was known as the Elementary Education Act). It was a milestone in the provision of education in Britain demonstrating central government's unequivocal support for education of all classes across the country. It also sought to secularise education by allowing the creation of School Boards. These were groups of representatives, elected by the local ratepayers and the Board had the powers to raise funds to form a local rate to support local education, build and run schools, pay the fees of the poorest children, make local school attendance compulsory between the ages of 5 and 13 and could even support local church schools, though in practice they replaced them, turning them into Board run schools (known as Board Schools). Naturally, and luckily for local historians, the Act required a questionnaire of local schools in 1870. The questionnaire for Cardington noted that there was accommodation for 97 children.
In the school log book entry for 9th October 1871, Elizabeth Anna Morris took charge of the school. She found that standards were poor and thought that the children "excessively talkative". The national School Inspector's Report later that year was encouraging but things had not improved by the time John Widdicombe began as Master on September 15th 1873. He found the children "very backward" and the school "very disorderly". In the Inspectors report 1875 the school lost two tenths of its grant for poor results and discipline. Fortunately, by the Inspectors report of 1876 considerable improvement had been shown [SDCardington10].
Industrial School for Girls
Interestingly in 1862 an Industrial School for Girls was opened in Cardington. As the Bedfordshire Mercury reported "The educational movement in this country has for many years been directed in instructing only the minds of the young. But it is now becoming recognised that to the labouring class the hands, no less than the head and the heart, need to be well-trained to fit them for their work in the busy hive of modern society". The report went on to say that the Misses Whitbread had run an industrial school in a cottage in Cardington and that the new school was designed for up to thirty girls. "On Tuesday last [4 February] the migration from the humble cottage to the ornamental new building was accomplished with some ceremony". The training was in cooking, washing and other work designed to allow the girls to become domestic servants as well as the traditional North Bedfordshire female skill of lace making.
20th Century Education in Cardington
former Cardington School Sep 2007
A land mark Education Act was passed in 1902, coming into effect in 1903. It disbanded the School Boards and gave day to day running of education to newly formed Local Education Authorities, usually the county council, as in Bedfordshire. The old Board Schools thus became Council Schools whilst the old National, British and other non-Board schools became known as Public Elementary Schools. Cardington became a Public Elementary School. At the time of the changeover [E/SA3/1/2] it consisted of two departments, infants and juniors, the school overall had 42 infants and 74 juniors on the role and an average attendance of 92. The school buildings belonged to Samuel Whitbread. The 1901 Inspector's report noted that in the mixed junior school "Discipline is satisfactory, and some very creditable work has been done in classes taught by the Headmaster, but there has been a marked falling off in the lower division". In the infants school "The methods of teaching are unskilful and ineffective…the discipline and order unsatisfactory. These defects are so serious that the class must be reported inefficient". By the 1902 Inspector's Report things had improved somewhat as it noted of the juniors that "…the general efficiency of the School is only fair. The order throughout should be more precise and habitual. the elder children are quite ignorant of History, and in the lower division the work is unsatisfactory". As for the infants "Progress…is effected by faulty classification, and, owing to inattention and answering out of turn the Object Lessons are ineffective, but the teaching is very careful and diligent". Staff in 1903 comprised:
- George Edward Coggins, aged 46 (appointed 1879) - headmaster;
- Gertrude Stanbridge, aged 30 (appointed 1903) - junior teacher - the current teacher. Miss Partridge, was "not "approved" by H.M.Inspector, and therefore leaving";
- Miss Vincent, aged 30, but she was leaving for Elstow School and a successor had not yet been appointed
Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service has a scrapbook of cuttings of visits made to most Bedfordshire Schools by School Inspectors for a period from just before the First World War through the inter-war years [E/IN1/1]. The School Inspector's report for 1911 noted that the Infants Class was the best feature of the school, with reading being particularly good and, though the older children were taught generally satisfactorily more work had to be done with the younger juniors. An epidemic had broken out prior to the Inspector's visit in 1913 but a good standard of work was noted, with the infants, once again, doing the best, though improvements had also been made in the teaching of the juniors. The First World War saw a few changes in the everyday routine of the school including the loss of the annual Whit week holiday in June 1916 and the excitement of 18th Jan 1918 when: " a new airship passed over here this afternoon, about 3 o’ clock, and all the children were taken out to see it" [SDCardington11].
After 1913 another inspection was not made until 1923 which from 1913 to 1921 "had deteriorated in efficiency very seriously" but the new headteacher had made substantial improvements. Other reports made between the wars continued to be good. In 1925 it was noted that "the school has a good tone and the children, especially in Class1, work diligently"; the infants were "doing very well indeed…the diffidence noted in the last Report has to a large extent disappeared". In 1932 it was reported that a new Head Mistress had taken over in 1929 and that in 1930 the school had been "decapitated", losing its Infants Department "The teaching of Arithmetic and attention to Speech Training perhaps show the most strikingly successful results in a school where every subject is most carefully taught…" In 1936 the inspector noted of "this most efficient school" that "The Head Mistress and her Assistant may therefore be complimented on work which has been well tested for years, and organisation and friendly relations which proved invaluable on this occasion".
former "offices" at Cardington School Sep 2007
During World War Two Air Raid Drills were held in school, on May 10 1940 it was noted in the logbook that every child was undercover in 5-6 minutes. When VE day was announced there was a two day holiday and on May 10th 1945: "A Thanksgiving Service was held on opening school. Time-table rearranged so that the day could be appropriately marked. National songs and dances were enjoyed. Children described their VE day experiences – a day of general rejoicing together". [SDCardington12].
The third of the great Education Acts was that of 1944 which established the principle of County Primary Schools for children up to the age of 11, at which time they took an examination to determine the nature of the secondary school they would attend until they were 15, the most academically able going to grammar schools, the rest to secondary or secondary modern schools. Cardington became a County Primary School for children aged 5 to 11. The School Inspector in 1951 [E/IN1/2] noted that the school contained 63 children, 45 of whom came from RAF Cardington and had been admitted to relieve congestion on Eastcotts County Primary School. "Enlightened teaching methods" were in use amongst the juniors but the infants "while sympathetically handled, do not have the opportunities of enjoying such stimulating experiences". The Inspector in 1959 reported that the school now had 48 pupils, having had 150 in the previous year, many from RAF Cardington, but that these had been transferred to the new school at Shortstown. A new sanitary block had been built in 1953 and, despite good efforts "a number of children in the school …are slower in learning to read than might be expected…the experiment of leaving the more backward children in the lower class seems not to have succeeded". Despite some concerns over reading it was reckoned that "Throughout the school there is a confident relationship between teachers and pupils" and that "The school is serving its village well".
rear of former Cardington School Sep 2007
In the 1970s Bedfordshire County Council introduced comprehensive education, doing away with the 11+ examination and grammar schools and introducing a tier of school between the old County Primary and County Secondary Schools. Thus Lower Schools now taught children aged 4 to 9, Middle Schools from 9 to 13 and Upper Schools from 13 onwards. The school became a Lower School but it was closed in July 1983 as an economy measure due to its small size. The buildings are now [2006] used as one of its three countywide offices by Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity
Sources
- W849: report by James Lilburne on Samuel Whitbread's School: 1802;
- X25/28: Bedfordshire Institution papers: c.1839;
- Bedfordshire Times: erection of new boys' school: 7 Jul 1849;
- SDCardington3: Register for Girl's School (name, residence, age, denom., father's occ.): 1849-1871;
- SDCardington4: Register for Boy's School: 1849-1871;
- SDCardington5: Index to Registers: 1849-1870;
- SDCardington7: Day School Report Books: 1849-1871;
- SDCardington2: School Inventory: 1852;
- P38/29/1: admission register: 1861-1871;
- SDCardington6: Girl's and Boy's Registers: 1867-1870;
- SDCardington1: School Inventory (single sheet): 1871;
- SDCardington8: Committee Minute Books: 1871-1894;
- SDCardington10: school logbook: 1871-1898;
- W4040 p.49: Whitbread Estate improvement ledger notes work on school: 1890-1895;
- SDCardington14: admission register: 1893-1978;
- SDCardington9: Committee Minute Books: 1895-1903;
- P38/0/5: school used for services during church restoration: 1897;
- SDCardington11: school logbook: 1898-1923;
- SDCardington13: punishment book: 1902-1929;
- E/SA3/1/2: managers' amd inspector's reports: 1903;
- E/TE5/3: details of teachers: 1904-1908;
- CTM17/39: mortgage of school to raise money for enlargement: 1905;
- E/TE5/2: details of teachers: 1908-1912;
- Z50/24/76: postcard of Howard Reading Room and school: c.1910;
- E/IN1/1: inspector's reports: 1911-1936;
- Z50/24/68: photograph of Cardington Green looking towards school: c.1915;
- SMM7: school managers' minutes: 1923-1957;
- SDCardington12: school logbook: 1923-1957;
- SDCardington20: Correspondence concerning attempt to close school in 1948;
- E/IN1/2: inspector's reports: 1951-1959;
- SDCardington15/1: school logbook: 1957-1980;
- SMM7/3: school managers' minutes: 1958-1974;
- CA8/909: building maintenance file: 1963-1983;
- SDCardington19: reports to managers, 1964-1978;
- SDCardington21: Certificates (2) from the Bedfordshire Competitive Musical Festival recording the award of first place to the Cardington School Choir for the Leslie Bowles Challenge Cup: 1964-1965;
- SDCardington19: Cast list for "Then and Now - a history of our school from 1848 to the present day", 1973;
- SMM30/1-3: governors' reports and correspondence: 1976-1983;
- SDCardington25: Trophy awarded by the Save The Children Fund to Cardington Lower School: 1978;
- SDCardington16: admission register: 1978-1981;
- E/TE2/2/L17: details of school: 1978;
- SDCardington18: Programmes of events at the School e.g. plays, sports day, harvest festival, Easter etc.: 1979-1982;
- SDCardington15/2: school logbook: 1980-1983;
- E/SC1/Gen5-6: details on school and proposals for transfer of pupils on closure: 1981;
- PCCardington26/1: Small Rural Schools, A Consultative Paper: 1982;
- SDCardington17/1: Coloured photograph of Sports Day: 1982;
- SDCardington17/2: Coloured photograph of Dancing group: 1982;
- E/SC1/Car1-2: papers on closure of school: 1982