THESE girls are thought to have been among the first Keighley pupils to attend Eastwood Board School in about 1880.

Keighley was slow to adopt the Elementary Education Act of 1870, which encouraged local authorities to elect school boards and provide universal education – funded from the rates, of course.

Three years later, at an open-air meeting discussing the pros and cons, “a huge dead rat found its way on to the shoulders of one of the opposition speakers”, while a Keighley News reporter was struck “a severe blow upon the left shoulder”.

A proposed Keighley School Board was defeated by 540 votes to 2,026.

At one polling booth, 122 out of 194 voters could not write their names.

In 1875, central authority – having heard that some local children didn’t even know the name of the county they lived in – compelled Keighley to form a School Board which within the first four years of its existence, built six schools, including Eastwood.