Page 11 - Natioinal School

The National School Redditch Heritage

Today children leave St Stephen's at nine years of age to go to a middle school. In earlier times
children stayed at their primary school until they went to work at thirteen or fourteen. Right up until
the 1960s there were no teenagers. As Dorothy Manson says.

"While you were at school you were a child and when you went to work you were a grown up .”

Peter White was another former pupil of St. Stephens.

“The Senior School was located on the northern corner of Peakman Street and Archer Road.
As the photos show the buildings changed very little. It was to become St Stephens Primary
School in its latter years. When I transferred there in 1951 it was an all boys school (the
‘big boys’ school) for 7-14 year olds and only a couple of years later became co-ed when it
became a Primary School . It later transferred to Mabey Avenue with the Infants School
where they eventually became a Middle and First School respectively. The school was
demolished in the late 50s and Redditch Technical College built in its place. “

”This was the top Junior Class of 1956 at St Stephens a few months before we scattered to
Secondary Schools. Those were the days of the 11+ so some us went to the Grammar
School whilst others became pupils at one of the new Secondary Modern schools. At the
right end of the back row is our teacher Norman Victor Turner (a very fine teacher indeed!)
– a man who certainly changed the course of my life. PJ Davis, whose picture of Wellington
St appears in a later slide is 2nd from the right sitting down in the second row whilst I am 2nd
from the left on the back row.”
“In the 1960s St Stephens moved to more modern premises in Riverside. The old school
became an annexe to the College of Further Education before it was demolished in 1983.”

Another school photo from St. Stephen’s, again undated but thought to be sometime in the mid 1950s.

(Source-Eddie Smith - The Life and Times series by Anne Bradford)

Page: 11