APPENDIX VI.

NUMBERS OF PUPILS AT THE SCHOOL.

We do not know the actual number of children in attendance
at Kibworth until the nineteenth century. The first definite figure
we can give is for 1837, when the Commissioners of Inquiry into
Charities reported that 45 children attended Kibworth Grammar
School. Before that date, therefore, our figures are but conjectural.
from its inception until the period just before the Commonwealth
the number of children in attendance would be about twenty.
Interest in education increased vastly during the Commonwealth
period, and thus at Kibworth we might have found some fifty
children between 1650 and 1660.   This number was certainly
maintained for the next seventy years, for the later Stuart period
was the heyday of the small country Grammar School. Numbers
began to decline about 1730, and by 1780 there would be perhaps
twenty children in the School.   With the end of the Napoleonic
Wars, education, like most other things, took a turn for the better,
and so by 1837 we find 45 boys in the School. From that point,
figures are as follows:--

1850  22    1884  33    1916  51    1931  119
1853  35    1895  39    1917  60    1933  135
1854  42    1896  40    1918  75    1934  138
1855  46    1898  39    1919  79    1935  145
1857  50    1901  42    1920  80    1941  262
1858  56    1904  40    1921  68    1942  298
1859  68    1905  39    1922  71    1943  345
1860  63    1907  40    1923  60    1944  372
1861  58    1908  43    1924  58    1945  440
1862  59    1909  38    1926  43    1947  444
1863  69    1911  43    1927  37    1955  525
1864  50    1913  47    1928  62    1957  520
1880  23    1914  67    1929  85
1882  29    1915  66    1930 106