ABSTRACT
The school selected for this case study was an infant and junior school set in the midst of the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, a rural area of England. Iron ore and coal mining were very important industries for the area and the ‘Forest Freeminer’ tradition still exists. Anyone born in the Forest of Dean within the Hundred of St Briavels, and who has worked in a mine for a year and a day, has the right to open up their own coal mine. Those born in the Forest of Dean also have ‘Forester’s Rights’ which gives them the right to graze their sheep and pigs in the Forest. The population in the region has been fairly static with people living and working their whole lives in a fairly small area. This school was established over a century ago and the main part of the school is a single storey, traditional, red-brick, Victorian building which up until a couple of years ago had changed very little. However the school has recently undergone quite a large amount of construction work and refurbishment which provides a new classroom, entrance and reception area and toilet block. It is a small, relatively isolated school with 80 pupils divided into three classes with roughly four boys for every three girls, and all the staff are female. Many of the pupils at the school are from families whose parents, grandparents and, in some cases, great grandparents attended. Unsurprisingly the head describes this school as ‘family oriented’:
The actual school is run on a big family basis where everybody looks after each other and we try and do a family ethos approach . . . I mean because we’re so small. There are only 80 children, all children know each other. We have buddy systems set up where some of the older children buddy the younger children, look after them, and they take that role really seriously. If a child falls over they cuddle them, they bring them in. And it’s done very much on the basis as you would with your nuclear family.
