Let's Think Again

 No sooner had the County Education Committee come to terms with the requirements of the 1902 Balfour Act, surveyed its sometimes woeful array of school buildings, and set out a plan for the future, than the upheavals of the First World War intervened.  At least, the east side of St Albans fared well from those early years; the two buildings of Fleetville Elementary Schools were both open before the onset of war, and Camp Elementary School just before the millennium.  But in the latter case day-to-day existence persevered  with limited water supply, no heating and an unfinished playground.  But at least the buildings were sound.

To herald peacetime the government announced further legislation.  Finally enacted in 1921 and known as the Fisher Act, the new Education Act established an all-embracing education programme for children between the ages of 5 and fourteen, with separate phases defining Infants (5 to 7), Juniors (7 to 11) and Seniors (11 to 14, but initially 13).  For the first time the Act laid out an approach to learning, not simply attendance and inspection; the phrase child centred learning entered the educational lexicon.  

The Education Committee, having carefully launched its initial programme, stretching limited funds as far as they would reasonably go, was now expected to adjust and expand even further, with no immediate expectation of increased funding.

The former St Albans School of Art in Victoria Street, whose buildings eventually extended
back to what became the Chequer Street Car Park following the closure of the brewery site.
The building also incorporated the first public library, the Central School and workshops for
senior boys from the town's schools.

However, there is one more local school not mentioned so far, which came into being during the Balfour era; and there were plentiful examples of them throughout the UK.  Central Schools were established in response to a demand by senior pupils coming to the end of their elementary education but with no access, including scholarships, to the existing secondary schools, which in St Albans at the time meant St Albans High School for Girls and St Albans School for Boys.  St Albans Central School was accommodated rather uncomfortably in the first library and art school building in Victoria Street.  It included workshop rooms for senior boys from the city's elementary schools that lacked their own facilities.  It was a shoe horn existence and badly needed sorting out.

The issues facing the Education Committee in addressing the Fisher Act requirements in St Albans was complicated by the nature and condition of the existing estate and it was agreed to manage the process by phasing the improvements, beginning with what was perceived as the most challenging to tackle; the East Ward.  Central and West areas of the city would have to wait their turns.  Even so, the East Plan's implementation stretched out over more than a decade, exacerbated by the stream of housebuilding in the Ward, unbroken for the past forty years or so. Thus huge pressures were placed on available spaces in all three schools; Hatfield Road, Camp and Fleetville – even though the former was not actually located in the East Ward.

Top priority was given to building boys' and a girls' senior schools on land the Committee had purchased in Fleetville (where today's Fleetville Junior School is located).  At the time, in 1921, the land was naively considered sufficient for two separate schools. The norm for the time would have been each school occupying the ground or first  floor of a single building; an arrangement which the Education Committee referred to as "adjacent sites".   While it was a bold start to the plan the new schools would take many years to open; an interim solution was desperately needed for shorter term gain.

Top: a Fleetville School senior class from 1931. From the following year the girls would attend
the new Central School on the other side of Hatfield Road.  Below: In the same year, senior
children at Camp School.  From 1932 senior girls would transfer to the new Central School, 
and senior boys to Fleetville seniors or Hatfield Road.

Funding for a girls' senior school was granted, though no building emerged.  If it had the new building would accommodate senior girls from Fleetville and Camp, and girls from the Central School in the centre of town.  The Camp senior boys would transfer to Fleetville and allow Camp to become the first of the Primary (Junior Mixed Infant) schools.  The interim plan wasn't signed off until 1928, at which time there was still no new senior school!

Top: the new Central School main building – although this photo was taken later than the year
of opening (1931) by which time a new teaching block had been added.  Below: a cookery class in one
of the practical rooms at the new Central School.

Meanwhile, conditions at the Central School deteriorated further and it was agreed – a euphemism for protracted and sometimes heated discussions – that a complete new school would be built – on the land at Fleetville previously reserved for two senior schools.  Central's new school, with an increased number of places, opened in 1931.  The Fleetville and Camp senior girls could finally move into bright new buildings, but Fleetville could not become a primary while its senior rooms were full of Fleetville and ex Camp boys.  Gradually boys transferred from there to Hatfield Road as its accommodation became available; Fleetville therefore emerged as a Primary over time; and it seemed that no sooner had later boys enrolled at Hatfield Road they transferred en-bloc to another new school which opened in 1938 at Beaumonts!  But that is a later chapter in the story.

Fleetville's senior boys did, however, enjoy one new benefit from 1931.  The new Central site also included workshops for practical activity, deemed essential since the existing elementary schools had contained no such facilities.

Ss Alban & Stephen's new school building opened on the corner of Camp Road and Vanda
Crescent in 1934.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

A further school which had been educating children from across the city, had its base behind a church building in Beaconsfield Road.  Its lessons were regularly interrupted by the arrival of trains at the station at the foot of the shallow cutting.  Ss Alban & Stephen Catholic School became part of the system under the Balfour Act, in which grants were paid by the local authority.  Such schools, controlled by the Church of England or Catholic Church, were and are known as Voluntary Controlled or Voluntary Aided schools.  In 1932, the Church acquired land from the Friederick Sander estate in Vanda Crescent for its new school (now the Ss Alban & Stephen Infants); perhaps surprisingly opening as an elementary model, but that was undoubtedly its most economic arrangement given the smaller numbers of expected pupils.  So Alban and Stephen became the next new establishment in the East End, just a year after the new Central.

Although later phases of the re-organisation plan would also impinge on the East Ward a brief explanation would be better left to a later post, otherwise readers would, I fear, find the changes more mystifying than the Hatfield House maze! 

It's Elementary

It is now over thirty years since the first major legislation authorising education provision on a national scale; the 1870 Education Act.

The original inset name panel at Alma Road School is below the first floor window. Although the date of installation is not known, the lower Public Elementary School panel would have been installed
post-1902 and fixed directly into the brickwork without being set into a border frame.

After playing around with government's potential responsibilities for educating the nation's children, the Education Act of 1902, commonly referred to as the Balfour Act, sealed the state's future pathway, formalising the provision of education throughout the country for all children, not only those who weren't lucky enough to receive a classroom place from one of the voluntary organisations.  Further, transferring existing responsibilities from local boards (described in the previous blog) and voluntary organisations to the recently formed county councils.  Although districts could apply for exemption, St Albans, after much lengthy discussion, agreed to pass over its schools to Hertfordshire County Council (HCC).

While HCC lost no time in familiarising itself with its portfolio of existing premises and the need to standardise the facilities' requirements for new buildings, it was clear to the authority that improvements to existing buildings would be limited, given the disparity between need and available resources.  For example, the entirely sensible desirability of providing a bathroom for the benefit of any child arriving at school dirty from normal living conditions endured at home, would potentially have a facility to use before the school day began.  However, some members of the education committee were not convinced of the committee's responsibility to ensure children were clean. Standard building foundations would also be reduced for new buildings to a depth of 18 inches.  Porches would not be provided, and pianos were also considered unnecessary expenditure.

It may be a challenge to view, but this photograph, published in the Herts Advertiser in 1914, 
shows boys from Hatfield Road Elementary School working on the school's allotment garden
in the Ninefields, Brampton Road.  The houses in the background are on the south side of
Brampton Road.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

On the other hand,  a proposal for woodwork to be introduced for boys, and for school gardens to be provided, both for which were accepted. Accommodation for the first was found initially at the old Art School premises in Victoria Street, and a section of ground at Hatfield Road Boys' School was made available, although it is not known whether other schools also benefited before the First World War.  During the war the same school took on allotments on spare ground north of Brampton Road. 

The committee was also concerned that younger children, including infants, traditionally spent too much time sitting at desks. It urged that more time was given for education for the body – active pursuits.

So, the new school style would provide full-time attendance at a recognised school from the age of 5 to 7 in mixed infants classes, thereafter in senior classes of single gender until the age of 12, above which it was slowly but progressively advanced by a year at a time.

Two recent views of the former St Peter's Elementary School, the top picture from Old London
Road and the lower picture from the top of Cottonmill Lane.

The first school to operate as an Elementary school was the former St Peter's Rural Board School, opened in 1898, which was quickly renamed St Peter's Rural Elementary in time for the new Act, and quickly identified as Camp Elementary Schools.  It should be noted that in most cases the title was pluralised to Schools as each section was operated as a separate school department, whether or not it operated within the same building.  Camp Schools quickly filled up as children not living within the city boundary, but who had previously received informal permission to attend their nearest city school, were now required to  attend their nearest "other" school. Since most of the new housing being provided on the east side of the city fell within the "other" areas and there was only one available school, the Camp School's accommodation was soon depleted.  More new homes were also being provided astride Hatfield Road – but  no school, board or elementary, was initially provided in that location.

Camp Elementary School in Camp Road.  The top image is a recent view of a little-altered
frontage (except for the hanging baskets).  The lower image shows a group, possible, two
classes from the leavers' year, aged 12, c1900 to 1905.

Parental pressure quickly mushroomed among parents moving to Fleetville, and by 1906 a site, intended to be for future houses in Royal Road and Tess Road (now Woodstock Road south) was turned over to the County Council for its next new elementary school.  By November 1908 the senior section of the new Fleetville Elementary  Schools was complete.  However, as the infants building was still in the future – and would not open until 1913 – it was decided infant classes would be enrolled and join the senior groups in the 6-classroom building.  For five years the three  infant classes would share the hall space.  

Recent photographs of the former Fleetville Elementary Schools.  The top image is the building first opened in November 1908.  This was intended for Senior classes, later designated Junior and Senior
classes.  The lower image is the smaller building, opened in 1913, for three infants classes.

The previous two paragraphs are naturally inadequate to describe the East End's two original schools.  So they will join a growing list of organisations enjoying more extended posts – eventually!

In other parts of the city and in more rural settlements the existing British, National and Board schools would continue as usual, but as Elementary establishments, the responsibility of Hertfordshire County Council.  Its Education Committee would then decide when a school was deemed full, with arrangements made to add either permanent or temporary rooms according to need. Or, of course, adding more desks to existing classrooms!

Remembering that the system in St Albans largely relied on making use of existing buildings for an existing system.  Unsurprisingly, it did not take long for the modified structure of the Education Committee to require unpicking.  The elementary system was about to be re-organised less than two decades onwards. We'll discover how next time.