I WONDER how many readers remember those small bottles, containing one third of a pint of milk, which — way back in time — were provided by the government for every schoolchild. I loved them, even when, in the depths of winter, they came half- frozen and were difficult to drink. Less so in the height of summer, when they were tepid, having stood out in the morning sun before we unruly schoolboys descended on them.
Free milk and school meals for schoolchildren were among the provisions of the 1944 Education Act, one of the great pieces of legislation of the past century. This year marks 80 years since its passing, although its implementation — delayed by the war — came only in April 1947. It was an Act that enjoyed wide support across all political parties, and found favour with the general public, too. Grammar, secondary modern, and secondary technical schools were established under a Ministry (formerly a Board) of Education.
I am one of those thousands who benefited massively from the Act’s many provisions. For a start, when it came to my leaving primary school, my parents did not have to pay for me to go on to secondary education. And I guess that my love of milk — I can drink a glass of it at any time and enjoy it — stems from that provision in the Act.
BUT the most profound impact on me, as I look back on those days — apart from the primary-school legacy, that I know my times tables up to 14, what a subordinate clause is, and how many chains there are in a mile — came from the duty, under the Act, for every state-funded school to begin the day with a non-denominational Christian prayer, conducted as the whole school met together.
I don’t know if my schools were different from those elsewhere, but we went further than a prayer: at both primary and secondary level, we also had a hymn, and some sort of reading, either from the Bible or another source. And, to finish, the inevitable notices— about the school clubs that were meeting that day, some sports results, and reminders to set an example.
If memory serves, the day — certainly at primary school — also closed, as we put our chairs on top of the desks, with a prayer. All this in a state school! For our Christmas carol concert at primary school, in Junior 3 and Junior 4 (now Years 5 and 6), we as a class learned to recite from memory, to the mums and dads down there in the seats (we were on the stage), verses 1 to 12 of Chapter 2 of Matthew’s Gospel, in the Authorised Version. I can still deliver most of it today without prompting: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Herod the king, there came wise men from the East. . .”
I COULD not, at the time, have told you what effect these religious provisions of the Act had on me, apart from giving me a love of singing, and a fairly wide knowledge of traditional or middle-of-the-road hymns, all found in my 4in.-by-3in. edition of Songs of Praise (eighth edition, 1955). It was a hymn book very much of its time, originally published in 1931 — and, by that eighth edition, its Englishness, its rural comforts, and the seasonal round were looking dated.
But I still have my pocket edition, and look at it nostalgically from time to time. Thanks to Ralph Vaughan Williams and Percy Dearmer, the editors of Songs of Praise, I can challenge you to remember the words to “Glad that I live am I”, “Now the day is over”, “When a knight won his spurs”, and more, which we long ago sang without embarrassment, although possibly also without understanding. And I’ll wager that not a few of you could sing all three now without too much help.
But, 60 and more years later, what I take from this immersion in school worship is more than just singing. Daily worship and daily exposure to the Bible and to learning and daily reciting the Lord’s Prayer gave me — and how many others? — my first encounters with the life and teachings of Jesus, and left a deposit of uncluttered faith, which later proved foundational to more taxing undergraduate and subsequent ordination studies. They also influenced personal devotion: the daily habit of prayer and scripture became part of who I am from that early practice at school.
THE days of the 1944 Education Act are long gone. Many will remember the 1971 furore over the axing of free school milk for over-seven-year-olds. The MP for Finchley (and, then, Education Secretary) was “Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher” long before she became “The Iron Lady”. (The Labour government had cut milk from secondary schools in 1968.)
Governments cannot resist dabbling in education, and, gradually, the 1944 Act was overhauled or repealed so that, by the beginning of the new century, it was long dead and buried. And Songs of Praise has very much had its day: I look at the hymns now and fail to recognise most of them. Anyone remember number 214, “Virtue supreme, thy mighty stream”? I thought not.
But, all these years later, let’s not dismiss “assembly” out of hand. I suspect that there are, in this country, many of an older generation who, like it or not, can dredge up from their memory at least some of the words of hymns they sang at school. I wonder how many conversations at the drop-in centre, the friendship group at the village hall, and the like, have centred on the hymns and prayers we knew at school?
I wonder, too, if this brief article has set hares running in the minds of older readers about how a non-denominational prayer, conducted as the whole school met together, influenced you — for good or ill.
For me, I give thanks to God for the 1944 Education Act: certainly for opening up the opportunity for me to go to grammar school, but also for a large repertoire of hymns, an introduction to scripture and prayer, and, not least, my love of milk.
The Revd Roy Shaw is a retired priest in the diocese of York.