AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941

page forty-six

Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Appendix

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Contents

To the normal work of the school F. R. Arundel added wider interests. He made Ayton a centre for university extension lectures, and the Committee granted the use of the school lecture room with free light and heat. Here the elder children joined the village intellectuals, heard lectures, held discussions, and wrote papers on the early explorers, or the Italian renaissance, or the poetry of Wordsworth. He introduced in 1900, the examinations for the College of Preceptors, and with them the stimulus of independent tests and outside comparison. The substitution seven years later of the Oxford locals for the Preceptors extended the area of comparison and helped to raise the standard of work.

This was the more necessary, for the Quarterly Committee examinations ended in 1896. These were becoming year by year of smaller value, and dropping them produced no regrets. The Committee instead requested various members to inspect the classes and see and hear them at their normal work. The teacher prepared the work more carefully, the children understood what was required of them, and the Committee felt ‘satisfied with the general instruction throughout the classes and with the behaviour of the children .’

General Meeting inspection kept its formality in three respects. Women Friends thoroughly examined the house and housekeeper’s department, and reported the results of their examination. They also noted critically the sewing. In one report they commend the plain sewing and the hemming, but ‘what called for the highest praise was the way the gathers were done.’ Such lyricism was not inevitable and in another year they stressed the importance, in cutting button-holes, of allowing room for the buttons, and at the same time pleaded for design in fancy-work. They condemned ‘the work with Japanese paper which seems to be a waste of time as it is so unserviceable.’ They relented next year, however, when the excellent sewing reflected, they said, the greatest credit on the teacher.

Men and women Friends, for the third part of their routine, toured the gardens. In 1901 the gardens were good but ‘to make them gay for General Meeting, we should recommend oriental poppies, irises, pyrethrums, etc., rather than bedding plants.’ Three years later all the gardens were ‘in beautiful order and weedless, and the new ones well stocked and attractive looking.’ They could not know the frenzied efforts of the previous week nor the buying or borrowing of plants already in flower, nor the justified comments when a garden, a desert for all weeks of the year but one, received an envied prize.

Yet, though the Committee’s examinations became more and more formal, they appreciated the raising of the standard brought about by F. R. Arundel. One Committee Friend indeed helped greatly to improve and extend the work done. John Pease Fry in 1897 offered to provide a yearly scholarship of £20, later increased to £25, awarded on the results of the summer examination and on the marking of an essay on Friends’ Principles. The money was specifically to be devoted to further education and the Committee, rightly understanding the motive behind the scholarship and the importance of the proviso, declared their ‘warmest thanks and high appreciation of the value of the gift to the Institution.’ It has proved to be a reward for sound rather than superficial work and an incentive to the girls and boys who realised that there remained always something more to learn.

Frank Arundel had built soundly. The three considerable achievements of his time, increased numbers, the development of building, the growth of intellectual attainment, remained as mementos of his foresight and energy. Their solid value emphasised and underlined the shock of his resignation. For some time disagreements on certain business matters had spoilt the relations between Committee and headmaster, and at the end of 1912 Frank Arundel resigned his office.

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