When the BBC transmitted its first educational broadcasts in 1924, classrooms in the United Kingdom weren’t exactly as they are today.
Digital whiteboards were from the imagination of writers like HG Wells and some lessons ran along gender divisions, where boys would do woodwork while girls learned about sewing. If anybody brought a phone to school, it would have needed a very long cord to stretch from the plug at home - and that was provided your family could afford one in the years between the two World Wars.
To mark the centenary of radio broadcasts for pupils in the UK, BBC Bitesize has spoken to three women who are all 100 years old (or slightly older) in 2024. They shared their memories of days when you didn’t know if an air raid was going to disturb your lessons and school trips involved visits to glamorous London boutiques.
Joy Killip: ‘I was into theatre. I couldn’t think of anything else’
While many centenarians will have retired decades ago, Joy still volunteers at her local talking newspaper, based at Princess Alexandra Home for the Blind in Blackpool. Her regular recordings hint at a past fuelled by theatre and performance, one which began during her primary school days in Wigan.
“I always remember the teacher was very kind,” Joy reminisced with a twinkle, “but, even as a tot, I was interested in theatre. So, of course, when they had teachers put on plays, I had to be the starring role, even at that age.”
Joy admits that she usually got the roles she wanted, while free time in her infant years involved sitting on a box at the side of a stage and watching her mother - a concert pianist - perform. Schooltime theatrics often reached the playground too, as Joy remembered: “When we went out to play, we got a bottle of milk and a straw and you took it outside. We mostly played ball games but I wasn’t really into games, I was into theatre. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
The school leaving age was raised to 14 in 1921. By the time World War Two began in 1939, 15-year-old Joy was old enough to move on from education and joined the RAF. She was posted to Manchester with a friend who had also left school and it was there they found they had access to Stockport College and the opportunity to gain qualifications.
Joy said: “I wasn’t interested in finding work at the time because I had no idea how long the war was going to go on. It was just a matter of bunking up on knowledge.”
Learning during wartime also brought unexpected air raids: “We would go down to the air raid shelters, the college had their own, but it was claustrophobic, very claustrophobic. I suppose you got used to it and eventually you got sort of brave and didn’t bother going to the shelters. If a bomb was coming, it would hit you. That’s it. You accepted that.”
Joy’s talents came in very useful during those long stretches in the shelter, where she would read to her fellow students and make up short plays. As she said: “You tried to get some fun into it because it was a black time, with the war going on.”
Looking on in the year she turned 100, what does Joy think about school life for young people today? “Oh, the opportunities young people have today is phenomenal,” she exclaimed. “I mean, when you left school at 14, you had to find a job for yourself. But, nowadays, you’re helped into further education or a job. When kids of my age left school, they struggled. They really struggled.”
Betty McWilton: ‘Ours was a busy school’
In the year BBC’s educational offering turns 100, Betty celebrates her 103rd birthday, so she has to think back approximately 98 years to remember her early days at school.
“I went to the village school to start with,” she said, referencing her childhood in the village of Landbeach, Cambridge. From there, she won a place at Cambridge’s technical college and cycled the approximate six miles from Landbeach into Cambridge every day for lessons.
Betty smiled: “What I enjoyed most was the hand-work. I would make everything, all children’s clothes. Ours was a busy school. It was a technical college.
"There were boys’ classes in the school, separate from the girls. They did engineering, electricity and office work as well.
“I was very good at arithmetic and things like that. I wasn’t very good at writing though. I was a bit of a scribbler.”
Her studies led to Betty becoming a nursery nurse, although dressmaking remained her passion - something she did in her own time for many years - and she remembered one school trip in particular: “We went to London and there was a dress shop, it was a fashion shop. We went there to see what they were making.
“I was a nursery nurse for several years. That was my main job, then, during the war, I went into the hospital. All the soldiers came in from Dunkirk and they were nursed as well - and one of them I married! Roderick - he came back from France and had an operation in the hospital.”
Elsie "Dee" Green: School dinners were ‘not pleasant’
Known as Dee to everyone at Blackpool’s Princess Alexandra Home, where she is a resident, this centenarian had connections with the prestigious Tiller Girls dance troupe, whose impressive, synchronised routines were hugely popular in the early days of variety television shows. Her aunt Miriam was a member and would often babysit Dee so she got to know the dancers and even had the chance to practice a few steps with them - just not on the stage.
It may come as no surprise, then, to learn what Dee’s favourite school lessons were: “I was good at the [Physical Education] exercises. We used to do exercises and there were conferences between us - and arguments! I didn’t misbehave, I liked being with a crowd.”
Although her school dinners were “not pleasant” and often involved boiled potatoes (Dee said they were “just something to keep you alive”), these were largely happy days for her. Even if she wasn’t enjoying a particular subject, her attitude was: “Let’s get on with what we’ve got to do and then they’re finished.”
Similar to the other remembered experiences from her peers, some of Dee’s lessons did not involve the boys in her school, although that didn’t stop the banter between them when they were together. She remembered: “Some of them back then were fine. Others would say, ‘you can’t dance’ and one thing or another and I’d say - ‘can you dance?’ and they’d say ‘yeah’.
“And I’d say, ‘well, I’ve never seen you’.”
We're marking 100 years of BBC Education with a special Behind the Scenes at the BBC Literacy Live Lesson for primary schools on Monday 22 April. You can also get a tinge of nostalgia with our timeline of BBC educational programming from the 1920s to today.
This article was published in April 2024
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