Item RSP/7/k/15 - Photograph: Matriculation classes

Photograph showing a student, Robert Marshall, at home with his wife.

Labelled on reverse 'Central Office of Information Photograph. Crown Copyright reserved (See Feature Set Into No.210 The Working Man's University: The First Polytechnic. The demand for evening education in Britain far exceeds facilities. After a full day's work a large proportion of the adult population hurry to evening institutes and polytechnics to learn, at a very low cost, the 'know-how' that modern industry and commerce insists of its workers. More than 11,000 people in the evenings, and 2,500 during the day attend courses for further education at the regent Street Polytechnic, where the twelve departments and three craft courses are designed almost exclusively for the vocational student who has reached the age of seventeen (there is no maximum age) and has passed Matriculation or an equivalent University entrance examination.'

Separately labelled 'D.47576 (3) Homework plays an important part in further education and keeps Robert Marshall busy in the evenings. He is taking the Matriculation Examination at the Polytechnic. Married when he came out of the forces at the end of the war, his wife became the breadwinner while he went to the Polytechnic. The pumpkin on the right was a gift from his parents; it is so embarrassingly large it can only be housed in the spare room he uses as a study.'