Our April Zoom talk on ‘Tudor Education in Essex’ was given by Tony Tuckwell, a former headmaster of King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford that was founded in 1551. The starting point for his talk was noting that with Henry VIII’s break with Rome and subsequent break between Church and State, the former supply of people educated in the state language of Latin from the Church was much reduced and a new route of education was required. A review of the Monastery’s and their assets prior to the Dissolution recorded the Chantry Chapels that were involved in education locally. For Essex with 65 Chantries only 16 were involved in Education, this included Chelmsford with 2, Harlow and Thaxted. Edward VI proposed to re-found the schools but after an initial slow start, in 1551, 15 schools were restarted nationally and another 9 new schools in centres of population. Chelmsford was granted lands in Tilbury, Hatfield Peverell and Great Baddow as the endowment but had to pay £2 0s 8d to Great Baddow to compensate for the closure of a Chantry that gave Poor Relief to the village. The Statute setting the schools up limited the education to Latin and Greek Grammar and Religion, with teachers being Priests. School children had to attend church and then write up the sermon on return to school to become fluent in Latin. KEGS has the unwanted distinction of having a pupil killed by a Cleric in the 1620’s following a physical beating about the head! By the 1800’s the constraints of the Statute Curriculum resulted in the Grammar Schools having few pupils - Oundle had 4, St Albans Nil and Chelmsford dropped from 15 in 1794 to nil. This problem was eventually resolved by Gladstone with the 1869 Endowed Schools Act that repealed all previous acts and created new criteria that allowed new subjects (particularly Maths, Science and Modern Languages) to be added to benefit the country and community with a broader based education. Whilst the Headmaster no longer needed to be an Anglican priest, that influence lasted into the 20 Century as Tony was only the 5th non clerical head at the time of his appointment.
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