School History 1926
1926 Terms and Holidays, Entrance Exam
Half-term holiday February 22nd;
b. Summer Term: April 28th - July 28th
Whitsun break - May 24th and 25th;
Half-term break June 11th
c. Autumn Term begins: Wednesday, 15th September.
No sooner had the New Year's celebrations taken place in the Hemsworth area than the ten year old children whose parents were planning their future education at the school were being summoned to take the entrance examination two days before the new term started on Wednesday 6th January 1926. In fact New Year's Day was on the Friday, and the exam was scheduled on the following Monday morning. The fees were advertised at the usual figure of £3/3s per term.
a. Memorandum 44, b. Let's Protest!, c. Crisis over
a. Shock, indignation, despair and a sense of injustice would doubtless have been expressed when the Governors heard of the contents of Memorandum 44. Winston Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer was looking for economies at the Treasury in early 1926, and all local authority building estimates were called into review with this in mind. The Government's undertaking to subsidise the mineowners for the men's wages for nine months while the Royal Commission gathered its evidence, meant economies had to be made to finance this. Another more pressing need for topping up the Treasury coffers was the likely future cost of the measures to overcome the general unrest in the country - the clash of the classes - which was on the horizon in January 1926. Memorandum 44 and its restrictive instructions affected all Local Authority building estimates, and more specifically, those of Hemsworth Secondary School.
b. The County Education Committee met on January 19th to discuss this new matter. Ald. Price was there, and seconded a proposed amendment by Mr. Hyman that a protest be entered against the Memorandum and sent to the Chairman of the Education Committee and the Chairmen of the Higher, Elementary and Finance and General Purposes Sub-committees with the power to approve revised estimates if they deemed it necessary for submission to the Board of Education. Ald. Price did his best to explain that the Memorandum would ruin the proposed provision of a central Hall and Gymnasium at Hemsworth, plans for which had already been passed. If the Memorandum were to be enforced, the contract was likely to be suspended. Hemsworth Secondary School was already overcrowded, and the new Hall was urgently needed. The amendment was lost.
c. We may never know of the negotiations which took place in the corridors of power in Wakefield concerning Memorandum 44, but the school certainly owed much to the tenacity and acumen of Ald. Price, who was able to announce one month later in February that he had been successful in obtaining local sanction to the scheme for the erection of an assembly hall and gymnasium. The science classrooms were already in the process of being built, together with continuing conversion work to create a woodwork and metalwork facility in the coach house at the school. This sanction for the assembly hall was only the first hurdle. Approval from the Board of Education in London was now required.
Share an Art Master?
The County Education Committee wrote in February 1926 to suggest that the school should make a joint appointment of an Art master with Pontefract King's School. The Governors agreed, provided that they could have the services of the teacher for three days each week. It is not clear whether they had followed the Education Committee's instruction of December 1925 to advertise for an Art teacher, or had been dilatory in this respect. Evidently the committee had been busy on Hemsworth's behalf! Might this have been another cost-cutting exercise by the Education Authority?
The actual appointment was made in June when Mr. H. Taylor (Leeds) accepted the post of part-time Art master.
No Red Blouses - please!
Letters of objection were received from parents concerning the requirement of girl students to wear red blouses as part of the uniform. When the Governors were made aware of this, they referred the matter for solution to the lady Governors and Miss Griffiths, the senior mistress. No doubt many a dolly tub had contained pink water, and the menfolk were objecting to pink shirts! (Red dye is notoriously difficult to 'fix' into fabric.) An observation could be made that the wearing of red blouses would not have been sanctioned in the first place without the express permission of Miss Griffiths, and so in this respect, she would have had to climb down.
Three items: a. Small-pox, b. Success at Last, c. Desks, Chairs and Lavatories
a. Small-pox
In view of the outbreak of small-pox in various parts of the country in January and February 1926, the Headmaster broached the matter of vaccinations for the children to the Governors, who were not quite sure what to do next. They agreed to leave consideration of the matter until they had consulted the County Medical Officer.
b. Success at Last
Early in March, the Board of Education in London sent its approval of the plans for the provision of a combined Assembly Hall and Gymnasium at the school at an estimated cost of £6,850. Work could now begin.
c. Desks, Chairs and Lavatories
The increased school population and extra classrooms called for more furniture, and an expenditure of £68 was made for desks and chairs during the Spring of 1926. Additional lavatories and washing facilities were also approved by the County Council to the tune of £222. Whether this referred to the boys' or the girls' facilities - or both- is not clear.
The Pontefract and District Musical Competition 24th - 27th March 1926
The competition began on the Wednesday morning, and ended on Saturday evening. Entries compared favourably with those of the previous year, and it was said that the element of "rush" had been removed by the postponement of the folk dancing classes until later in June, when a special full day's festival in the Castle grounds was planned. In the singing of test pieces the choir was awarded 158 marks, and came third out of five schools competing, but in sight singing they came first with 80 per cent marks, and had the marks been awarded in full, as they should have been, the school would have taken second place for the whole competition. The latest musical development in the school was the formation of an orchestra.
Salaries
On 23rd March the West Riding Education Committee met to decide on the future salaries of Head teachers in Secondary Schools as from April 1st 1926. Sir Percy Jackson was re-elected chairman, and Mr. Edwin Talbot vice-chairman. (There was therefore no change at the helm of the good ship WREC.)
Headmasters
School No. of pupils 1926 Scale (1921 Scale)
Grade 1 ........Up to 200 ...... £600pa with increases of £20 annually up to a maximum £675 £600----£25-----£750
Grade 2 ........201 to 300....... £650pa and increases of £20 annually up to a maximum £815 £700----£25-----£850
Grade 3 ........Over 300 £700 pa and increases of £20 annually up to a maximum £865 £800----£25---- £950
Those Headmasters in Grades 1 and 3 appointed prior to March 24th 1922 (i.e. Mr. Jenkinson) would proceed to the maxima of £720 and £910 respectively.
Headmistresses
School No. of pupils 1926 Scale (1921 Scale)
Grade 1 ........Up to 200 ...........£500 with increases of £15 annually to £572 £500----£25----£600
Grade 2 ........201 to 300..........£600 with increases of £15 annually to £672 £600----£25----£700
Grade 3.........Over 300...........£650 with increases of £15 annually to £770 £700----£25----£800
It is clear from these figures that all Head Teachers, and more especially the ladies, were to accept reduced wages. Approval from the Board of Education in London would follow.
The Water Pump
Another example of how the school had to wait for approval of its applications for funds from the Education Authority came in March 1926, when permission was at last given for a small new electric motor for the purpose of pumping water to be used in the school. The estimated cost was £55. At the Governor's meeting, Councillor Beaumont inquired whether this purchase would "put the school's water supply in order". The chairman said it would clear the school of any trouble in future. The water itself had been analysed, and was declared fit for drinking purposes. This water was presumably to be drawn from the well in the quarry garden, and would make the school independent from the town's piped water supply when required.
[A 500 gallon tank such as the one proposed in 1925 for siting within the roof of the school would have a cubic capacity of 80 cubic metres, and be about 4ft x 4ft x 5ft. If one gallon of water weighs ten pounds, then 500 gallons would weigh 5,000 lbs. If there are 2,240lbs in a ton, then the weight of the water in the tank would be 2.23 tons.]
A Princess
At No.17 Bruton Street, Mayfair on April 10th 1926 the Duchess of York gave birth to her first child, Elizabeth, who became Queen Elizabeth ll.
a. Lock-out , b. The Strike, c. The Betrayal
The Samuel Commission published its report on the mining industry in March 1926. Its conclusions were to greatly affect Hemsworth and its surrounding villages. It recognised that the industry needed to be reorganised but rejected any form of nationalisation. It recommended that the Government subsidy should be withdrawn and the miners' wages should be reduced. The mine-owners published new terms of employment extending the seven-hour working day. There would be district wage-agreements, and depending on a variety of factors, the wages would be cut by between 10% and 25%. If the miners did not accept their new terms of employment, then from the first day of May they would be locked out of the pits.
On April 27 1926, three days before the showdown was to begin, the TUC General Council met and proposed a General Strike of its members on the understanding that it would take over the negotiations with the government from the Miners' Federation. Desperate to find some way out of this conflict, they held talks with the Conservative Prime Minister. The talks broke up, Baldwin walked out, and on May 3rd the strike began.
b. The Strike
Initially, the workers in the key industries - the railwaymen, transport workers, dockers, printers, builders, iron and steel workers were brought out on strike - three million men, or one fifth of the adult male population. Later on the shipyard workers, engineers and other trade unionists would be called on to withdraw their labour in support of the miners. A state of emergency was called. Army and Navy leave was cancelled and the armed forces were sent to escort vital supplies. Food, coal and petrol were stockpiled, and the whole country ground to a standstill.
c. The Betrayal
The strikers organised themselves well, and the situation began to look like a revolutionary struggle instead of a wage dispute. Fearful of the consequences of the battle for power, on May 7th the TUC negotiating committee, without telling the Miners Federation, met Sir Herbert Samuel and accepted proposals which were viewed by the miners as a complete surrender. On May 12th the official General Strike of nine days was over, but the miners stayed out.
By October 1926 hardship forced men to begin to drift back to the mines. By the end of November most miners had reported back to work, forced to accept longer hours, lower wages and district agreements. However, many were victimised and remained unemployed for many years. The humiliation of the TUC was compounded shortly afterwards by an Act of Parliament making all sympathetic strikes illegal, forcing trade union members to 'voluntarily' contract in to pay the political levy, forbidding the Civil Service to join the TUC, and making mass picketing illegal. Workers everywhere believed the miners had been treated abominably, and there was a widespread and justifiable feeling that the mineowners were "a wicked lot".
The hardship suffered by the miners' children probably had little effect on the children of the better-off families who could afford fees for the education of their offspring, yet they would not have been able to miss seeing the general poverty around them in the Hemsworth area. At the local Elementary schools, malnourished pupils with inadequate footwear and clothing were commonplace. Mining was the major industry of the area, and as such was the livelihood of many. The year of 1926 would be remembered as an unmitigated disaster for the miners, who felt bitter against their employers, who were victimising them, and against the leaders at the TUC who had betrayed them.