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EARLY
YEARS AT THE ABBEY PRIMARY SCHOOL
by Rex Needle
A NEW FLAG unfurled over the Abbey Primary School last week marked 130 years
of unbroken teaching for young children on the same site which is a record for
which the town may be justly proud. Of all the schools in Lincolnshire, this one
has more cause to celebrate than most because it has evolved from a humble
council school providing basic learning to many deprived children to a modern
educational unit which achieved national recognition in 1991 by becoming the
first in the country to achieve grant maintained status. Education available to all is a comparatively recent innovation in England and it was not until the Education Act of 1870 that elementary schools were built and run by the state and local school boards appointed to supervise their running and empowered to levy a rate for this purpose. This was a major social change that has evolved into what we know today as the state education system although conditions have drastically changed since Victorian times. The school board in Bourne was formed in 1874 and its first task was to build a new elementary school which was erected with an adjoining master's residence on the site of an old orchard in Star Lane [now Abbey Road] at a cost of £3,727, constructed in the distinctive yellow bricks and blue slate popular for institutional buildings during the mid-19th century. The school opened in 1877 as the Star Lane Board School with room for 480 children, both boys and girls, and soon became the main centre for elementary education in the town, superseding the old National School in North Street. Mr John Derry was appointed headmaster at a salary of £80 a year and average attendance during the ensuing years was 350 but numbers steadily increased to 500 by the turn of the century and the premises were enlarged to accommodate the additional children in 1892 and again in 1894. There was a further extension in 1901 with the aim of providing classroom space for 700 children although this turned out to be an optimistic forecast. During one week in January 1878, stormy weather caused fluctuating attendances and a year later, heavy snowfalls resulted in only 55 girls turning up out of a total of 120 while in July 1901, continuous rain flooded the streets and closed the school and pupils were sent home. There were similar occurrences of wet weather disrupting the school's activities in 1910, 1911 and 1912, causing serious flooding in the surrounding fenland. Illness and epidemics were also a common cause of children staying away. Influenza closed the school for three weeks in 1891 and it was shut again for a fortnight in 1897 because of an outbreak of measles. Mumps and whooping cough were also prevalent illnesses of the time together with other diseases that have become quite rare such as diphtheria, scarlet fever and even smallpox which resulted in a number of children from the workhouse being absent. Many of the fathers of children attending the school were agricultural labourers and so busy periods in the farming year were also a major cause of absenteeism and in October 1879, attendance fell because girls were out gleaning while six years later, the headmistress reported: "Attendance irregular - some of the girls are absent getting the potatoes up" and in July 1901, girls stayed away for half-days while taking dinner and tea to the hay fields. The authorities were well aware that schooling in a farming area was likely to be affected in this way and tried to minimise the difficulties by arranging holidays to coincide with busy times on the land. In the final decades of the 19th century, the summer holiday of five or six weeks' duration became known as the harvest holiday and in October and November 1918, the school closed for four weeks to enable children go potato picking. There were many other reasons for a fall in attendances during the school year including the arrival of a circus in the town, ice skating in severely cold weather, cheap day rail trips to surrounding towns, the October Fair, church picnics and national holidays such as the coronations of 1902 and 1911. In February 1905, each pupil was handed a slotted card with a sixpence attached that had come from Burghley House to mark the birth of David George Brownlow Cecil, Lord Burghley and later the 6th Marquess of Exeter. One of the boys, George Darnes, later remembered: "Some of my classmates, to whom sixpence was real wealth in those days, chose to spend it on sweets on the way home." But despite these interruptions to the daily routine, attendances slowly improved and had reached 90% by 1907 while inspectors spoke highly of the standards achieved, and that progress has continued to the present day. The Abbey Primary School today is a large, mixed nursery, infant and junior school although the original buildings of 1877 can still be seen with separate entrance doors marked Boys and Girls while the stone tablet bearing the crest and the motto Vigila et ora or Watch and Pray remains on the front wall. The premises however have been extensively modernised over the years with new extensions built during the early 1960s and mid 1980s and a further addition of three infant and two junior classes and a technology room were completed in the 1990s. Apart from the well equipped classrooms, there are two large halls used for assemblies, physical education and drama lessons, concerts and musical presentations while the school also has an active Kindergarten and extensive hard and grassed areas for play and outdoor games. The current IT provision is among the best in Lincolnshire with an interactive DVD as part of the school’s prospectus and pupils have their own web site on the Internet of a very high quality, well designed and easy to read and navigate and additional pages are being added showing the work of each year group and community links. There was a landmark in the history of the school in June 1991 when it was named as the first primary in Britain to become grant maintained and pupils and staff received a surprise visit from the then Secretary of State for Education Kenneth Clarke to mark the occasion, and it has since become a foundation school, a far cry from those Board School days of a century ago. |
NOTE: This article was published by The
Local newspaper on Friday 5th October 2007.
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