Victorian Knighton - the School Inspector calls

Knighton and district
Victorian school days

	When the School Inspector came to call	Glossary
	Most Victorian schools were visited by the government's official School Inspector at least once every year. Teachers were often very worried about these visits because the results of the tests given to the children affected the amount of grant money given to run the school for the next year. The Inspector's report was always copied into the school Log Book, and these entries give a good idea of the way these early schools carried out their work. This example is from Heyope National School in 1886...	Latent - hidden, not in evidence.

17th December
1886

Heyope National School, Radnor.
"This School was closed at the beginning of the year for epidemic and the attendance has been irregular. Still I miss the brightness that used to be a feature here. Mr Barnes should endeavour to exercise the intelligence of the children now latent. He should also ground his children in arithmetic as they are slow in working their sums and are also inaccurate; the children being backward in Tables in the Second Standard.

"But very little will be done until the Infants be better taught and while doing arithmetic the use of strokes should be discouraged. The children write fairly well but Spelling is weak throughout..."
As you can see on other pages of this website, much school time was lost to illness and epidemics, and this is mentioned here.
Victorian schools concentrated on the famous three subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic - plus sewing and knitting lessons for the girls. As always it was usually sums and spelling that caused most problems !

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