| SCHOOL LOG BOOKS . . . as required by Law A fascinating insight into school life, compiled by Wendy Williams Weather, Health, Hygiene and Illness, Attendance, Events, Teachers, Industrial Action, Exams/tests/Inspections, Curriculum, School trips, Children Services, School Managers/Visitors/Board/attendance Officer, Head Teachers |
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“It seems a quite momentous & somewhat awesome occasion when one opens the pages of a new School Log book. The notes I, and probably others, will record within these pages will be mostly mundane & largely everyday events of little consequence to anyone outside the school. Issues which loom large when they are current and occupy our attentions to the exclusion of all else, appear only a year or so later, to diminish in scale & importance. Seen against the changing patterns of the decades they rightly shrink to attain their true proportion. And yet, having read the Log Books compiled by my predecessors, I am aware how the events recorded here, largely trivia & having no significance outside these walls, can provide a sometimes amusing & usually interesting insight into one aspect of our lives”. - Michael Bloor, Head Teacher of Knowles County Middle School, 1984 These log books, of Bletchley Road Infants-Junior School/Bletchley Road Council Girls’ School/Leon County Junior School/Knowles County Middle School written from 1909 to 1987, with a gap of 20 years (1945-1965) are a sketchy record of the activities held in this school building. Initially, they appear to have been kept mainly as a record of attendance of pupils for the purpose of gaining the fee per pupil provided by Buckinghamshire County Education committee. ‘Visitors’ to the school were both the official representatives of the Committee and the School Managers, and they frequently visited the school to check on attendance. They also assessed the physical needs of the building, and supported the staff when need be. As the years and the log books continue, however, the picture grows of a school and its staff determined to do their very best to give the local children an education they can be proud of. And it wasn’t easy. For each pupil over 5 (to 7) years in 1910 the school received 21/4d (? Per year), and under 5 years they received 13/4d per head – plus a fee grant (not specified). Infant school teachers would have to deal with classes that could rise to 75 pupils, many of whom might not be present regularly in class because of illness, the weather, or even exclusion because they had not had a particular disease like measles when an epidemic is raging through the school. Central heating would not be introduced until the 1920s and a private room for the staff until the 1930s. As the years pass, and the school takes on different roles – from Infants, to the Girls’ (Senior) School and so on, conditions as shown by the Log Books gradually change. The class sizes get smaller, the curriculum becomes slightly more comprehensive and modern, less vocational; a few girls will get scholarships or places at the local grammar schools; all the teachers are now training school or university qualified; and more money becomes available to both the school and to parents so that visits outside the school become more frequent and venture further afield. As the culture of the country begins to change, so also it does in Bletchley. In the 60s, for example, there is the concern about an immigration ‘problem’ – that of Italian families moving into the neighbourhood. Later on, these problems change only in character by the increasing number of families arriving from Bangladesh. We also get the first reports of an increasing number of break-ins at the school, with the initial neglect of the fitting of a burglar alarm system by the Education Authority, for example. The books also show a change in reporting by the head teachers, perhaps because at first teachers would not be prepared to use them as a kind of diary, a form certainly used by Mr. Bloor, quoted at the beginning of this report. The changing nature of local and national school organization is also included in the latter Log Books.as is the falling school attendance by the 1980s. And there are an increasing number of services offered by school districts to attempt to improve children’s chances at a better education – educational psychologists, welfare officers, special needs, etc. along with increasing need for record keeping by staff required by educational authorities. |
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