The Most Democratic State School... Alexander Bloom's St Georges-in-the-East

As we approach the celebration of the centenary of the 1918 Education Act, and the visions of the school behind it, as portrayed and created by the New Ideals in Education Community, I thought I would post a series of blogs that would explore different aspects of the Act and the concept of the school fit for the returning soldiers and their families, the school fit for a developing democracy, a democracy that had just extended its franchise to women with property or who attended university.

Alexander Bloom.

I am going to start, rather in the future, a school created after the end of WW2 in bomb destroyed and impoverished East End London, Stepney. Alexander Bloom, the headteacher, expresses the values found throughout the history of New Ideals, though we have yet to find evidence that he attended  their conferences or was part of that community. Though their publications were promoted to teachers, and sent free to them on request, or for a small sum. Published originally by the Womens Press.

Bloom did become an active member of the international community that sprung from New Ideals, through the organisational skills of Beatrice Ensor, one of the first women to become a school inspector in England, part of the New Ideals in Education community from the beginning, who helped found New Education (International) Fellowship that held its first international conference in Calais 1921, and whose journal, New Era, was co-edited by A.S.Neill just before he founded Summerhill School.

There is little evidence for the background to Bloom's creation of the most democratic state school in Britain, when he took over headship of the East End School in the blitzed, impoverished Stepney, though he wrote numerous articles on how the school worked. 

People came from all over the world to visit St Georges-in-the-East, there was a film made by Rank about the school, and national and London newspapers ran reports about its activities and Blooms funeral. The school was run co-operatively for ten years, 1945-55, ending with Bloom's heart attack at his school desk.

Bloom created a school based on a written ethos of freedom from fear, co-operation and democratic participation. There was a structure of class meetings, class rep meetings, school council meetings, staff team meetings and staff/student management meetings. 

One regular meeting described in E.R.Braithwaite's autobiographical novel about his first year of working at the school, 'To Sir, With Love', has the whole school in a hall, with a panel of teachers on the stage answering anonymous questions taken from a hat by students. The book, and subsequent film, with Lulu and Sidney Poitier, seem to portray a traditionalist teacher, who exerts authority over the students, but is fair, and even takes them on a bus trip to the Museum. But the book portrays the school as a failing progressive, that the headteacher is letting his children down through his progressive attitudes, this is a perspective from an aero engineer and spitfire pilot, who could not get employment except finally as a teacher, due to racism. 

Comparing the book/film with the articles about the school would be a great way of exploring the issues of teacher as traditionalist hero or the community, through the vision of the headteacher as the hero. I have, with resources based on Prof Fielding's research, run workshops with secondary school children comparing their student voice with that of St George's-in-the-East and then making suggestions for change in their schools.

The irony of the title of the book and film is that the headteacher of the school, Alexander Bloom refused to be called 'sir' by his students

The teacher, Thackeray,  in the film, takes his children to the Museum by bus, this appears as if it is an innovation in the school, and helps him get the children on his side, whereas the school had a policy of encouraging children to leave the school to learn and research, sometimes even without a teacher. One project reported in the Times Educational Supplement, 1951, was of Form 4 Alpha, creating self-selected groups, choosing sites along the 15 bus route, phoning and writing to them, and then visiting them to research and create a display, to share and teach others, with some 37 sites celebrated. Much of the work done without a teacher. 

This project and the use of the 15 bus will be central to a centenary celebration of the 1918 H.A.L.Fisher Continuation Education Act, for which it epitomises the values of the vision of schooling that was behind the many people who supported and implemented the Act.

A HMI school inspection report stated: 

‘The pioneering and missionary work which has been carried out over the past two and a half years, always in a spirit of confident adventure, has attained not only the goal which the school set itself from the beginning, but also something every School can be.’  (Ministry of Education 1948) Report by H.M. Inspectors on St, George-in-the East County Secondary School, Stepney, London. Inspected 25th-27th February, 1948.

And when on to say that this was 'the vision of the secondary modern school'. These statements and valuation of a community of learning reflected similar writings and case studies shared by school inspectors active in New Ideals in Education from 1914, including the ex-Chief Inspector of Schools, Edmond Holmes.

To find out more click on the links below to read Prof Michael Fieldings research. I will end here with one quote he uses to show the importance and respect held for Bloom and his school:

"...to work of such innovative power and inspirational reach that Dr Gertrude Panzer, a concentration camp escapee and one of the key figures in the educational reconstruction of post-war Germany, insisted that 'If I could have in Berlin three schools like St. George-in-the-East, Stepney, I could revolutionise the education of this city' (Birley 1978, 63)? How was it that in less than two-and-a-half years Bloom was able to achieve what HM Inspectors described in their 1948 report as 'a vision of what the new form of Secondary School can be' (Ministry of Education 1948,11)."
Alex Bloom: Introduction and Part 1 By Prof Michael Fielding, Lib Ed 1 May 2013

The pictures in this article and much of its content about the school comes from research by Prof Michael Fielding, who has published much of it online. 

'Beyond the Betrayal of Democracy in Schools' by Michael Fielding, 2013

'Alexander Bloom, Pioneer of Radical State Education' by Michael Fielding 2005

'The Radical Potential of Student Voice: Creating Spaces for Restless Encounters' by Michael Fielding 2010

'Democracy and Leadership' slides for Michael Fielding presentation 2014

Clara Grant and New Ideals

Clara Grant

Clara Grant is a famous teacher in Tower Hamlets, she was headteacher at Devon's Road Infant School from 1900, which was later named after her; created the Fern Street Settlement from her home in 1907 promoting health, play and community support including adults learning a trade, making dresses sold via the Settlement, a similar pattern shown by the Lester sisters in setting-up Kingsley Hall; campaigned for health work in schools having one of the first nurses to work in a school, and giving her students a hot breakfast. 

She also set up clubs to save and get boots, spectacles, cradles and fireguards, as an emphasis on hygiene and safety.

Montessori class at East Runton.

Clara Grant attended the Montessori Conference at East Runton in 1914, and later two more conferences, as the community renamed itself New Ideals in Education. She does not speak from the platform, but luckily we have reports of the contributions from the audience in the early conference reports. 

Clara Grant responds to the presentation on Montessori, and comments on the irrelevance of the model classroom that had been set-up for the conference, stating that it is with few children, a lot of space, and investment in costly apparatus. How could she apply this to her large classes in East London, with the poorest children? Even though she was enthusiastic about Montessori. 

The published report states:

“Miss Clara Grant, Infant Mistress, Devon Road L.C.C. School, Bow and Bromley, hoped that those who like herself taught in the elementary schools would not be discouraged because they could not have all the apparatus of the Montessori system of education. It was not much encouragement to see at Runton small children under ideal conditions, while they,

Toys made by children, as presented in Clara Grant's book for teachers.

loving the system, had neither material nor apparatus. Freedom was a dangerous word, and they knew something of the restriction on their elementary schools in the past. It had been most disastrous. Those who lived among poor children and poor parents saw the results. And now the teachers were going the opposite way, and trying to make the apparatus and apply the system in their schools. She thought the class system had been a failure, there should be some individual competition over which the children could exercise their judgement, the children should be independent of the teacher. There were not enough teachers in the infant schools, so they used older children to teach younger. Personally she thought there was much in the system which could be taught and practised.” P23 1914

Indeed in her book on 'The Teachers Book of Individual Occupations'  she continuously references Montessori, though she is showing teachers how to create their own apparatus for children to learn through manual use, including card games, textiles, objects for sorting etc. Like in her book 'Teachers Book on Toy Making' she believes in children learning by doing, and through play. The toys include dolls, objects for a doll's house, 3-D scenes for storytelling like The Three Bears, or of a park the children had visited or wanted built... 

Clara Grant's book for teachers.

Her teacher's guide advises that the teacher offers boxes of materials from which the children can choose, along with tools, and to let them free to make what they want, how they want, to give advice if they ask and instead of directions show them either the object they are trying to make, for example a cooker, or pan, or show them such toys already made. 

Clara Grant, in her reports on the Fern Street Settlement, writes about each area of work and finance, and lists all the workers, supporters and donators. Health, free milk, cleanliness, transition from school to work, play and happiness are the major issues. She advises on the re-use of household items to create them into toys, and in 1910 lists games that are for learning, mental games. These include cards to be matched with words, faces linked to names, sticks of different lengths for putting into order. 

She was known as 'The Bundle Woman of Bow' as she created small bags of gifts from recycled or homemade toys and from donations, including Queen Mary. There were given out every week for a farthing, adding toys to the children's lives and the pleasure of a surprise. It was so poplar that a doorway was constructed, which the children had to walk through, if they were too tall then they were deemed too old for the bundle.

“Farthing bundles are full of very human things such as children love,” explained Clara.

Toys for storytelling.

“Tiny toys of wood, or tin, whole or broken, little balls, doll-less heads or head-less dolls, whistles, shells, beads, reels, marbles, fancy boxes, decorated pill boxes, scraps of patchwork, odds and ends of silk or wool, coloured paper for dressing up, cigarette cards and scraps.”

Her farthing bundles are a way of distributing second hand, and homemade toys and items. For Clara Grant the making of the toys, and the playing with them are an important part of childhood. There are also exchanges between her school and those in more affluent areas, which she recognises as important in terms of social mixing, and people’s understanding of poverty. There are frames on the walls for art to ensure that the environment of the child includes art to create a landscape of beauty. 

One, of many stories she tells in her book, 'From Me to We', starts with watching a child outside, who is in a street with little stimulus to thought or beauty. She writes:

“PICTURE WINDOWS

“… one evening I watched a small boy counting the cracks in our lower windows. Borrowing an idea from a social worker in Limehouse who placed sacred cards on her window-curtains, we decided on framing the many beautiful cards which reached us… Miss Ethel Moir, had started passe-partout (making picture mounts from cardboard or patterned paper) classes of enthusiastic little neighbours, with a waiting list of forty-seven…

“We have now hundreds of these pictures carefully grouped in subject and changed weekly in our three lower windows, and we have four weekly classes so there is a constant enrichment of old groups and new.” P56-57

She goes on to tell us about the conversations she would hear of children, or children with their parents, chatting about the pictures as they looked at them. One great use of buildings and their relationship to public spaces to encourage learning through looking and conversation.

Clara Grant was part of a delegation in 1917, from the New Ideals Conference, which had been meeting at Bedford College (Regents Park), who went to Parliament to lobby the President of Education H.A.L.Fisher, on his 1918 Continuation Education Act. Earlier on he had opened the New Ideals Conference, being introduced by Earl Lytton, both rushing to and from the event because of duties in Parliament.