Teversham : Education

EDUCATION.

In 1729 part of the income of Joan Jermy's charity was assigned to teach poor children. (fn. 1) From the 1730s to the 1790s £1 10s. were thus paid yearly to a schoolmistress, (fn. 2) who received £3 by 1806, raised c. 1837-8 to £6, officially to teach 14 children reading, spelling, and sewing. (fn. 3)

In 1818, when a private day school taught c. 15 paying pupils, the rector had recently started a Sunday school for over 30 children, (fn. 4) maintained by subscriptions from the farmers. It had closed by 1836, when only the rector still supported it. (fn. 5) In 1833 a private school had taught 14 pupils, the endowed one only 8, though probably 15 by 1836 when the curate supervised it. (fn. 6) In 1846-7 the day school had an unsecured schoolroom and a teacher's house; the parish paid for its mistress, one of two, to teach up to 20 children, parents paying for the rest. (fn. 7) About 1850 the old woman who kept a dame's school was thought unable to read. (fn. 8)

In 1861 the rector gave 1/3 a. just east of his rectory house, upon which a school and teacher's house were built in brick the same year for use by a National or church school, also for a Sunday school, to educate the children of labouring and poor families. Control of religious instruction was vested in the rector. Until 1883 both his co-managers and the electing subscribers, giving at least 10s. each, had to be Anglicans resident or owning land in Teversham. (fn. 9) In practice by the 1870s the vestry supervised the school through a committee and might levy school rates. (fn. 10)

The school received from the Jermy charity c. 1860-80 over £20 a year, over half its income in 1865. It was otherwise supported until the 1870s largely by subscriptions and schoolpence, not levied for more than three children per family. In 1865 a certificated mistress taught 28 boys and 32 girls, 34 attending regularly. In 1873 almost half the 60 pupils were infants, other children going out to work almost before they could walk. (fn. 11) Average attendance declined from 57 in 1885 to c. 50 from the 1890s. (fn. 12) A winter night school, held thrice a week and attended, 1873-83, by c. 20 young men, was declining by 1885. (fn. 13) At the day school girls learnt plain needlework, older boys drawing. In 1897 two pupil teachers helped teach history and arithmetic and, less well, English and geography. (fn. 14)

The school remained a church school after 1903. (fn. 15) Attendance, only 32 in 1919, was still 30 or more in the 1930s, (fn. 16) even though the older children had been sent from 1927 to Fulbourn, and after 1937 to Bottisham village college. (fn. 17) In 1956, in expectation of rising population, the school, then with 40 pupils, bought c. 10 a. of glebe to extend its site and playground. Its old assembly hall was modernized, and two new classrooms were added by 1965. (fn. 18) The primary school, again extended in 1985, (fn. 19) was still open as a church school in the early 1990s. (fn. 20) It still received half the income, reduced c. 1900 to c. £12, constituted as a separate educational foundation since 1907, of the Jermy charity. (fn. 21)