Paul Haslam on an 1868 report on St Olave’s grammar school,
Marian Nyman recalls a chat about uniforms in the 1970s, and
Kate Danielson on access to universities and opportunities afterwards
Re your leader on St Olave’s grammar school (Pupils paid the price. It was their school’s failure, 12 July), it is not the first time that the school’s admissions policy, among other matters, has been the subject of a report. In 1868, in his report on the endowed classical or grammar schools of the London postal district, Daniel Fearon, the assistant commissioner to the Schools Inquiry Commission, had much to say about this ancient foundation. But the problem was, in a sense, the opposite of the present situation. The school was then situated in Southwark and was bound like many grammar schools, by its charter, to make educational provision for the rich and the poor. But by 1865 many of the professional and commercial inhabitants had left the parish and so the school had become one for the education of the labouring classes. It needed, in the view of the governors, to attract middle-class children in adjoining parishes and several respectable families in the parish had said they would be glad to send their children to the school if “a separation could be guaranteed from the lowest class”. The solution, in the view of the governors, was the introduction of fees!
Paul Haslam
Derry
• As a teacher in inner London in the 1970s, I told the head of year that enforcing all the details of school uniform was a waste of everyone’s time (Mother to sue over school uniforms guidance, 7 July; Letters, 10& 14 July). His response was that kids will always object to something, and it may as well be something as pointless as uniform as anything more important.
Marian Nyman
Whitstable, Kent
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