A group of student officials taken from the Wintonian 1908-1910

A Brief History

Education, for certain elements within society, has always been available in this country.  The idea of education for all was a much later idea, as was a system of free education. Until the late nineteenth century all university fellows and many schoolmasters were required to be in Holy Orders. Schoolmistresses taught the basics in Charity, Dame and informal village schools ; many schools were funded by permanent endowments. Charity Schools provided education for poor students aged between 7 and 11. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge funded some of these Charity Schools and provided some of the early teacher training. The Sunday School Movement was another way that poor boys could gain a very basic education. These schools used the older boys to teach the younger ones, the fore-runner of the pupil-teacher system. In 1818 John Pounds started the first so called Ragged School teaching the three R’s to poor children without charging fees. After his death in 1839 other Ragged schools were set up around the country. Over the next eight years 200 free schools were established in Britain. It was generally accepted that the children of the poor needed an education solely in Holy Scriptures , the Catechism, reading and writing.

Ragged School in Smithfield

In August 1833 Parliament voted sums of money each year for the construction of schools for poor children in England and Wales. Scotland had implemented a similar programme in the seventeenth century. In 1839 Government grants for construction and maintenance of schools was switched to voluntary bodies and then became conditional upon a satisfactory inspection.

The 1870 Forster Elementary Education Act required that Board Schools be set up to provide Primary education in areas where the existing provision was deemed inadequate. These schools were fee-charging but poor parents could be exempted. These schools were managed by elected school boards. The 1880 Elementary Act insisted on compulsory attendance for children aged between five and ten. In 1891 the Elementary Education Act provided for state payment of fees, up to ten shillings per child. Later acts raised the leaving age first to 11 and then to 13.

Pupil – Teacher Scheme

Before the Education Act of 1902 the training of teachers was largely carried out under a pupil-teacher system. The first pupil-teacher scheme was set up in a Poor Law School in Norwood by  Dr. J. Phillips Kay (later Kay-Shuttleworth).  In 1846 a national pupil-teacher scheme was launched for carefully selected, mainly middle-class, Elementary School pupils aged 13 or over.  These pupil-teachers had to fulfil certain scholastic, moral and physical conditions. The scheme worked as an apprenticeship, a pupil meeting the criteria would be apprenticed to a selected headteacher for five years. They would teach throughout the day and be taught by the headteacher before or after school for at least one and a half hours a day, for five days a week. Every year they were required to be examined by an HMI. Pupil-teachers were paid: a boy would receive £10 per annum for his first year, by the end of their fifth year they would be receiving up to £20, with a girl receiving two- thirds of that. The headteacher would be paid for their teaching and supervising role, £5 for one pupil-teacher, £9 for two, but this was dependent on the inspection of the student being satisfactory. A headteacher was allowed one pupil-teacher for every 25 pupils on the school roll. When the apprenticeship had been successfully completed the pupil-teacher would receive a certificate which would enable him or her to sit the examination for the Queen’s Scholarship. This would qualify the holder for a place in a training college with a maintenance grant of £25 for men or £20 for women. Some pupil-teachers, having completed their apprenticeship, were not in a position to delay earning a wage. They could take up a teaching position in a grant-aided elementary school as an Uncertified Teacher. Training College students who successfully completed 1, 2 or 3 years of training would be awarded the Teachers’ Certificate. On Census returns the terms Assistant or Uncertificated teacher are often seen. Uncertified or Uncertificated Teacher would be used for teachers who had completed their pupil-teacher apprenticeship but had not done their Teaching Certificate,  Assistant Teachers were working the two years required after completion of training before they were finally awarded their certification. The term Assistant Teacher also seemed to be used in other circumstances, for example for a teacher who wasn’t the Headteacher, and sometimes for an Uncertified Teacher, which adds an element of uncertainty when trying to interpret historical documents.

Photograph from the Ragged School Museum by Karen V Bryan

In the latter part of the nineteenth century the age to begin training as a pupil-teacher was raised to 14, and then at the turn of the century it was raised again to 15. There were exceptions made to this age limit, particularly in rural areas. To be accepted as a pupil-teacher the young students needed to be approved by an HMI, pass a medical, and an examination set by the Board of Education in Reading and Recitation, English, History, Geography, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Euclid (boys) or Needlework (girls) and Teaching. Pupil-teachers were not allowed to teach for more than 5 hours a day or 20 hours a week. They were examined annually by an HMI.  After their period as a pupil-teacher came to an end they could sit for the Queen’s (King’s from 1901) Scholarship. A first or second class pass would qualify the student to enter a training college although this did not guarantee a place as applicants were far more numerous than places. In 1900 barely 44.5% of pupil -teachers were accepted.

From 1902 regulations for pupil-teacher training were tightened up and all potential future teachers were encouraged to get a good secondary education wherever possible. In 1906 King’s Scholarships were abolished. From 1907 there was instead, a Preliminary Examination for the Elementary School Teachers’ Certificate’.  This examination was in two parts, compulsory subjects in Part 1 needed to be passed before continuing onto the second part. In Part 2 there were compulsory subjects English, History and Geography, but also a wider range of other subjects from which the student could choose three options, from within the categories of Elementary Science, Elementary Mathematics, and Foreign Languages.  Also from 1907 there was an alternative route into the profession apart from being a pupil-teacher. Selected pupils at secondary school could be awarded bursaries to enable them to stay at school  for an additional year.  They could then enter training college or serve in a school as a student teacher for up to a year and then enter college. From August 1909 the Board of Education would only consider applicants who had been to a recognised Secondary School for at least the previous three years and would only pay a grant to Bursars who passed  (either during their bursary year or within one year after completion of it) one of the exams qualifying them for entry to a Training College. Bursars could be accepted at a Training College at 17, a year younger than those following the pupil-teacher system. There was criticism of the new system by some who considered it to be unfair to children from working class families who were not in a position to delay earning a wage until they reached the age of 20 or 21. By the outbreak of the Great War the old pupil-teacher system was more or less obsolete, although it was not formally disbanded until the nineteen thirties.

Practicing Schools

Each training college was allied with one or more schools in the local area where the students could practise their teaching skills .When the College was at Wolvesey Palace St. Michael’s was the practising school. Students attended St. Michael’s every Monday afternoon between 2-4pm. In the last four months of their training they were required to attend every afternoon. Later by the time college was on the West Hill site the main Practising’ school was St. Thomas’, but others including some in Eastleigh were added at a later date. Students were given regular access and teaching experience within these approved practising schools. Their teaching was supervised, they also had the opportunity to study good models of teaching within those schools and additionally they had lectures on the principals of teaching and the application of those principles. It is probably then safe to assume that those students who were employed in a practising school on completion of their studies were deemed to be particularly good teachers.

A student, writing in the college magazine, the Wintonian, in 1908, tells us about their experience of teaching practise: