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Abstract
Footnote 1 This article examines the reasons behind the decline of schoolgirl cricket in the years between 1945 and 1960. It considers the impact of the Education Act 1944 and ‘secondary education for all’ on girls’ physical education in general, focusing on why certain sports, in particular cricket, were not widely introduced into the new secondary modern and grammar schools. The outreach programme of the Women’s Cricket Association, the governing body of women’s cricket, to these new schools is considered alongside the problem of equipment and pitch shortages. Ultimately, blame for schoolgirl cricket’s failure to become entrenched within the English education system is placed on the attitudes of teachers and Local Education Authorities towards girls’ cricket at this time; they considered the sport unsuitable for female pupils. Overall, the article serves as a historical case study of gendered physical education in action.
1I thank Peter Catterall for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Notes
1I thank Peter Catterall for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
2Jack Williams, ‘Cricket’, in Sport in Britain: A Social History, ed. Tony Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 141.
3Women’s Cricket Association, ‘Yearbook 1955’ and ‘Yearbook 1970’, Women’s Cricket Associates, http://www.womenscrickethistory.org/ (accessed January 27, 2012).
4Sheila Scraton, Shaping up to Womanhood: Gender and Girls’ Physical Education (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1992), 18.
5See for example Jennifer Hargreaves, Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sports (London: Routledge, 1994), and Dawn Penney and John Evans (eds.), Gender and Physical Education: Contemporary Issues and Future Directions (London: Routledge, 2002).
6Scraton, Shaping up to Womanhood, 28.
7Hargreaves, Sporting Females, 120–2, 152–4.
8Richard Holt and Tony Mason, Sport in Britain, 1945–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 17.
9Peter McIntosh, Physical Education in England since 1800 (London: Camelot Press, 1952); John Welshman, ‘Physical Culture and Sport in British Schools, 1900–40’, International Journal of the History of Sport 15, no. 1 (1998): 71; John Welshman, ‘Physical Education and the School Medical Service in England and Wales, 1907–39’, Social History of Medicine 9, no. 1 (1996): 47; Fiona Skillen, ‘“A Sound System of Physical Training”: The Development of PE in Interwar Scotland’, History of Education 38, no. 3 (2009): 406.
10Welshman, ‘PE and the School Medical Service’: 48.
12 Education Act 1944, 7 and 8 Geo 6 c. 31 (London: HMSO), s.53(1).
11Exceptions are McIntosh, Physical Education in England, and Sheila Fletcher, Women First: The Female Tradition in English Physical Education (London: Athlone Press, 1984).
13Skillen, “A Sound System of Physical Training”, 413.
14See for example Marjorie Pollard, Cricket for Women and Girls (London: Hutchinson, 1934), 13–14, 65.
15Kathleen McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women (London: Routledge, 1988), Chapter 5.
16See Jack Williams, Cricket and England: A Social and Cultural History of the Interwar Years (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 92–111.
17McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women, 60–90.
18Board of Education, Supplement to 1919 Syllabus of Physical Training for Older Girls (London: HMSO, 1927), 33.
19Jack Williams, Cricket and England, 100.
20Martin Francis, ‘Leisure and Popular Culture’, in Women in Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 237.
21On the decline of cricket in state schools, see the Telegraph, May 20, 2010. There is evidence that state school teachers have been relucant to introduce cricket even among male pupils due to concerns about its unsuitability in this context. See for example School Sport Magazine, July 1976.
23WCA Executive Committee minutes, November 14, 1947, WCA Archive, Lancashire.
22Women’s Cricket Association, ‘Yearbook 1952: AGM minutes’, Women’s Cricket Associates, http://www.womenscrickethistory.org/ (accessed January 27, 2012).
24Colwall is a village in Herefordshire. The WCA’s Cricket Week was held there because this was where the founders of the Association had been holidaying when they made the decision to form the WCA; the village was referred to as the ‘birthplace’ of women’s cricket.
25Women’s Cricket Association, ‘Yearbook 1946: WCA Rules’, Women’s Cricket Associates, http://www.womenscrickethistory.org/ (accessed January 27, 2012).
26WCA Executive Committee minutes, December 9, 1950, WCA Archive, Lancashire.
27Redoubtables AGM and Executive Committee minutes, 1945–60, private collection, Wallington, Surrey.
28 Cheltenham Ladies College Magazine, 1951, 91. Wycombe Abbey Gazette, December 1951, 86.
29 Women’s Cricket, May 29, 1948, August 20, 1949, June 14, 1951.
30PE Inspectorate meeting, January 9 and 10, 1961, ED 118/16, National Archives, Public Record Office, Kew (hereafter TNA: PRO).
31 Women’s Cricket, 31 August, 1956.
32At least 23 were grammar schools dating from before 1945. Nine had been affiliated to the WCA before the war.
33‘AEWHA Report, 1950’, ED 169/36, TNA: PRO.
34All England Netball Association, The Silver Jubilee Book: Netball 1901–1951 (Manchester: AENA, 1951), 15–25.
36John Newsom, The Education of Girls (London: Faber & Faber, 1948), 89–91.
35Paul Addison, No Turning Back: The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 40.
37Memo, ‘Physical Education in Secondary Modern Schools’, April 2, 1953, ED 158/115, TNA: PRO.
38Memo, ‘Supply of Specialist Teachers in Grammar and Modern Schools’, March 1951, ED 158/114, TNA: PRO.
39 Newsom Report (London: HMSO, 1963), Chapter 17.
41Board of Education, Syllabus of Physical Training for Schools (London: HMSO, 1933; reprinted 1949), 39. Emphasis in the original.
40PE Inspectorate meeting, April 24 and 25, 1947, ED 158/114, TNA: PRO.
42Memo, ‘Physical Education in Secondary Schools’, April 2, 1953, ED 158/115, TNA: PRO. My italics.
43 Newsom Report, Chapter 22.
44PE Inspectorate meeting, September 21 and 22, 1959, ED 118/16, TNA: PRO.
45Board of Education, Syllabus of Physical Training, 63.
46McIntosh, Physical Education in England, 264.
49John St John, ed., The MCC Book for the Young Cricketer (London: Naldrett Press, 1951), 52.
47 Women’s Cricket, May 1, 1959.
48Ibid., June 10, 1955 and May 14, 1954.
50 Women’s Cricket, September 5, 1958.
51Marylebone Cricket Club, Report of the Cricket Enquiry Committee (London: MCC, 1950), 1.
52Ibid., 12.
53Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket (London: Aurum Press, 1999; reprinted 2003), 278.
54Holt and Mason, Sport in Britain, 21.
55MCC, Report of the Cricket Enquiry Committee, 23.
56 Directory of Modern Secondary Schools 1956 (London: School Government Publishing Company, 1956), 35–46.
57By 1960 at least 36 of the state schools affiliated to the WCA were single-sex. See Women’s Cricket Association, ‘Yearbook 1960’, Women’s Cricket Associates, http://www.womenscrickethistory.org/ (accessed January 27, 2012).
58These were Yorkshire, Sussex and Surrey. See Women’s Cricket, May 4, 1951.
59WCA Executive Committee minutes, October 27, 1950 and December 9, 1950, WCA Archive, Lancashire.
60Ministry of Education, The Youth Service in England and Wales (London: HMSO, 1960), 8.
61PE Inspectorate meeting, December 18 and 19, 1952, ED 158/15, TNA: PRO.
62WCA Executive Committee minutes, January 17, 1948 and May 21, 1948, WCA Archive, Lancashire.
63See for example WCA Executive Committee minutes, June 21, 1948, WCA Archive, Lancashire.
64 Women’s Cricket, April 24, 1953.
65PE Inspectorate meeting, December 21 and 22, 1959, ED 118/16, TNA: PRO.
66 Women’s Cricket, May 26, 1950.
67Ibid., August 28, 1959.
68Ibid., April 27, 1956.
69Ibid., September 5, 1958.
70Ibid., September 18, 1948.
71Ibid., August 12, 1960.
72In fact this has remained an issue. See for example Oliver Leaman, ‘Sit on the Sidelines and Watch the Boys Play’: Sex Differentiation in Physical Education (York: Schools Council, 1984).
73PE Inspectorate meeting, December 17 and 18, 1953, ED 158/115, TNA: PRO.
74Ibid.
75John St John, ed., Book for the Young Cricketer, 99.