The log books, especially the earlier volumes, make regular references to attendance. The possible reasons for low attendance are carefully noted. Weather conditions feature prominently as do recurrent illnesses. In addition to the usual catalogue of childhood epidemics—chicken pox, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, and the like—more serious illnesses make an occasional appearance. Smallpox, for example, occurred in May 1892 and in March in the following year and several cases of typhoid are recorded in September 1914. The post-war international epidemic of influenza closed the school from 18 February to 17 March 1919.
Industrial troubles had an impact on attendance, and details of these can be found in the log books. As the colliery company owned the houses its workers lived in, it could retaliate to strike action by giving notice to quit company houses, followed by eviction action. Between April and June 1885, there are regular references to the effects of a strike on attendance, and a lay-off in January and February 1888 caused by a fire at the engine house had a similar impact. The dispute of 1902–1903 caused the number of children on the register to fall from 381 to 297 and average attendance to fall from 294 to 98.
The pupil-teacher ratio is also recorded in the log books. In 1883, there had been as many as a hundred infants in the care of one teacher and a first-year pupil-teacher. Although staff numbers increased, the Inspector's report for 1892 commented:
"The number of babies (72) which an unaided Assistant attempted to keep in order during the inspection far exceeded that which can be handled by any ordinary Teacher."
By the turn of the century classes in the Infants averaged 40. In the Boys Department in the early 1930s, the average class size was 41, but the six classes in the Girls Department varied between 44 and 50. After the reorganisation of 1936 there were seven classes which in 1940 had between 33 and 46 children. By the beginning of the new school year in 1961, class size ranged from 28 to 32, with a total of 250 children at the school. Ten years later, the school's 140 children were divided into five classes, one of 20 and four of 30.
The log books have little to say on the day-to-day life of the school, but the gradual widening of the scope of activities can be traced in their pages. In the Girls Division, visits outside the school seem to have begun in June 1918 with a 'combined Nature study and History Ramble' to Sprotbrough organised by the head and another teacher for Standard VI and VII. The outing took them through Conisbrough and Levitt Hagg to Sprotbrough, where the verger showed them round the church and back to Denaby Main via Sprotbrough Woods, Cadeby and the Pastures. The head confided to her log book to her log book:
"The educational value of such a trip needs no comment, and its social value is just as great. Teacher and scholar meet on a different footing from the 'school' one to the advantage of both"
A more ambitious trip for a small group of boys and girls took place six years later, when in September 1924 a three-day visit was made to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley and the sights of London. The girls begain swimming lessons (at the Welfare Baths) from May 1931, but the first reference to swimming in the Boys Division does not appear until five years later. Visits to the cinema began in May 1937 when the Picture Palace screened a film of the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. School radio broadcasts were first received in Denaby Main in May 1940: twenty minutes of World History on Mondays and fifteen minutes of Nature Study and ten minutes of English for Under Nines, both on Thursday.
Amoungst the non-routine events which are recorded in the log books are those caused by war. 24 May 1900 saw the Infants Department (and probably the Junior Mixed, had its log book survived to tell us) closed for a one-day holiday to celebrate the relief of the South African town of Mafeking, where Baden-Powell and his English troops had been besieged by the Boer forces.
In the Girls Division, it was decided on 31 August 1914 that the five minutes set aside for nature observation each morning would be 'spent in discussing war topics. Standard V will learn the Geography of Europe with specific reference to the war'. No other events relating to the war were entered thereafter, apart from the three days the school was closed in February 1918 'to enable the staff to help with the new Food Rationing Cards'. But one year after the end of hostilities, Armistice Day 'the National Memoriam to our fallen heroes' joined Empire Day as a regular school event.
The Second World War brought air raid shelter drill and, on 3 November 1941, an actual air raid. As the head recorded:
"At 2:30 pm gunfire and aerial activity was heard overhead and the children took cover under the desks. At 2:35 pm they were again taken to the shelter and kept there until 3:45 pm".
Links between school and parents developed only slowly. The Infants Department held a Parents Day in December 1914, but it did not become a regular event. In the Girls School, a series of open days began in December 1922. Two hundred parents attended in March 1924 and after the event in the following year the headmistress noted that:
"Such occasions bring teachers and parents into closer touch and sympathy and a much better feeling exists in consequence."
Closer co-operation came in 1969 with the creation of the Friends of the School Association, which met for the first time on 22 September and two months later organised the first communal bonfire, attended by a thousand adults and children.