No More Promotions To Intermediate

  Orders have just been given for the biggest educational re-shuffle that Rushden has known for about 20 years.  Except for the Infants’ Departments, every school in the town is involved, and the changes will also affect the school at Higham Ferrers.

  The Intermediate School, which has functioned for about 20 years as a central school, entrance to which was by examination, is to lose its status as a “selective” school and will now simply take in the whole of the scholars from two junior schools (except those entering grammar schools) as they reach the age of 11.

  The two schools that will thus be limited to scholars under 11 are Alfred-street and South End.

  Newton-road School, however, will remain outside this arrangement.  Hitherto, like Alfred-street and South End, it has fed the Intermediate with scholars passing the annual examination.  Now it will retain the whole of its over-11s.

  Higham Ferrers Council School also has sent a proportion of its scholars to the Intermediate.  That arrangement now ceases.

Rather Mixed

  Rushden will now have one school for children aged 11 and over, two for children under 11, and one covering the whole range.

  Under the new Education Act the age of 11 is a universal dividing line between junior and secondary education.  The schools emptied of their older scholars will thus be called “Junior Mixed” and the Intermediate will grade as “non-selective Senior (Secondary).”

  Enquiries made by the “Echo and Argus” show that no progressive step is being attempted in this reorganisation, which has been ordered by the County Education Committee after consultation with the Rushden School Managers and the Intermediate School Governors.  It is nothing more than a makeshift arrangement arising from the need to redistribute the scholars.

Hired Classrooms

  The whole question has come to a head following the withdrawal of evacuees from the town.

  For five years Alfred-street School has only avoided extreme overcrowding by sending 150 of its children into outside premises.  The bombing of the school in 1940 aggravated an already difficult problem, for the school was rebuilt in curious fashion to provide deep raid shelters, and classroom space was sacrificed.

  Two classes were “farmed out” at the distant Highfield St. Peter’s Hall, and another was put into the Adult School Building.  When the evacuees left Rushden the authorities turned their thoughts to this inconvenient arrangement, and perhaps even more keenly to the fact that the hire of the outside premises could no longer be charged – as it had been – to the Evacuation Account.

Future Hopes

  Calculating the effect of bringing back the outside classes, they found that Alfred-street could not possibly accommodate them.  The general reshuffle is their solution of the problem – until such time as the new Education Act is carried into fulfilment and real secondary schools – one of which would have to be built – are established in the town.

  The scheme is subject to the approval of the Ministry of Education.  It begins with the coming autumn term and contains a proviso that “nothing…….shall affect the right of the parents of the said children to send them to such other available schools as they may choose.”

  One point, at least, awaits elucidation.  The Intermediate children have always worn distinctive hats and caps.  What happens now in the case of the older scholars at Newton-road, who will be – or should be – on exactly the same footing?

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