1.0 Summary

The original school building was constructed in 1874 as a two-room Church of England Primary School. It was popular and was extended in 1906 when an outside toilet block was built. In 1939, an air raid block was built in the playground, and parents converted it into office and library space precisely 50 years later. With a very low school roll (11 at one point in the 1950s), several closure threats were made, which were avoided. In the 1990s, the school became so popular that mobile classrooms were required to accommodate approximately 90 children. Kent County Council carried out a major expansion and refurbishment of the premises at a cost exceeding £500,000. The school experienced staff difficulties a few years later, and the Council and church decided to close it permanently. This was in the face of significant opposition from the remaining parents and villagers. The site was declared an asset of community value. It was purchased by the Parish Council and leased to KCC, which adapted and upgraded the facilities for use by a year’s group from Grange Park School, Wrotham.

2.0 Background

It was not until 1870 that elementary (primary) education was made available to all children in the country as a right. It wasn’t free, which didn’t happen until 1891, nor compulsory, which was ordered in 1876. Before this, there had been a variety of provisions, and it was very easy for children to fall through the net, especially in rural areas such as Stansted.

Sunday schools had been around since the 1790s, and after 1811, the Church of England set up its National Society for the Promotion of Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church. This started to put into place a system of reading, writing and arithmetic plus needlework for the girls. This system dominated popular education for the next 50 years. Between 1830 and 1857, some provisions were established for factory children, workhouse children, and wayward or homeless children, but this was in towns and cities, not the countryside. Implementation was patchy, and even where provision existed, it was often only for 2 hours a day, and many children did not take part. There were few Catholics in the Parish, but elsewhere, they had only been allowed to build their schools since 1829 – previously, Catholic children had to be tutored privately or attend an overseas school (obviously out of the question for most working families).

A Primary school was founded in Ash in 1814 and Wrotham in 1844; children from Stansted and Fairseat are known to have attended these schools. Before this, charitable education for the poor had been provided in both Ash and Wrotham, but the provision was patchy and inconsistent.

In rural areas, poverty must have denied practically all schooling as parents could not neither afford school fees nor forgo their children’s earnings or labour. Consequently, it was still an oral, largely illiterate society with much ignorance and superstition. Most children would have received their education from their parents, who had had very little formal education. In 1840, it was reported that in England, only one-third of working-class children could read ‘fairly’ and that no more than half regularly attended school. In 1843, it was estimated that only two-thirds of adult males and less than half of adult females had a basic literacy.