THREE DOZEN YEARS

CHAPTER TWO - THE FORMATIVE YEARS

The first entry in the School Log Book records the beginning of Downhills Central School in the following words:

"The above school was opened on Wednesday morning, 1 October, 1919, with the following staff:- Headmaster, Mr. F. O. Pinchbeck, B.A., Miss F. A. Wilson, Miss M. L. Mandall, Mr. W. M. Roberts, Mr. W. W. Semmons. 78 scholars presented themselves for admission, consisting of 42 boys and 36 girls."

1 October is kept from year to year as the "School Birthday" with appropriate ceremonial. If we have a "Founder" it is the Tottenham Urban District Council Education Committee who, in February, 1919, adopted the Report of its Central Schools Sub-committee recommending the establishment of three Central Schools, one of which was to be at Downhills. The Education Act of 1918 had been followed by a Board of Education Circular (1057) which advised local authorities on the preparation of schemes of education, for submission to the Board, showing how they intended to implement the Act. The Tottenham Education Committee remitted the Circular to the School Management Committee which set up the Central Schools Sub-Committee. The members of this Sub-Committee and the Director of Education, Mr. A. J. Linford, after visiting several Central Schools in the London County Council area, made the following recommendations:

1. Three Central Schools should be opened in Tottenham; a mixed school at Downhills, a girls' school at Down Lane, and a boys' school at Risley Avenue.
2. The mixed school at Downhills should have a curriculum on lines similar to those of a Secondary (Grammar) School. The two other schools should have a commercial and technical curriculum.
3. These schools should commence after the summer holidays.
4. At the commencement only first year pupils should be admitted.
5. Scholars in elementary schools who were over eleven and under twelve years of age on 1 August and who had reached a class equivalent to the fifth standard should be eligible for admission. Pupils should be selected at the same time and by the same processes as candidates for the second examination for free places in the Secondary (Grammar) Schools.
6. There would be a need for maintenance allowances when the pupils passed the normal leaving age of fourteen.

In submitting these recommendations the Sub-Committee said that the purpose of these schools was "to provide for suitable and specially selected pupils an extended course of instruction having a definite bias towards some kind of industrial or commercial work. They differ from Secondary Schools in their earlier leaving age and less academic curriculum and from Trade Schools in their earlier age of admission and in not aiming at providing training for a particular trade or business." It appeared that, in London, pupils were admitted to Central Schools between the ages of eleven and twelve years and were expected to remain for a four-year course, but they could stay, with the approval of the Board of Education, for five years. The Sub-Committee estimated that, on this basis, there were in Tottenham 1,500 prospective pupils for Central Selective Schools. The Report of the Sub-Committee was adopted by the Education Committee on 17 February, 1919.

By June of the same year more detailed plans had been worked out for the admission of the first batch of pupils. Free places were to be given to 160 boys and 120 girls, 62 of these places were to be offered to unsuccessful candidates for the entrance scholarship examination to Secondary (Grammar) schools, the remaining places to be allotted to the schools of the district in proportion to the number of pupils on roll. The pupils were to be chosen on the basis of their class records and an examination conducted by the Headmaster. This may seem rather a haphazard method but it must be borne in mind that it was an emergency measure to get the schools started. As events turned out, this first batch produced some of the most distinguished old scholars.

On 30 June, 1919, Mr. F. O. Pinchbeck was appointed Headmaster, to take up office on 1 September. Mr. Pinchbeck was trained as a teacher at St. John's College, Battersea, and was a Bachelor of Arts of London University. He brought with him the experience of senior assistant at Mansford Street Central School, London, and he had been head of a London County Council Commercial and Technical Evening Institute. In September Miss Mandall, Miss Wilson, Mr. Semmons and Mr. Roberts were appointed to the teaching staff. The names of these four will live as long as the School, as the four Houses are named after them. In November Mr. W. S. Oldland was appointed as manual instructor and was shared with Downhills Senior Boys' School.

At the outset, Downhills Central School shared the building with the Senior Boys' and Senior Girls' Schools which it gradually displaced. An old scholar (G. C. Carpenter) writes: "I was the first boy (indeed the first person of any sort) to join the School. I was attending Downhills Senior School which then occupied our building and I was shot into one of the two rooms which had been cleared for the new Central School a day or two before it opened. Mr. Pinchbeck arrived a good half day after me!"

In November, the Education Committee referred to the Joint Advisory Committee, composed of Councillors and Teachers' representatives, the question of the method of selection of future pupils, and a special Sub-committee recommended that the candidates should be examined at the same time as candidates for the free places at Secondary (Grammar) Schools. There were to be two examinations, a preliminary examination in arithmetic and English, followed by a final examination of selected candidates in the same subjects. The number to be selected for a final oral test was to be 50 per cent in excess of the places available. Marks were allotted thus: Arithmetic 75, English 100, oral 75, and allowance was to be made for age on the basis of so many marks for each month below the maximum. Headmasters' reports were to be taken into consideration. Parents would be asked to state the school they wished their child to attend and the children who came next on the list after the places at the Secondary (Grammar) Schools had been filled were to be offered Central School places. There are many points of similarity to the present day method of selection.

An important recommendation of this Sub-committee was "that the Education Committee be advised that it is impossible to expect large numbers of applications for admission to secondary and central schools without the establishment of an adequate system of maintenance allowances. "A standing Sub-committee on maintenance allowances was thereupon set up and recommended that a maintenance allowance not exceeding £12 a year should be payable from the beginning of the term after that in which the pupil reached the age of fourteen years. This recommendation was accepted by the Education Committee and forwarded to the Board of Education for approval. The Education Acts of 1907 and 1918 had empowered the Board of Education to pay half the cost of approved schemes of maintenance allowances, but 1921 was a year of financial stringency and a Circular (1238) had been issued saying that no new schemes would be considered. The Tottenham scheme had been submitted to the Board before the Circular was issued and it was pointed out that a refusal to sanction the scheme would be a severe blow to the three schools in which 700 scholars had been awarded free places. But the Board of Education regretted that they could not approve and, in the circumstances, the Tottenham Education Committee decided to pay half the cost (£6 per annum) out of the local education rate.

Another recommendation of this Sub-committee was "that the best method of discovering all suitable candidates is to examine in school hours all children within the age limits," which anticipated a recommendation in the report of the Hadow Committee by six years.

In the meantime the School had been growing. The number on roll on 29 October, 1920, was 158, two more classrooms had been taken over from the Senior Boys' School and four additional members of staff had been engaged. Miss M. Brander, Miss F. A. S. Ward, Mr. H. S. Bourne and Mr. D. G. M. Robson. In September, 1921, a further two classes were formed, the number on roll on 30 September being 237, and the staff was enlarged by the addition of Miss F. A. Grigg, Miss S. A. Bottomley, Miss E. L. Wraith, Mr. G. H. Policy and Mr. H. Haber.

At about this time the Education Committee was considering the possibility of building a new mixed Central School on the ground behind the School, and an architect was commissioned to draw up plans. Then we find in the minutes a reference to a proposal for the erection by the County Council of a secondary school at Downhills. In 1921 the Board of Education issued a circular (1235) urging local authorities to engage in works to ease unemployment and the "Works and General Purposes Sub-committee of the Education Committee drew up a scheme for the erection on the field of a two-storey building to contain a science room, hall, domestic subjects room, two classrooms and cloakrooms. The Education Committee decided to defer this scheme pending a report on the possible reorganisation of the School which would permit the use of the whole of the Senior School block for Central School purposes.

At the end of the Easter term of 1921 Mr. Massie, the Headmaster of the Senior Boys' School, retired, and Mr. Pinchbeck was put in charge of the elementary classes still in the building and, in the following December, the 200 scholars of the Senior Boys' School were transferred to Bruce Grove and Belmont. Except for some classrooms on the west side of the Hall, the Central School then had the whole of the building, and these classrooms were still occupied by the Senior Girls' School in July, 1923. In September, 1922, two more classes were formed, bringing up the numbers to 304, and Miss M. L. McConachie and Mr. G. A. Bullen joined the staff.

In October, 1922, the Director of Education, in a report to the Education Committee, could say of the Central Schools that: "These schools have now admitted their fourth yearly draft of scholars and are completely constituted." In his Annual Statement on 26 March, 1923, the Chairman of the Education Committee said:

"The fact that these schools are in the fourth year of their existence and are now fully constituted gives them a claim to special mention in this statement. . . . Two of the Central Schools entered candidates for the Cambridge University Local Examinations and these met with very gratifying success. . . . The co-operation of all the Committee's head teachers in encouraging pupils to compete for places in Central Schools has had much to do with the success achieved."

Of what impression these Schools made on the life of Tottenham during these formative years there remains little evidence. In 1919 the Tottenham and Edmonton Weekly Herald published a series of articles on the Education Act of 1918, written by the Editor of the "Schoolmaster's Review" under the heading of "New Era in Education." In the second article, on 22 August, the writer, after summarising the advantages which these Central Schools would possess, referred to them. as providing "a long wished for opportunity for the worker's child." When, in 1921, the Education Committee published their draft scheme based upon the Act of 1918, and invited observations, the North Tottenham Labour Party said "that it viewed with grave misgivings the establishment of Central Schools as it is of the opinion that the setting up of a proper system of secondary education is being retarded by the establishment of such Central Schools." The South Tottenham Labour Party, not to be outdone, urged "the conversion of Central Schools into Secondary Schools in the interests of secondary education and also to distribute the cost of such schools more widely." But, alas, the establishment of a national system of secondary education had to wait for more than twenty years.