The spacious new Council School at Bruton was formally opened on Tuesday afternoon by Mr W H Shepherd, chairman of the Somerset County Education Committee, in the presence of a large gathering of residents of the town and district. Bruton is a town with great traditions in the matter of education, and the new school, a fine example of modern buildings of the kind, is a worthy addition to the educational facilities of the district, with wings for seniors and juniors respectively, it is the open air type, and is only the second of it's kind to be opened in the County, the previous one being Clevedon.
CENTRAL SCHOOL FOR AREA
It has been built to take the place of the former Church of England School which is no longer suitable for present requirements and under the Committee's scheme of re-organisation, it will form the senior school for Bruton and the neighbouring parishes of Pitcombe, Lamyatt, Milton Clevedon, Batcombe, Upton Noble, and South Brewham. The children over 11 years of age from those parishes will atend the senior department of the school, and the junior department will provide for the children up to 11 years of age from Bruton itself. The buildings comprise four classrooms, a science-room, and a combined manual and domestic science-room in the senior school; three class-rooms in the junior school; and one class-room for the infant department. There is an assembly hall, kitchen, scullery, larder, and stores, headmaster's room, rooms for the male and female staff, cloak-rooms, and offices, a playground for boys and one for girls and infants, a heating chamber in the basement, and school gardens. The domestic subjects to be taught will include a complete course of housewifery for the girls, and woodwork for the boys. The assembly hall will be used for physical exercises on wet days, and as a dining-room for children who remain for the mid-day meal, for the preparation of which there is a service kitchen. It is hoped to introduce a scheme for agricultural education for the older children on available land adjoining the school. The class-rooms are of the open-air type, with side walls of fully glazed doors, which may be opened to their full extent, or the upper half used as ventilators. The heating of these rooms is by means of panel radiators fixed in the ceilings and end walls, controlled by valves. The room for teaching the girls domestic science is suitably fitted, and has a small dining-room and bedroom communicating with it. The playgrounds are paved with tarmacadam, and cycle sheds for boys and girls are provided. The building was designed by Major A J Toomer, the county architect, and work carried out by a local firm, Messrs Hobbs & Son, of Bruton. Electric lighting is installed throughout. The accepted tender was £15,189, and the cost of the building works out at £40 per head of the accomodation.
THE STAFF
Mr W T Chancellor, who for the last 25 years has been headmaster of the old Church of England School, becomes headmaster of the new school, and transferred with him from the old school are Mrs Chancellor, as senior assistant mistress in chanrge of the junior and infant section, Miss Harding, as senior assistant mistress, and other members of the staff.
Mr W A Knight (chairman of the managers) presided over Tuesday's ceremony, and, in addition to the Chairman of the County Education Committee, those present included Mr J C Morland (vice-chairman of that body), Mr E S Reed (chairman of the County Education Committee Building Committee), the Revs W H Haviland (Batcombe), W M Annesley (Brewham), and F J Burt Soray (Congregational minister at Bruton), Mr R T A Hughes, Mr F Golledge (a member of the school managing body), and others.
Mr W A Knight said he had known from the inside every type of school he thought they could mention. They had in Somerset a most excellent local authority, which had always been in the forefront of educational development. in the re-organisation of elementary education, which had been going on now for some years, he knew Somerset was absolutely in the front rank, and had developed it's schemes, he believed, before any other county. They might have excellent buildings, however, complete equipment, and a good managing body, but one thing that counted was the personality and training of the teacher. He must say that that school could compare favourably with other Bruton schools. The modern requirements of education were such that as time went on, what had been good enough for a large secondary school was hardly thought good enought for an elementary school. Mr Knight concluded with a warm tribute to the county education officers, who had helped them in every possible way.
JUST IN TIME
Mr Shepherd, declaring the school open, said he congratulated Bruton on getting that school, for in one respect they were very fortunate. It was only a little while before the "stand still" order of last autumn came that they had been able to place the contract for that school. They had placed the contract, and so they were able to go on with it. The financial stringency had been such that their schemes of development had been seriously retarded, and Bruton was fortunate because it had "got away with it" all right. He could not help feeling, too, that while in the future they would have to build schools with accomodation to equal that, the type of building they would have to adopt would have to be cheaper, and the schools then might not be so handsome, though, he hoped, equally efficient for their purposes. If they cost less, he thought he might say that it was not a matter over which the county ratepayers would quarrel with the County Education Committee. (Laughter).
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TRIBUTE TO PAST TEACHERS
He would rather like to contrast the present system of education in primary schools with that which had proceeded it. It was not so many years ago that they were told they had to develop their scheme of education, and prior to that what they had done was to train all the children, whatever their age, in their own local schools - schools which, admirably adapted for their purpose when erected 70 or 80 years ago, had, with the development of education ideas, become less suited for the purpose for which they were used. They had a whole lot of children from ages ranging from five to 14, educated together - all mixed up in one or two classes, and they had a want of system which must have rendered teaching the teaching almost impossible. That it was not impossible was thanks to the skill and goodwill of the teachers. (Applause.) How they had succeeded, under the conditions, in turning out boys and girls as they had done was to him a marvel. What they were doing now was to bring the older children from the smaller schools into one big centre, and they had left in the smaller schools children from five to eleven years of age, which was a much more managable proposition.
Mr Shepherd stressed the advantage the larger central senior schools could offer in the matter of having the services of a number of specialist teachers, and went on to say that he wanted to thank, on behalf of the County Committee, the managers of the contributory schools - those schools who would send children to that school - for the ready co-operation which they had shown.
PAST SCHOOLS IN BRUTON
Mr R T A Hughes, proposing a vote of thanks to Mr Shepherd, said speaking as one with a 40 years' connection with elementary education in that town, he would like to say that the reason for that new school was not any want of efficiency on the part of those who had been carrying on elementary education in Bruton for so many years. There had been teachers who, in their day and generation, had done great things for the children of Bruton. (Applause.) The name of Edward Robt. Hayter came to his mind in that connection. In 1837 the first Bruton national school was built and formed out of an old poor house, and the place where that stood was now the playground which some would remember in 1917 was very nearly washed down the Brue into the Bristol Channel. In 1851 came the building of what they had known for so many years as the National School, erected on the site of a public-house, which was pulled down, and in 1876 the infant school in High-street was given to the people of Bruton by the visitors of Hugh Sexey's Hospital.
The Rev. W H Haviland, seconding, said compensation for the removal of the children of 11 years of age from Batcombe School, was that he had 40 little ones to go on with. So far as he was concerned the children of Batcombe would get church teaching at the most impressionable age, and a glimpse at the sylabus of religious teaching put forth by the Education Committee for that new school had surprised and delighted him.
Mr E S Reed moved a vote of thanks to the Chairman, mentioning that Mr Knight had been a member of the County Education Committee since its inception and he was a prominent member of the Higher Education Committee. His name would always be associated with Sexey's School for the great work he had done there. He had served on the examining body of the elementary schools for qualification for secondary schools, and was also a member of the Universities Committee.
A PIONEER
Mr F Golledge seconded, remarking that he was an old pupil of Mr Knight. Mr Knight had always been a pioneer, and at Sexey's he had introduced a scheme which afterwards had been copied throughout the country, and as a result of that scheme he had been able to send pupils to Cambridge. He (Mr Golledge) had been, and still was, sceptical as to the advantages which would accrue from those central schools. In the village they had worked hard to provide themselves with an efficient school and staff, and it seemed to him under this re-organisation they would lose one advantage which Mr Chancellor, and those with him would find it difficult to recover, and that was the personal contact between the staff of the school and the parents of the children they were teaching. That was a great asset of their little country schools, and of course it would be impossible for Mr Chancellor to be conversant to the same extent with the parents of all the children coming from the country villages. It seemed to him to-day there was a great tendency to "urbanise" everything, and they did want the rural part of the life of the country kept to the fore. Education in the past had rather tended to make clerks and typists of boys and girls, and he did feel that it waws production that counted. England to-day was in a bad state, and it was up to them to look around in every direction, and see where things were wrong. He did wonder sometimes whether their educational system was on the right lines.
"SPEED LIMIT" APPEAL
Mr Knight, responsing, referred to the number of county councillors there were present, and said some of the residents of Bruton had felt for a very long time that Bruton was not exactly a place where a speed test for motor-cars and motor-cycles should be arranged. The only remedy for the "frightful" driving that they saw through the streets of Bruton was the establishment of a speed limit. The opening of that new school, with so many children coming from the villages, made that need even more imperative. (Applause.) He understood that the matter had already been brought up by some members of the Parish Council, and he earnestly appealed to those members of the County Council present to use their utmost influence to get that speed limit established.
The premises were afterwards thrown open for inspection.
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