In 1846 the Government decided to improve the funding available to schools. In return they wished to see improvements in school buildings and in teaching. The Privy Council Committee on Education proposed that standards should be monitored by Government Inspectors who would conduct examinations of all the pupils in the school. The success or otherwise of the pupils would form the basis of the Inspector's recommendation that funding should be granted. Thus came into existence the method of "payment by results" dreaded by teachers whose meagre salaries partly depended upon the performance of their pupils on Inspection day and feared by the majority of pupils who might well, in the tense atmosphere prevailing, be unable to acquit themselves to anyoneÕs satisfaction.
The new system was accepted by the Boys' School in 1847. In 1849 Government Inspector J.D. Morrell reported that the school was unacceptably overcrowded "an additional classroom would increase its (the school's) efficiency and if possible steps should be taken to erect one without delay" he wrote.
The Trustees delayed action although consultations took place to consider the matter.
In 1853 Mathew Arnold, the celebrated poet but also a Government Inspector reported, "Buildings good. Desks inconvenient. Furniture tolerable. Playground insufficient. Books and apparatus scanty. Organised on the British System. Methods in five divisions. Discipline good. Instruction tolerable. There are great diffficulties in the way of making this school a thoroughly effective one, but it would be improved, even with its present accommodations, by transferring the youngest children to the Infant School (uninspected), and by adopting a better organisation. The single room in which the boys are taught is a fair one, but a classroom is exceedingly wanted".
The Trustees acted and commissioned a new classroom with a gallery (a wooden floor rising in five broad steps) to be built at an estimated cost of £200 -£250. The room measured 28 feet long by 15 feet wide and was 16 1/4 feet high. The windows were high in the roof allowing light to flood into the room and fall directly upon the desks. In daylight hours this illuminated the room with an astonishing clarity. As daylight faded the few gas flares rendered the room gloomy and full of shadows.
The classroom was built in front of the Lancasterian Hall whose floor was, at the same time levelled in order to accommodate the newer teaching ideas. One hundred and ten boys could be taught together in the gallery room whilst in the Lancasterian Hall the semi - circles were gradually abandoned and the desks re-arranged to group pupils into classes, often containing 60 or more pupils at a time, in various areas of the one room.
These photographs, taken in 1917, show classes in the Gallery Classroom and the Lancasterian Hall. Both rooms continued in daily use until 1969 when the last school children transferred to new buildings and North Herts College took over the site for student and adult use.
