4 - The emergence of the Bedford School Board

Summary

“A bitter pill for us to swallow.” The Mayor of Bedford, July 1897.

“I do not doubt but that future generations will point to Queens Park, Goldington Road, Priory, and the rebuilt Ampthill Road Schools as monuments of a bold, enlightened and industrious, though short-lived public authority.”

The Chairman of the Bedford School Board, May 1903.

The School Places Crisis

As 1895 drew to a close it became apparent to the Harpur Trust Elementary Schools Committee that the stage was fast approaching when the Harpur Trust could do no more to accommodate the ever-increasing numbers requiring elementary education. The income from the 2/11 of the endowment was not increasing, nor to any great extent was the government grant: on the other hand the cost per pupil was rising steadily. At the end of November the heads of the elementary schools were asked to inform the Committee what in their opinion was the maximum number of children that could be accommodated without lowering efficiency. After considering the replies, the Committee decided to recommend that “the Governors should seriously consider the urgent necessity for increased school accommodation, and the inability of the Harpur Trust to provide the same.”

The facts of the situation were clearly brought home to the Governors at their meeting on January 8th, 1896, when the inspector’s reports were read. These revealed serious overcrowding. At Ampthill Road Boys’ School classes of 55-60 were being taught in rooms which at 10 square feet per pupil should only have accommodated thirty-seven. In the infants’ school a room 26 feet by 22 feet had, at times, to hold ninety-three children. Another room 30 feet by 20 feet accommodated 122, and there was one class alone that had over ninety on the register. At Clapham Road a similar state of affairs existed. In the babies’ room 108 were taught in a room that should have only held seventy, and as many as forty-nine sometimes had to be taught in a cloakroom that should have held no more than twenty. When the inspector made his visit in November, no pupils had been admitted since September.