Posted by John Birch on October 16, 2000 at 10:20:52 from 194.6.79.172:
In Reply to: Re: More Ransome "Oddities" posted by John Wilson on October 14, 2000 at 14:01:32:
The school leaving age in the 1930s was 14, and had been since at least 1921. It went up to 15 following the 1944 Act when - for the first time - secondary education was provided for all children. Prior to that "elementary school" children only had a chance of secondary education if they could pay or passed the 11+ and received a scholarship to attend the local Grammar School.
In Cumberland & Westmorland grammars would have been few and far between. Local experts will know better, but I think Ambleside (ie. just beyond the North Pole) might have had a grammar school, while I am pretty sure that Windermere (ie. Rio) never did. Beyond that there will probably have been grammars in Barrow, Kendal and Whitehaven, but it is interesting that some South Lakeland/Furness children with access to a mainline railway station were still going to grammar schools as far away as Lancaster well into the 1970s.
The school leaving age eventually rose to the current 16 from the beginning of the 1972 academic year.