A receipt issued by Lloyds Bank as proof of payment of school fees
for pupil Dudley M Bruton for the spring term when he was in Form 1
Dudley Bruton is now a retired Consultant Occupational Physician living in Oxfordshire.
He attended The County School from 1943 to 1948 and lived near the School in Gadlys
Road.
Also on this website is an almost identical receipt issued to Glyn John seventeen
years earlier in 1927, for
£1..6s..8d. It is possible
that Dudley Bruton’s school fee of £1 was less because Glyn John
was in the sixth form, and Dudley in the first form, with the larger fee applying
to the more senior forms. However, Dudley has pointed out that his father was in the
army and it was a concessionary rate to children of servicemen. In 1896 when the school
opened, the school fees were £1..10s..0d per term,
so it is clear that these fees were almost static for 50 years.
In 1907 the free place scholarship system was introduced to give children from
elementary schools the opportunity to go to secondary school. All grant-aided secondary
schools had to admit free place scholars (not less than 25% of the previous year’s
total intake) who had spent at least two years at public elementary school. Prior
to 1907 there was a small number of scholarships available for deserving pupils that
gave full or partial exemption from school fees. These scholarships were awarded by
local benefactors such as H.C.Lewis, D.P.Davies and Charles Kenshole; the Governors
also had a fund which was used to make these awards.
The 1932 economy campaign caused free places to be converted to special places
for which a means-tested scale of fees was introduced. Fees for secondary schools
were abolished by the Education Act 1944 (Butler Act), so this receipt must have been
one of the last issued by the school.
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