Housewifery or woodwork
I was born on 23rd October 1913, the youngest of five children. I had two brothers and two sisters. My oldest sister was born on 27th October 1903. I was always told that I started at Newton Road Infant School on the Monday I turned three and my sister left on the following Friday having reached the age of 13.

I can't remember much of the Infant School except that we made paper chains and acted Bible plays at Christmas, and the Maypole ribbon dance in May. School uniforms were unknown but most boys wore jerseys. Many children attended school with handkerchiefs or squares of old bedroom sheet pinned to the front of their clothing with safety pins. We usually moved up a class each year as we progressed from using coloured clay to crayons, pencils, water paints and pencils, painting, joined writing, times tables and the rudiments of arithmetic. About the age of eight years the top class moved to the bottom class in the senior school. There we were segregated: girls on one side of the classroom and boys on the other. We had long desks, each shared by five or six students. The class teacher was in charge for most subjects and concentrated on the 3 Rs, with History, Geography, Art, and so on having lower priority. The girls had a special tutor for housewifery (Cookery and House Management) and the boys did basic woodworking.

Around our 11th birthday we took the Scholarship Examination. Because affluent parents could pay for a place in a Grammar School for their children, the number for 11 plus applicants was limited. To compensate for this, a school for those who just failed the 11 plus exam was founded in Rushden. It was called Rushden Intermediate School and was based in the former North End School Hayway. I attended the day it opened in September 1925. We had School blazers, navy blue with a magnificent red rose embellished with R.I.S. on the front pocket. They cost less than £1 but some students couldn't afford them.

Standards were high, and we left school at 14 with good all-round knowledge of Mathematics, including Trigonometry and Logarithms, Reading, Writing and especially Spelling. We also did French Language which I loved. Even now 73 years after leaving school I can still recite most of the 23rd Psalm and the poem L'Hirondelle and many individual words and phrases. Discipline was very severe, we had to address teachers as 'Miss' or 'Sir' and touch our caps if we met them away from school. But I honestly enjoyed it and have many happy memories. Jack Tear