The rash of local schools celebrating distinguished anniversaries of one sort or another recently is no fluke. A lot has happened in education since the end of World War Two, and we think it’ll be worth paying it a bit of local historical attention.
Until fairly recently setting up and running a school was a pretty simple thing to do – but it didn’t reach everyone. We’ll leave aside the public schools in which the wealthier part of society was educated: what did the rest of us – boys and girls – do? Of course, there has always been a recognised need to teach children – the ancient Greeks did it, and pretty well all societies have something in place, although whether everyone has access to it is debatable. In England the cathedrals and monasteries began to teach Latin from the sixth century, and that expanded to provide grammar schools delivering an increasingly broad education aimed at university admission , and developing right up to the 1950s.
We won’t try to track each school’s story in these articles, but with Durrants, Rickmansworth Grammar opened just after it in 1954, then Clement Danes in 1975, there will be plenty ofWe want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.