Item RSP/7/k/22 - Photograph: School of Tailoring

Photograph showing student measuring and marking fabric in the foreground, with another student (identified as Peter West) talking a tutor at the blackboard.

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.47588 (14) The School of Tailoring is one of the three Craft Schools of the Polytechnic. An instructor solves a problem for Peter West at the blackboard. Peter who is thirty-eight, was a big-gun maker for ten years at Woolwich Arsenal. During that time his hobby was making suits both for himself and his wife. Now he has turned to this as a career, and the Polytechnic School of Tailoring will give him the opportunity of qualifying.'