School Leavers at Work

December 1938

Mexborough and Swinton Times December 16, 1938

School Leavers at Work

Some interesting figures to show where the young folk of Conisbrough and Denaby, old Denaby and Hooton Roberts (for these place of the school also caters) work has been compiled by Mr W Gledhill and Miss GE Packwood, the head teachers of the Senior School.

During last year a total of 159 boys and 148 girls left school, and from enquiries of employees, parents, friends, fellow schoolchildren and the Labour Exchange the head teachers have been able to discover the following facts:

Boys: working at collieries 92, shops 19, at Mexborough Secondary School (and County Minor transfer scholarships by fee payment) 16, trades 12, brickyard 7, paperboys 5, sawmills 2, lime works 1, textile mills 1, page boy 1, farming 1 and unplaced two.

Girls: continuing in education 5 (at Mexborough Secondary School 3) and commercial school 1, domestic training1, in service 39, industrial work 19, shop work 8, cinema attendant 1, farming 1, at home 71, not known 4.

These are formidable lists and it seems most astonishing that in total 307 scholars not a single boy or girl should have entered office work. Both Mr Gledhill and Miss Packwood assured me however, that such a state of affairs was purely a coincidence and the number of Senior School scholars who engage in the colliery and other offices in the district.

It is of course natural in a district such as our own that a large proportion of the boys she went to the pit service, but Mr Gledhill stated that it will be increasingly difficult in years to come to get boys to go down the pit.

The school leaving periods were October, Christmas, Easter and July, and it was a practice at those time for officials of the juvenile department at the Labour Exchange to visit schools to recruit labour.

On a recent the occasion the official who visited the Senior School required 20 boys for pit work, but was only able to secure six – the other boys and either obtained out of the pit jobs or were not eager for underground work. The majority of the local boys for pit work are absorbed by the Denaby, Cadeby and Yorkshire Main Collieries, and Mr Gledhill added that he actually had a waiting list of jobs vacant at pits and multiple shops.