A model
Kent school from the outside but children at Bodsham eat meals in Vicarage
stables
Bodshams old village school was
very proud when the Ministry of Education chose
photographs of its exterior to
use as typical of the best type of country school.
It is now hoping that
Kent Education
Committee will change its
mind and
decide that it can afford the £900
Pounds
for a new kitchen
and canteen for school
meals. Then perfect photographs
could be
taken from any
angle.
For
the present kitchen and school dining
room
are in the
vicarage
stables.
Mrs
E. Cahill the school cook turns out up to
40 perfect meals
every day from
a
four wick oil stove in what used to be a
loose box. The dining room
adjoining was a
stable
for
two horses. Mr T.W. Birch, Folkestone
Divisional Education
Officer outlining the
schools
catering
plight to his executive committee
said
that the
difficulty was to keep the
building
wind
and water tight. The staff were coping
heroically but the
kitchen was dark and on
wet
days
mud was trampled
in.
This
was the most isolated school in the
division and it was
hardly possible to
visit it in one
day
from Folkestone headquarters using
public
transport. The
dining room presents
an odd
appearance
from the outside as the children
file
across the
main road from the school
and
reach
the old
stable half doors, which are still
in
place.
Transformation But
inside (and especially on a fine day)
there has been a
complete transformation.
The Walls are brightly
painted; the tiny tables and
chairs infant
size-
are scrupulously
clean and Mrs
Cahill says she
manages very well considering, on
her oil
stove.
Starting at work at 8.30 am
she has her
dinners ready by the stroke of noon and
puts
the last
burnished pan away about 3.30pm.
You never think about its being an old
stable,
she
said.
The village
children showed manners fitting
a palace
not a
stable, when a six foot
high reporter squeezed among them to
join them at dinner
on
Tuesday. Mr and Mrs F.D.
Nancollas the only teachers
in the school
of
59 pupils have whatever
their difficulties, kept their tiny
establishment
well in the stream
of the best modern
education
ideas. The children show
the results in every
action. They were
bright and friendly with
the strange adult. Ten years old boys
rattled merrily on with
descriptions of
local farming and their
hopes for the
future. They suffered from no hampering
shyness, displayed no
brashness . At the
end of the meal it was a five years
old
boy who is
struggling with a speech
impediment who came up to the
tall stranger in the camp
and politely
bore
his plate to the serving
hatch.
In the small school building
there are three
wash basins at
varying heights for the
children of
different sizes very much like the Big
Bears, the Medium Bears
and the Baby bears
which the kiddies used without direction
after playtime. Most
convincing
testimony to modern methods was
a well-written letter in blue and red ink
pinned to the wall
from a nine-years-old
girl. She wrote from a sick bed to say she
was
getting well and
hoped to be back soon and
thanked the headmaster for sending her
some
homework.
