Plan to raise school leaving age to 15 postponed

Because of the start of World War Two and evacuation of so many children, the Government decided to postpone indefinitely a plan to increase the school leaving age to 15. The change had been due to happen around autumn, 1939, the Observer reported. Ministers also decided leaving certificate examinations due to take place in secondary schools in March, 1940, would not be held. The Education Act 1944 led to the extension of compulsory education to 15.

This took effect from 1947.

The war, said the Observer of October, 1939, had created unexpected demand for items which for many were usually only purchased occasionally. At that time, one such item was the fire guard. People who had never had them in their homes before were wanting one. And the heightened demand – which had even rendered second hand fire guards scarce – came from people who had offered their home to young evacuees. And with children in the house, they needed a guard to keep the young guests safe from the fire.

StirlingTown CouncilWater Committee, meeting in October, 1939, recommended that two additional men be appointed at wages of £3 per week (almost £200 today) to undertake night watchmen duties at Touch Reservoir Number Four, and that a hut be erected for them there. It was understood the watchmen would be armed. It was thought unnecessary to employ at watchmen at North Third Reservoir as two employees lived near the site.

Latest figures in late 1939 from the Registrar General, Edinburgh, put Stirling’s population at 24,547 compared with the 22,593 recorded in the 1931 Census.

The Observer’s Gartmore correspondent told how in October, 1939, an angler fly fishing in the Forth, half a mile above the road bridge at

Cobleland, had landed a flounder.

It was, said the paper, a matter of wide interest that a salt water fish should be found so far up river and away from its usual habitat. In a later issue a‘trustworthy source’told the paper flounders had occasionally been caught as far up river as Kippen Station.“What seemed like an angler’s yarn now appears to be a rare yet possible happening,”said the Observer.