Two former education volunteers write about the work they used to do with school children and about their dismay when their education teams were disbanded.

Pam Davey, a former education volunteer at Montacute House, writes:

I was on the learning experience team at Montacute house for 15 years, delivering guided tours to school children aged between four and 16 years old. The content concentrated on the lives of rich and poor Tudors, discussions on the symbolism and meaning of portraits of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and we looked at the architecture and function of the rooms in the house. Relevant activities were also delivered, such as quilling, heraldry designs, dressing up in Tudor costumes (made by volunteers) and making pot-pourri and bouquet garni bags. The tours took place on most weekdays during the term and were popular with schools, many doing repeat visits. The feedback from the teachers was very good.

Overnight and with little and unsatisfactory explanation, our team was disbanded. Shortage of money was mentioned, but we are unpaid. I am utterly disgusted at how we were treated by Tiger De Souza’s department. I wrote to him twice, and also to Mrs McGrady. From his replies, I did not believe he understood what he was destroying and how passionately we felt about our role. There was no suggestion as to what would follow for schools’ education. Personally, I felt totally patronized and completely unappreciated after I had contributed to the fun and education, in the broadest terms, of hundreds of school children many of whom were disadvantaged. It is likely now that only the better-off schools, mostly in the private sector, will be able to afford self-led groups as they have the staff and money to do them. They are unlikely to have the depth of knowledge of the house and its contents that the learning team had accumulated over many years. Mr. De Souza’s policy to demolish our team is ‘a blinkered approach to the next generation of National Trust members’, as a colleague says.

Years of knowledge, passion and dedication have been wiped out. There was no real acknowledgement, gratitude or recognition of what we had done over many years. The National Trust has lost an invaluable, hard-working team which would take years to replace and, in my view, it is a tragedy for the schoolchildren in and around Somerset, Dorset and Devon, whom we used to serve.

Jane Lewis tells us about her experience as an education volunteer at Chedworth Roman Villa:

In 2011 the Chedworth Roman Villa Education Department was granted Heritage Lottery Fund money to build a purpose-built classroom to accommodate 32 children, and another open classroom to seat 30 children in the West Range. This was to replace the leaking sheds we had outgrown. We were one of a few sites in the country to allow children to handle real Roman artefacts. We ran a waiting list and during term time we had up to 90 children per day rotating through three magical sessions. Up to 10,000 children visited us each year. We tailored sessions to suit reception children through to university students. Our team consisted of one full-time Learning Officer, one part-time Learning Assistant and 13 volunteers who were predominantly retired teachers and headteachers. They were superb! Beyond superb. We were nominated for awards. Many of the children came from inner city areas and had never seen such countryside. They were buzzing.

It became apparent with the arrival of the New Operations Manager in 2017 that classroom chairs could be more profitably used in an overflow café and that the storage space for Roman costumes and artefacts would be more useful as a shop stock room. The department was closed down last year (the two staff members made redundant) at the first opportunity presented by Covid. Some of the volunteers wrote to the management at Heelis cancelling their memberships. They didn’t receive a response.