EDUCATION.
In 1729 part of the income of
Joan Jermy's charity was assigned to teach poor
children. (fn. 28) From the 1730s to the 1790s £1 10s.
were thus paid yearly to a schoolmistress, (fn. 29) who
received £3 by 1806, raised c. 1837-8 to £6,
officially to teach 14 children reading, spelling,
and sewing. (fn. 30)
In 1818, when a private day school taught c.
15 paying pupils, the rector had recently started
a Sunday school for over 30 children, (fn. 31) maintained by subscriptions from the farmers. It had
closed by 1836, when only the rector still supported it. (fn. 32) In 1833 a private school had taught
14 pupils, the endowed one only 8, though probably 15 by 1836 when the curate supervised it. (fn. 33)
In 1846-7 the day school had an unsecured
schoolroom and a teacher's house; the parish
paid for its mistress, one of two, to teach up to
20 children, parents paying for the rest. (fn. 34) About
1850 the old woman who kept a dame's school
was thought unable to read. (fn. 35)
In 1861 the rector gave 1/3 a. just east of his
rectory house, upon which a school and teacher's
house were built in brick the same year for use
by a National or church school, also for a
Sunday school, to educate the children of labouring and poor families. Control of religious
instruction was vested in the rector. Until
1883 both his co-managers and the electing
subscribers, giving at least 10s. each, had to
be Anglicans resident or owning land in
Teversham. (fn. 36) In practice by the 1870s the vestry
supervised the school through a committee and
might levy school rates. (fn. 37)
The school received from the Jermy charity
c. 1860-80 over £20 a year, over half its income
in 1865. It was otherwise supported until the
1870s largely by subscriptions and schoolpence,
not levied for more than three children per
family. In 1865 a certificated mistress taught 28
boys and 32 girls, 34 attending regularly. In
1873 almost half the 60 pupils were infants,
other children going out to work almost before
they could walk. (fn. 38) Average attendance declined
from 57 in 1885 to c. 50 from the 1890s. (fn. 39) A
winter night school, held thrice a week and
attended, 1873-83, by c. 20 young men, was
declining by 1885. (fn. 40) At the day school girls
learnt plain needlework, older boys drawing. In
1897 two pupil teachers helped teach history
and arithmetic and, less well, English and
geography. (fn. 41)
The school remained a church school after
1903. (fn. 42) Attendance, only 32 in 1919, was still 30
or more in the 1930s, (fn. 43) even though the older
children had been sent from 1927 to Fulbourn,
and after 1937 to Bottisham village college. (fn. 44) In
1956, in expectation of rising population, the
school, then with 40 pupils, bought c. 10 a. of
glebe to extend its site and playground. Its old
assembly hall was modernized, and two new
classrooms were added by 1965. (fn. 45) The primary
school, again extended in 1985, (fn. 46) was still open
as a church school in the early 1990s. (fn. 47) It still
received half the income, reduced c. 1900 to
c. £12, constituted as a separate educational
foundation since 1907, of the Jermy charity. (fn. 48)