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late Alec Weston had an original copy of
the PGS Prospectus when C W H Richardson
was the headmaster and this is also dated
1924. [School pictured in 1924] This details the
rules and conditions of all new pupils to
the school when the fees for a term were
Two Pounds, Three Shillings, and Eight
Pence (£2/3/8).
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Rod
Crook adds, "The PGS
Prospectus for 1924 recently posted by
the Editor is a great item for the
Archive. In passing I also remember Alex
Weston taking great pride in showing me a
brightly coloured striped blazer dating
from the 20s. It must have been for
sporting occasions only-presumably worn
with the straw hat referred to in the
Prospectus and was probably a minority
possession. A photograph of the blazer
might be worth pursuing for the Archive.
A couple of points to notice. The fees
remained similar up to the time they were
phased out after the 1944 Edcation Act.
In the early 1940s I think they stood at
2 pounds and 15 shillings a Term, as
opposed to 2 pounds three shilling and
eight pence twenty years before. This may
not seem much to the reader today, but
should be related to the typical family
wage. This might represent perhaps 50% of
a weeks wages, impossible for many
famlies and very hard for others. The
Twenties, as noted by the Editor were
sometimes referred to as the
‘roaring twenties’ but this was
the froth on the heap of Depression,
poverty and unemployment. For the
denizens of Prescot and environs it was
not an easy time, and the 30s were no
better. You could enter the School in
Form 1 as a fee paying student after your
8th birthday, and remain a pay payer
throughout, or enter in Form 3 after
passing what was termed the
‘Scholarship Exam.’ Some of us
changed status by taking the Scholarship
Exam while already attending the Lower
School. The Scholarship Exam was to
become the ‘11 plus,’ and of
course became the sole method of entry
until the end of the Grammar School.
It is also interesting to notice that the
Prospectus refers to 5 acres of land.
This was of course the year of the change
from the old High Street building to the
St Helens Road site. Early in the life of
the School it was intended that a Girls
Grammar School would be created on the
same site and the rest of the then
farmland was purchased for the School. In
other words the site many of you remember
was much larger than 5 acres. For a
fuller discussion see F.A.Bailey’s
discussion in the 1944 volume or
reprinted in that of 1994.
I like the bit about the four rules of
Arithmatic-presumably these were
addition, subtraction, multiplication and
division?" |
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