Life in 1916 Ireland: Stories from statistics

Photo: Miss Crowe and Mr Gildea with their pupils at Kilglass National School, Ahascragh, Co. Galway

• While the population of Ireland increased over the last 100 years, the numbers of National Schools has fallen. There were over 8,000 National Schools on the island of Ireland in 1916.
• By 1923 there were nearly 5,700 and this had dropped to 3,277 by 2014.                                                              
• The Irish Education Act of 1892 required parents in cities and urban areas throughout the country to send children between the ages of 6 and 14 to school for at least 75 days a year.  
• Rural areas were excluded from the requirements of this Act, which stated that children could be kept out of school if they were prevented by "sickness, domestic necessity…husbandry and the ingathering of crops, or giving assistance in the fisheries, or other work requiring to be done at a particular time or season…"                                                                                                                            

• This table shows that school attendance at National Schools in 1916 was 70.7%. So on any given day in a National school in 1916 only seven out of 10 pupils who were enrolled had attended school.
• School attendance data from Tusla (the Child and Family Agency) shows that average daily attendance at Primary schools was 94.1% in 2012/2013.                                                

Photo: Teachers at Waterpark College, Waterford 1910

• There were 13,411 Principals and Assistant Teachers in National Schools on the island of Ireland in 1916 and the majority of the teaching staff (57%) were Principals.
• There were 7,690 Principals and 5,721 Assistant Teachers which means that there were 1,969 schools with just one teacher - the Principal.                                             
• In 1916, 57% of Principals were male and by 2014/2015 this proportion had dropped to 34%.                                                                                          
• In 1916 most of the Assistant Teachers were female (78%) and in 2014/2015 86% of teachers are female.                                       

• A gratuity of £8 was paid to a teacher in respect of every boy monitor or pupil teacher who successfully completed his course and passed the examination. For a girl monitor or pupil teacher the teacher also received a gratuity but this was only £6. The minimum age for appointment as a monitor was raised from 13 to 15 years in 1905. (The gratuity of £8 for boys, updated to 2014 prices using the Consumer Price Index, is €738.20 while the gratuity of £6 for girls would be €554.11 in 2014 prices.)               
• Pupil teacher positions were offered to Secondary School students who had obtained a pass with honours in one of the Junior grades in the Intermediate Examinations. They were allowed to continue their studies in the Secondary School and had to teach, under supervision, in the National School to which they were attached for 1-3 hours per day. The pupil teacher position was seen as preparation for a possible entrance to a teacher training college.                                                                                                                        

• A gratuity of £8 was paid to a teacher in respect of every boy monitor or pupil teacher who successfully completed his course and passed the examination. For a girl monitor or pupil teacher the teacher also received a gratuity but this was only £6. The minimum age for appointment as a monitor was raised from 13 to 15 years in 1905. (The gratuity of £8 for boys, updated to 2014 prices using the Consumer Price Index, is €738.20 while the gratuity of £6 for girls would be €554.11 in 2014 prices.)  
• Pupil teacher positions were offered to Secondary School students who had obtained a pass with honours in one of the Junior grades in the Intermediate Examinations. They were allowed to continue their studies in the Secondary School and had to teach, under supervision, in the National School to which they were attached for 1-3 hours per day. The pupil teacher position was seen as preparation for a possible entrance to a teacher training college.                                                                                                                 

Photo: Classroom, Waterpark College, Waterford, 1913

• The Intermediate Examinations in 1916 were taken by second level students and had three levels - Junior, Middle and Senior. There were strict age limits for these examinations - under 16 for Junior, under 17 for Middle and under 18 for Senior.                                                
• Nearly 7,000 students took the Junior Intermediate examination in 1916 and 58% of the candidates were male while about 1,400 took the Senior examination and over 60% of the candidates at this level were male.                
• In 2015 there were just under 60,000 candidates for the Junior Certificate examination and about 55,000 for the Leaving Certificate and the gender split was about 50:50 for both of these exams.                                                                                                       

• The most popular subjects for the Intermediate examination in 1916 were English, Algebra, Arithmetic and Arithmetic with Algebra with over 11,000 students taking these subjects.                                                                       
• Languages were also popular with nearly 9,000 students taking French, while 6,760 took Irish and 5,216 took Latin.                                                                      
• All of the students who took Manual instruction and practical Mathematics and Mechanics were males, while 88% or more of the students who sat exams in Greek, Applied Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Trigonometry were male.   
• All of the students who took the exam in "Domestic Economy and Hygiene" were female while over 80% of the students taking exams in Physiology and Hygiene, Botany, Italian, German and Drawing were female.              
• Notice that while there is a bias towards males taking subjects such as Applied Mathematics and Trigonometry, there were still strong numbers of females taking Algebra, Arithmetic and Arithmetic with Algebra. 40% of the candidates for these subjects were female.                                                                                                                                        
• Close to 70% of students taking the subjects "Commercial Course" and "Shorthand" were males, which presumably reflects the fact that the majority of office jobs were held by men.                                                                       

• The five most popular subjects in the Junior Certificate in 2015 were English, Mathematics, Geography, Science and History.
• There were some strong gender differences in 2015 in subject choice. Over 80% of students taking Metalwork, Latin, Technical Graphics, Material Technology and Technology were males while 74% of candidates for Classical Studies were males.
•  More than 70% of the candidates for Home Economics and Music were female while girls accounted for more than 60% of Art, Craft, Design and Italian candidates.                                

Photo: Industrial school, Letterfrack, Co. Galway

• There were 65 Industrial schools and 5 Reformatory schools in 1916, of which 65 were Catholic and 5 were Protestant.

• Over 8,000 children lived in Industrial and Reformatory schools in 1916, with 7,922 in Industrial schools and 708 in Reformatory schools.
• More than 90% of the children in Reformatory schools were boys while 52% of children in Industrial schools were girls.
• The Annual report of the Inspector of Industrial and Reformatory schools in 1916 said that the number of children admitted in 1916 was the lowest in years. During 1916 a total of 1,001 children were admitted - 179 to Reformatory schools and 822 to Industrial schools.
• This low number of admissions in 1916 was attributed to the "abnormal conditions" prevailing during 1916. The previous year, 1915, saw a total of 1,133 children admitted to Industrial and reformatory schools.

Photo: Dormitory, Baltimore, Co. Cork

• Of the 58 children who died in 1916 in Reformatory and Industrial schools, 25 died from TB while 15 had "Diseases of Brain" entered as the cause of death.
• The writers of the report also state that since August 1914 3,860 boys from Reformatory and Industrial schools had served in the navy and the army. The total number of war casualties from among the ex-inmates of these schools was 1,132, which included 374 deaths (over the time period 1 August 1914 to 1 June 1917).

Photo: Netmaking, Baltimore school, Co. Cork

• The purpose of the Industrial schools seems to have been to give training to children from poor backgrounds so that they would be able to get employment.
• In contrast, children were detained in Reformatory schools because they had been convicted of an offence. A table in the 1916 Annual Report of the Inspectors of Industrial and Reformatory Schools gives the reasons why boys and girls were confined in Reformatory schools and this is shown above.
• There were 96 boys and 6 girls were sent to Reformatory schools in 1916 because they were convicted of larceny and petty theft while 37 boys and 1 girl were convicted of house breaking or shop breaking.

• Of the 822 children admitted to Industrial schools in 1916, 146 were less than 6 years old while a further 146 were aged between 6 and 8 years of age.
• 85 children admitted to Industrial schools were aged between 12 and 14 years of age . There were 94 aged between 14 and 16 years of age.