So Long, Old Church Nursery School

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Guest Writer Jonathan Moules celebrates the remarkable history of a much-loved Stepney educational institution and the inspirational work of Bridget Cass, with pictures by Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman.

The end of term beckons for children across England. But for Stepney’s Old Church Nursery School, whose pioneering work has been encouraging the East End’s youngest pupils into formal learning for nigh on a century, July brings the end of an era. 

Old Church opened in August 1930 – one of just two such institutions in London – to meet a growing need for formal children’s education because of women entering the workplace.

Its generously proportioned clapperboard classrooms are little changed from the day the nursery nurses, as well as teaching staff, welcomed their first three and four year olds, ensuring children were clean, nourished and healthy as well as ready to learn.

But from this September, Old Church will no longer be a standalone school. Instead it will be downsized to an adjunct teaching space for the standard nursery teaching provision at nearby Marion Richardson Primary School.

It is the end of an era too for Old Church’s chair of governors for the last three decades, Bridget Cass. She invited me over for one last tour of the site, during which she recalled how she first came to Old Church in the early nineties as a young parent and immediately fell in love with place on account of the straggly climbing tree that still provides refuge for curious young people.

“This tree was the first thing we saw, and the marvellous thing was that there were children in it,” Bridget says, pointing out how its boughs are still strong enough for today’s pupils to clamber over and hang from – which they do with gusto during break time.

“When I was growing up we had a reasonably sized garden and as a parent I felt it was very important that our children had trees to climb,” Bridget adds. “But my husband and I had moved to Mile End where we didn’t have that much outdoor space. When [my daughter] Rachel saw that tree, she loved it.”

After Bridget’s second child joined the school in 1991, she was asked to become a governor, quickly followed by a rapid – and unexpected – promotion to lead the team of trustees.

“They asked me to come on board in part because they were having difficulty finding governors,” Bridget recalls. “At my first meeting, the chair didn’t turn up and they asked me to chair. I’ve been doing it ever since.”

The Old Church site is a local secret, hidden behind postwar housing estates at the end of a cul-de-sac. But it is known by those that count: not just education experts but the many and varied local families – rich and poor, of all religions and none – that live cheek by jowl in this corner of the East End.

One of the great achievements of Old Church has been to bring these families together. The school aspires to make Old Church “a safe, joyful place where everyone is known and valued as a unique individual; and where needs are acknowledged, accepted and met”.

This is obvious from the range of parents with young ones queueing at the gate at the start of the school day, or gathered around the teachers in each of the classrooms.

One of the joys of her time as governor, Bridget adds, has been to see the crossover between different communities as a result of parents feeling encouraged to be themselves, then getting to know one another as neighbours in need of each another’s support.

“I remember once at a parents’ coffee morning where an obviously middle class parent was talking with someone clearly unable to speak much English and said that they would take them to the shops after the meeting was over. There were huge differences between these people but they saw that they were similar in that they were all having difficulties as parents.”

Such cultural interchange – alongside the children’s polite and considerate behaviour to one another – was noted by Ofsted in its most recent report, in which it restated the outstanding rating that Old Church has held since 2012.

Yet Old Church is more than just a place of learning. From its inception, the school employed nursery nurses and later special educational needs support staff to work alongside the classroom teachers, ensuring that developmental issues could be spotted and addressed at this formative stage.

This kind of facility would be welcomed in most communities around the country, but in Stepney it is particularly important.

“This year we have, out of almost eighty children, over thirty who have some sort of delay, some of them severe, including children with visual impairment,” Bridget says.

“All of these children need to be assessed and supported appropriately. We therefore need a highly skilled staff team.”

This concern for the child’s whole development, in addition to the concept of learning through exploration, goes back to the original school design, which included drying, lavatory and bathing rooms plus a medical inspection room, in addition to the classroom.

Like other state schools in Tower Hamlets, there was a period where Old Church was in need of significant improvement. That changed in the nineties thanks largely to the Labour government elected in 1997, but also because support came from the local authority.

“What I am really proud of is Tower Hamlets,” Bridget says, adding that it was “the most extraordinary story” of a turnaround in educational attainment.

“When I first started as a governor, I would go to meetings and people would say wouldn’t it be good to get Tower Hamlets up to the national average for child attainment. That has been transformed in my thirty years as governor. Tower Hamlets is now way ahead of the national average and other local authorities wonder how they can be as good as us.”

Changes in central government funding for education since the coalition government was elected in 2010 have made finding this money to maintain standards increasingly difficult. While Tower Hamlets continues to perform above most other local authorities in London as well as the rest of England, the way education funding has been redistributed nationally has meant that the writing has been on the wall for a while at Old Church.

Before the decision to amalgamate Old Church with Marion Richardson, Tower Hamlets had already cut the number of places it would fund at Old Church. This has meant halving staff numbers over the last two years, from twenty-six to thirteen posts.

“What we lose by going into a primary [school] is that the head there, quite rightly, will be thinking about how to make these kids into ones that are academically prepared for reception or year one. The risk is that in doing this they will miss what we can spot at Old Church because of the people we employ in addition to teachers,” Bridget says.

“When my daughter started at Old Church, she liked to play with this toy that enabled children to make electrical circuits. There was this one boy who worked alongside her who could wire up a circuit board like there was no tomorrow. My daughter could wire it up to make one bell ring but he could make all the bells ring at once.

“That boy couldn’t read when he left Old Church but he knew he could do something.”

Bridget says she will find other ways to serve the community after Old Church, including as a member of St Dunstan’s Church, helping to stage events such as the recent Jubilee party in the churchyard. However, Bridget is clearly still passionate about supporting education and urges others to get involved in their local schools.

“It is the end of an era for me and I have learned more than I ever thought I would have done. I have learnt about managing people and about how to win battles with borough officials to try to make things work. But most importantly I have learnt about what really matters to people by getting an insight into my community.

“Every thinking person should be involved in education.”

Bridget Cass, Chair of the Governors for thirty years

Old Church Nursery School

Pupils from the thirties

The climbing frame among trees

Pupils from the thirties

‘I have learned more than I ever thought I would have done’ – Bridget Cass

Photographs copyright © Rachel Ferriman

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