|
AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941 |
||
 |
Chapter
X |
 |
|
Contents
|
F. R. Arundel, the Committee’s choice, was born in Newcastle in 1861. While he was yet a baby the family moved south, but later returned to the lovely hamlet of Hipperholme, high in upper Wharfedale. Hipperholme school and Rawdon started the boy’s education, and when the family again moved to London, the Croydon school, soon to become Saffron Walden, continued it. Here young Arundel both developed his cricket and followed the normal course of an intending teacher, apprenticeship and Flounders. He returned to Walden where in time he became second master, and from Walden he received the Ayton appointment in January 1886. The Committee maintained their usual caution. When they interviewed the future headmaster and his wife, they specified that Alice K. Arundel should act as housekeeper, for which they paid her £35 a year, and that the two of them should live in the School house on the green. Frank Arundel’s salary was fixed at £150 a year with board and lodging free for themselves and their family. The Committee further allowed the new head to spend from £30 to £40 on furnishing the Schoolhouse, and here he and his wife and children lived for seventeen years. Three main features distinguished this time of F. R. Arundel’s rule; first the steady, considerable growth in numbers and all which that implied; secondly, material progress, particularly in building and lighting; and thirdly, the extension and development of the curriculum and of the intellectual side of school life. These three features all showed the practical capacity and sound common sense of the headmaster. The decline in the numbers of scholars had for some time disturbed the Committee. In 1893 they decided that, as no applications for entrance had been made in the last two months, they would ask the local agents to be more energetic, and they also advertised the school in the North Eastern Gazette, the Auckland Chronicle, the Darlington and Stockton Times, and the Whitby Gazette. Little came of such boldness, and at the end of 1895 only 68 pupils were attending the school. Next year, numbers rose to 73. By the turn of the century, 94 boys and girls were at school, and in 1903 the hundred was reached. By the end of 1911 numbers increased to 125, 73 boys and 52 girls, but the total was not maintained, and next year the numbers dropped to 107. Gradually, too, various salutary changes altered the details of the children’s lives. These changes, small in themselves, meant an increase in happiness and efficiency, and Frank Arundel was always delighted to unite them and secure both. In 1896 the Committee decided to ‘abolish the mangling hitherto undertaken by the girls’ and to ‘equalise the hours of such labour as is necessary of the boys and girls as much as possible.’ All schoolwork as well as the extra time thus secured was done in three-quarter-hour classes and the staff quickly found that the children did more work and better work in forty-five minutes than they did in sixty. The system of prefects gave the older girls and boys some small responsibilities with their accompanying privileges and helped to maintain a discipline less rigid than formerly. At the same time a more human air filled the dining room where boys and girls mixed for meals as they mixed in the schoolrooms and in the playing fields. No one objected except a few misanthropic bookworms who remembered the past delights of reading at meals and regarded morosely the neighbours of either side in whose presence politeness forbade reading and demanded conversation. |
|
|
Return to: |
Previous page | Next Page | |
The change in title from superintendent to headmaster indicated a
real, though gradual, change in the functions of the School. The name
superintendent rather emphasised the institutional side, headmaster,
the scholastic, and in effect that change in emphasis developed during
the headmastership of Frank Rivers Arundel. The traditional Dixon rule
had closed and the new century demanded new ways. The immediate separation
of the school farm and garden from the School marked the beginning
of these new ways. The School now demanded and received the whole attention
of the headmaster; the farm and garden passed into the hands of the
late superintendent.