Stapenhill: Education

Education

There was a boarding school in Stapenhill in the mid 17th century. (fn. 10) In the earlier 1770s there was apparently no local educational provision, and some boys at least were probably sent to the grammar school at Burton. (fn. 11)

Two Sunday schools in 1818, one Anglican and the other nonconformist, together provided education for 180 children, and a further 70 children attended what were probably dame schools. (fn. 12) By 1833 the vicar, John Clay, and his daughter had opened a day school for poor children, probably on the west side of the village green. Entirely under the vicar's management, it was maintained by subscriptions, collections, and school pence, and had an attendance of about 40 boys and 30 girls in 1846, by which date it was affiliated to the National Society. (fn. 13) A separate infants' school was built near by in 1837. (fn. 14) In 1863 a new school for girls and infants was built on the south side of the green in St. Peter's Street, (fn. 15) and the boys were evidently moved to a new building at the north end of Stanton Road. From 1872 Clay also ran a girls' and infants' school in a mission room which he had built in Short Street in 1869. (fn. 1)

Stapenhill was included in the school board district established for the Burton area in 1873. (fn. 2) In 1874 the vicar, still John Clay, conveyed the St. Peter's Street building to the board, and vested the Short Street building in trustees for use as a board school. He notified his intention, however, of converting the Stanton Road building into a reading room and library, and the board had therefore to seek new premises for boys. (fn. 3) At first it used the Sunday school premises of the United Methodist Free chapel on the west side of Hill Street, but a new boys' school was built on the opposite side of the road in 1875; (fn. 4) a master's house was provided when the school was enlarged in 1894. (fn. 5) The St. Peter's Street school was rebuilt, possibly in 1880 when girls and infants were moved, apparently as a temporary measure, to the Stanton Road building. (fn. 6)

In 1939 St. Peter's Street became a primary school and Hill Street a secondary school. (fn. 7) The juniors at St. Peter's were transferred to new schools in Stapenhill in 1959, but the infants stayed until the school was closed in 1984. (fn. 8) In 1992 the building became a doctors' surgery. (fn. 9) Short Street became an infants' school only in 1949, and it remained as such in 1999. (fn. 10a)

There were three other schools in 1999 serving the modern housing estates. Waterside junior school at the north end of Suffolk Road was opened (as a county primary school) in 1951, and Edge Hill junior school in Sycamore Road (also as a county primary school) in 1960; the latter was extended in 1990. (fn. 11a) Violet Lane infants' school was opened in 1968 and part of the building has been used as a nursery school since 1997. (fn. 12a)

Pupils at Hill Street secondary school were moved probably in 1959 to a new school called Hillside, on the east side of Stanton Road. It was renamed Paulet high school when it became comprehensive in 1975. (fn. 13a) Since 1974 the Hill Street building has been used by Staffordshire county council as a physical education centre. Robert Sutton Roman Catholic comprehensive school in Bluestone Lane off Stanton Road was opened as a secondary school in 1964; an additional school building to the north was opened in 1971. (fn. 14a)

In the 1870s Elizabeth Woodward moved her private girls' school from Burton to Stapenhill village, and she still ran it there in 1884. (fn. 15a) There were two private schools in 1904, one in Scalpcliff Road and the other in Elms Road. The former still existed in 1925 and the latter in 1940. (fn. 16)