22 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF NOTTINGHAM AND DISTRICT 



This separation of the sexes at or about the age of 1 1 years has also 

 been carried out in the schools for the physically and for the mentally 

 defective children and in the larger junior schools. No distinction has 

 been made between the various senior schools in their staffing, equipment, 

 size of classes, or in the conditions of admission of their pupils. Each 

 school is fully equipped to give a good general education. The schools 

 are non-selective, each having its own district of supply, and each ad- 

 mitting from that district all the pupils of the appropriate ages who do 

 not join secondary schools. 



It has been considered that it would have been both unwise and unfair 

 to provide special training and staffing for the select few and to let the 

 great majority, less well endowed pecuniarily or mentally, be taught in 

 worse buildings with a narrower curriculum and inferior means of in- 

 struction. 



Each of the central schools has therefore been equipped with special 

 rooms in order that there may be given on the school premises, and with 

 its own staff of specialist teachers, practical instruction in arts and crafts, 

 science, physical training, gardening, handicraft and /or domestic subjects. 



Each senior school is large enough for satisfactory classification of its 

 pupils, since the numbers on the rolls vary from 320 to 560. There are 

 in each year, therefore, three to five parallel classes. Each school has a 

 multiple bias, and therefore pupils in their third and fourth years can 

 study such subjects as are considered to their advantage, and it is not 

 necessary for a decision to be made at the too early age of 1 1 years as to 

 which type of curriculum they shall receive at the age of 14 or 15 years. 



During the reorganisation, 25 schools with an accommodation for 5,000 

 children have been closed, and 22 schools with accommodation for 9,500 

 have been built. Actually, 8 only of the 30 central schools are in 

 new buildings. In the remaining 22 central schools, rooms had to be 

 erected or adapted as gymnasia or for instruction in art, science, handi- 

 craft and domestic subjects. The new schools, whether for normal 

 children or for physically or for mentally defective children, have been 

 built on the open-air plan with ample provision for school gardens and 

 large playgrounds. In many of the older schools, which must still be 

 used, large french windows or casement windows have been made, so 

 as to provide more light and air and to make the schools really homelike, 

 and less like disused prisons. 



When planning the new schools in the new housing estates in the city, 

 the Education Committee had in mind not only the provision of facihties 

 for a good general education for school children of all ages but also for 

 social gatherings of the inhabitants in the evenings and in school holidays. 

 With this idea in view, there was allocated on each housing estate, and 

 generally in the centre of it, a school site varying in size from 10 to 25 

 acres. The schools were planned so that thsir use for social functions in 

 the evening would not interfere with the day school work, or with those 

 out-of-school activities which form so important a feature in modern day- 

 school education. It was borne in mind, also, that the schools would be 

 required for the purposes of evening institutes for the further education 

 of adolescents and adults. The schools have not only been planned, but 



