Couldn't take a photo of the folks I worked with today so it's a second-best. In addition to the usual round of meetings I started researching the beginnings of schools in England. Of course, it very much depends on what definition we use but it looks likely that the first recorded school, after those unrecorded during our Roman times, is The Kings School, Canterbury (597). But what caught my interest was the range of schools .... song schools, grammar, schools, academies (long before today's manifestations), ragged schools, charity schools, Sunday schools, schools of industry, monitorial schools, elementary schools, endowed schools, parochial schools, independent schools, public schools and boarding schools, all long before the state took responsibility for education in the 1800’s.

And there are notable characters, including Roger Ascham, teacher of Queen Elizabeth. Ascham stressed the importance of play and said,

'The Scholehouse should be in deede, as it is called by name, the house of playe and pleasure, and not of feare and bondage.'

I think these studies will have a long way to go .....