Posted by John Birch on September 08, 2000 at 16:31:35 from gateway1.gsi.gov.uk:
In Reply to: Schools (was: Re: PM: Roger & Latin) posted by Robert Hill on September 06, 2000 at 13:34:52:
The books being set in the 1930s it is indeed highly unlikley that the children concerned went to state secondary schools (boarding or otherwise) because there were no such things until after the 1944 Act.
You COULD get state scholarships to attend Grammar Schools (from about 1902 if memory serves me correctly) and many schools would indeed be 100% scholarship, but technically they were not state schools. After 1944 these types of school either joined the state sector - notmally as Voluntary Aided schools - or became "Direct Grant" schools, which in turn ceased to exist in the early 70s (ie. most became independent, some joined the state sector).
Some of the nominally "day" Grammar Schools did (or do) have boarding sides, as well as day pupils and it is possible that some of the children could have attended such schools. My own school - Lancaster Royal Grammar School (where you can see the Lakeland hills from the playing field... ah memories!) -still is one third boarding to this day, and always had a catchment area extending well into southern lakeland (however it is a boys-only school, so no chance that Nancy or Peggy ever went there...). State boarding is far larger than most people realise. It is highly possible I think that the Blackets and the Callums could be scholarship pupils.
Also the Walkers school fees may well have funded by the navy as they always used to give grants for such things, especially to higher ranks (indeed all ranks were eligible for something - many of my contemporaries in the 70s were service children with their boarding fees paid by the services) so they may not have been quite as wealthy as it may seem.
As for what a "public school" is.... technically this is/was more correctly defined in the education worlds as "a school in membership of the Headmaster's Conference or the Girls Public Day-School Trust". This actually (and confusingly) means that some (all be it only a handful) state schools were also public schools, and that many independent schools were not (again my school was a state school - but also an HMC member).
In this is all a bit a bit academic as fact the HMC/GPDST officially dropped the term "public school" about 8-10 years ago so officially there is no such thing as a public school any more.
And one final not wildly relevent aside, but still... The UK's first comprehensive school opened in Windermere (Rio?) in 1946 because the area had too few children to support separate grammar and secondary modern schools, which kind-of support the idea that the Blackets had to board (maybe with the help of a scholarship?) in order to get any sort of secondary education in the 30s.