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The only evidence for schooling in the parish in the 18th century Visitation returns is a mention of 'reading schools' in that for 1764, those of 1746, 1779, and 1798 all give nil returns.  Yet the Overseers' Accounts show payments for 'schooling' occasional poor children, which were paid to a variety of 'dames' - Patty Higison and Elizabeth Cran c. 1770, and Martha Warren and Mary Toby c.1790.  Payment in these cases was 2d or 1½d per week, per child.  Men were also paid at times for schooling boys - John Pratt in 1793-5, Frederick Patch in 1806, and Joseph Pratt and John Cook in 1828, the rate in these cases being 5d or 6d per week.  Whether these were in a proper sense 'schoolmasters' is however doubtful, since the 1818 Returns show only an evening school, with 58 boys and girls and a master paid £15 p.a. from subscriptions (and this may have been in Salterton).  In any case, poor children were apprenticed by the Parish at the age of nine as a means of providing for their maintenance and so were debarred from schooling after this age except in an evening or Sunday school.

More dames were paid c.1820 - Mary Rogers, Sarah Rogers, Elizabeth Western, S. Scaddens, Mary Bedford, Mary Farrant, Ann Yeats, and Ann Kelly - at 2d p.w. per child: and in 1829 Mrs Fanny Carter received 16s 6d (per quarter?) for 'schooling poor children'.  In some cases at least we may assume 'lace schools', since the 1833 Returns give four 'lace and reading' schools in the Parish (including Salterton).  Apart from these, there was then only one public day school supported by subscriptions (and for Infants only) with 13 boys and 23 girls, established in that year. But with the growth of Salterton there were in 1833 no fewer than eleven private fee-paying schools, all established at or soon before this date, with in all 104 boys and 124 girls, besides two fee-paying boarding schools for girls with in all 20 pupils.

The baptism registers show James Barrett as schoolmaster in Salterton in 1828, and John Carter in 1835; and Julia King, 'teacher of a seminary' (girls' boarding school) in East Budleigh was married in 1838.  The first regular public school was however the National School in Salterton, built by Lord Rolle in 1842.  William Churchill appears in the registers as a schoolmaster in Salterton in that year, and Charles Westcombe in 1842-50, but the former is not mentioned in the 1830 Directory and the latter, though mentioned, may have run a private 'academy'.  Frances Hayden appears in charge of a boarding 'academy' in East Budleigh (not Salterton) in that year, and Sophia Copp was running a day school of sorts.

Regular public schooling in East Budleigh village began only after the Charity Commission, in or about 1850, at last diverted the large revenues of the 1628 Drake bequest from handouts to a horde of 'founder's kin' to more useful purposes, including £55 p.a. for a school at East Budleigh (to which £30 p.a. was added by a later bequest).  One was promptly established, and the Diocesan Board of Education report for 1851 records the appointment of Mary Pass, who since leaving the Training School in Exeter in 1846 had taught the girls at Sandford.  But if she came, she did not last long; the baptism register shows John Millyard established as schoolmaster in the village (with his wife Mary as assistant) in 1852, and a directory shows him still here in 1856. By 1870 Mrs Millyard was still teaching, but the master was William Fletcher who probably lasted until William Clotworthy's arrival in January 1875.

So far, though its handsome new building had been erected in 1860 (and a new Trust Deed executed in 1859) the school had remained outside the orbit of State inspection and grant, certificated teachers, and pupil-teachers. But the 1870 Act compelled eventual conformity; and a certificated mistress, Susanna Vanstone (later Mrs Palmer) was appointed to the Girls department in March 1872. The delay in doing the same for the boys may have been due to waiting for Fletcher to retire.

Clotworthy, who came here from Zeal Monachorum, was not a happy choice. He took his certificate (externally) immediately before his appointment, but was nevertheless moved on when the Zeal School Board took over the former Church school there.  His spelling and grammar were at times quaint - 'the school having now being (sic) placed under Government', and 'the Rev G.D. Adams tooked (sic) the 1st Class'(twice!) His log is dull and routine in the extreme; and year after year HMI complained of the pupils' poor spelling and arithmetic. In 1881 he was caught out in some funny business with the registers, and there was a two-tenths cut in grant 'for the misregistration of which the master has been guilty, and a note of his misconduct has been made against his name. He is warned that any tampering with the Registers on his part in future may be followed by the suspension of his Certificate'. We may guess from this that he was then paid on a share-of-grant basis, and had been fiddling the attendance on which grant partly depended. He ran a 3R evening school, which in 1881 raised the very large amount (for a village) of £19 6s 6d in grant.

His 1884 report was bad, and commented on 'the want of proper order' (as well as of 'proper assistance'). That for 1885 was bad again; but by the time it arrived the Managers had already sacked him, since they were 'required without delay to specify the cause of their dissatisfaction with Mr Clotworthy'. He has not been traced further in Devon. Up to this point the only assistance for the Master had been a monitor, though in 1884 there were 78 boys presented at the Examination (and occasional attendances would have been larger).

The Managers then appointed George Honey (b.1848, and so aged 37 on arrival). His career in Devon began as master of Bishops Nympton in 1868, and his record there indicates that he was an efficient schoolmaster but a difficult man. When he left he took with him the vital authorised timetable, and six months of indignant expostulation from the Rector and the new master were needed before he returned it.  He also, in his successor's words, 'having carried-on school 13 days of the school year, gave notice that he should claim one-ninth of the grant'.  In 1872 he moved to South Tawton, and while there got himself appointed Clerk to the new Throwleigh School Board.  The Throwleigh papers fully document an unpleasant business in which he and the Rector combined to throw out a mistress whom the rest of the Board wanted to keep, Honey having concealed vital letters from the Department in the process.  After this, the Board got rid of both the Rector (as a member) and Honey.  He left South Tawton in 1881, and has not yet been traced before his arrival at Budleigh in 1885.

Not surprisingly, after the decline and fall of Clotworthy, Honey found the Boys' department in a mess: 'the discipline has evidently been more than lax, and the ignorance of the children in all subjects is deplorable ... at the Examination on May 6th only 12 children out of 62 on the Schedule passed in all three subjects ... it was the rule for more than half the children to come late'. He at least improved on this, and achieved discipline and 'a creditable state of efficiency'.  In 1888 Mrs Troake started as Assistant in the Boys department in place of monitors.  She appears in the Boys' log as Supplementary, but in the Girls' (where she later did occasional duty in Mrs Honey's absence) as Uncertificated: the former is probably correct.

Honey's log, up to 1894 when the first book ends, is also routine; and his later reports are no more than satisfactory.  There was a suggestion in 1893 for the removal of the 'ground glass and small, panes' in the windows, which suggests that they were originally leaded; and in 1894 Honey is found running a new-style evening school under the Technical Education Act, the two subjects being geography (with the help of a magic lantern) and mensuration.

The Parliamentary Returns of school income for the year 1888/9 give the following: accommodation 219, average attendance 130: income - endowment £115 19s 1d, grant £111 14s 2d, fees (school pence) £26 12s 3d, subscriptions £12 12s, book charges 16s 5d; total £267 13s 11d. The effect of large endowment was, as usual, in fact to relieve the pockets of those who would otherwise have had to support the school, and not to reduce or cut out fees from poor parents, which here were little less than average.

The school was built for separate Boys' and Girls' + Infants departments, and consequently the latter had separate Heads and logbooks right up to amalgamation as a mixed school on Honey's retirement in 1911.  Miss Vanstone (Mrs Palmer) did a good job.  When she started, HMI noted that 'the children are very young and very ignorant, but she appears to be working with a fair prospect of success'.  She soon ran into difficulties with the local lace schools, which endeavoured to take away illegally her older girls.  With the help of the Workshops Inspector, she managed to enforce the rule that they must attend the National School for ten hours (i.e. two days) a week, and the lace school mistresses were required to get certificates to that effect from her on pain of a £3 fine.  Mrs Hayman and Mrs Eliza Lake were running such schools in 1874, and later ones were conducted by Susan Hitt and Jane Carter.  The lace school nuisance lasted at least until 1885.

Miss Vanstone's report record steadily improved, and in 1874 the 23 children presented in Standards passed 100%. At first her only help was a monitress at 1s p.w.; but in 1877 a pupil-teacher was taken on at 5 x £2 10s = £12 10s. An 1878 entry, paralleled elsewhere, records the admission of a child aged two, because 'the mother goes out to work, and she could not send the eldest boy unless the little one came too'.  Mrs Palmer left at midsummer 1879, and the Rector recorded that she had conducted the school 'to the entire satisfaction of the Managers ... and they hereby record an expression of regret at her leaving'.

Margaret Warren had been briefly mistress of Abbotsham in 1876-77, and since then of the Littleham Board School near Bideford.  Her stay here was also brief. Its chief landmark was the building of the Infants classroom - occupied in May 1881 - the construction of which could no longer be delayed when the number on books in this department reached 107, and a quarter's average attendance 83, in mid-1880.  In 1893 HMI noted of this room that 'the windows are all very high up ... the seats in the gallery would be more comfortable with backs'. It seems from this that originally the upper windows were the only ones - a claustrophobic arrangement.  A Margaret Warren reappeared in the Girls' department in 1899 and remained until retirement in 1932, but can hardly have been the same person.

Miss Hodgson, previously mistress of George Nympton, was appointed at age 27 and stayed for four satisfactory but uneventful years.  She noted the closing in 1882 of 'the old established Dame School of this village' - might this have continued in the pre-1860 premises? Her notes on Object Lessons, too extensive for quotation, are a valuable record of contemporary practice.

Miss Hodgson's departure coincided with that of Clatworthy, and allowed the Managers to engage a married couple.  Mrs Honey (b.1854) had taken her Certificate in 1875 (after training) and had already put in ten years of Certificated service, including five years in charge of the Infants at South Tawton alongside her husband.  She began with drastic complaints about discipline and attainments, but her subsequent record indicates that this was not merely reinsurance.  Her reports, unlike those of her husband, steadily improved, and by the later 1890's were definitely good:

1896: 'Girls in excellent order, and the attainments throughout do great credit to Mrs Honey's skill and industry'.
1898: 'Girls in excellent order, very carefully and intelligently taught'.
She seems, to have been a better teacher than George, but her log unfortunately makes dull reading.  In 1897 we find a Mrs Clotworthy as a parent - was the luckless William still about the place?
County records show that in 1903 Honey was paid £100 p.a. (+ house), and his wife £80. After he retired in 1911, she remained Head of the then Mixed school till her own retirement in 1919.

East Budleigh National School, 19th Century Teachers:

Masters

John Hillyard (pre-1852, post 1856)
William Fletcher (pre-1870, - 1874?)
William Clotworthy 1/1875- 6/1885 (from Zeal Monachorum: dismissed) George Searle Honey 7/1885 - 1911 (retired)

Mistresses

Mary Pass? (1851)
Mrs Millyard (pre-1852, post 1870)
Susanna Vanstone (Mrs Palmer 3/1872 - 6/1879)
Margaret Warren 6/1879 - 6/1881
Alice Tamar Hodgson 6/1881 - 6/1885
Elizabeth Jane Honey (Mrs) 7/1885 – 1919

Assistants and pupil-teachers

Boys' Dept.: Mrs Susanna J. Troake (S) 1888 - ?
Girls' Dept.: Catherine Mary Hart (PT) 1877-78
Mary Ann Hitt (PT) 1879-83, Provisional Certificate 1884, then to Dilham.  Susanna Jane Chudleigh (PT) 1881-85, Provisional Certificate 1886
E. Scanes (S) 1884 - (from Ide)
Louisa E. Baker (S) 1887 – ?

Found amongst papers accompanying the Parish Packs produced by an MSC Community Programme for Devon Library Services 1986 -1988. Author unknown.

Sources

Evidence from Parish Records.
19th century Logbook of School.
And other sources.

56 EB-G-00004 Education  any