Housewives of Tomorrow, 1951
‘Housewives of Tomorrow’ was sponsored by the Glasgow Education Committee and filmed at Albert Secondary School in Springburn, Glasgow. It is a silent film showing the various subjects undertaken by girls as part of their secondary domestic education, including dressmaking, cookery, and babycraft.
The full length film is available to view online here, via the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive. The NLS has also produced a ‘Lesson Guide’ for teachers to use clips from their films in a lesson about ‘Experiences of School’ in Scotland, available here.
Cheltenham Ladies College, 1953
This ambitious, technically proficient and somewhat stiffly narrated production was directed and produced by June Goodfield, then a biology teacher at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She went on to make scientific films and television programmes, as well as writing prolifically – both fiction and non-fiction – and she was also a professor at several American universities during the course of her remarkable career.
The entire film is available to view here, for free, via the BFI.
Semper ad Lucem: Penrhos College, 1953
By the time this Coronation Year production was screened at Penrhos College in 1953, the Methodist boarding school in Colwyn Bay had been educating girls since 1880. Speaking ‘received pronounciation’, the pupils introduce the school, the sporting and leisure activities on offer e.g. walking two-by-two along the promenade at Rhos, guided by the school motto: always towards the light. Places of interest to occupy visiting parents are also noted. Penrhos College amalgamated with the local boys’, private school – Rydal, Colwyn Bay – to become Rydal Penrhos School in 1999, offering a private, Methodist education to children aged 2 and a half to 18.
The entire film is available to view here, for free, via the BFI.
In and About Ellerby Lane, 1955
This is a gorgeous and unique documentary film exploring life and education in an east Leeds secondary school. Fascinating and poignant: it’s a heartfelt, enthusiastic record of a day’s routine – study, sport and play – and a lasting memorial for a school long demolished and a community transformed. Today the area’s grids of cobbled lanes and snickleways, back-to-backs and factories have largely disappeared. The film is the product of a pioneering educational filmmaking initiative set up by staff at the City of Leeds Training College to enable a group of children from the Ellerby Lane School’s Senior Two class to document and examine the life of the school and its position within the community.
The entire film is available to view here, for free, via the BFI.
Mayfield School, Putney, Summer 1955
This delightful home-made documentary records a vision of life and learning in a Putney girls’ grammar during the last summer term before transitioning into a comprehensive. Loosely structured around a day’s activities, it sees the girls knuckle down with algebra and science; stitch and knead through home economics; tear around the rounders court; and cruise through their end of year exams. After the school evolved into the Putney County Secondary School, the geography department redoubled its filmmaking activities, and made a series of eight films between 1959 and 1963 documenting school days and trips abroad.
The entire film is available to view here, for free, via the BFI.
Learning for Living, 1956
‘Learning for Living’ was sponsored by the Scottish Education Department and depicts the (ideal) type of work undertaken by Scottish pupils who were enrolled on three-year courses at junior secondary schools following the Education (Scotland) Act of 1945, i.e. the equivalent of secondary modern schools in England and Wales. We see the pupils making their own newspaper, undertaking a local history project, making a puppet theatre, making a model of local gas works, and rural pupils studying agriculturally-based sciences. The film was shot at various schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and at Powis Academy in Aberdeen.
The full length film is available to view online here, via the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive. The NLS has also produced a ‘Lesson Guide’ for teachers to use clips from their films in a lesson about ‘Experiences of School’ in Scotland, available here.