Was filmed in Liss, Hampshire, England, at the village infant school. The pupils were featured in the movie as extras.
Dame Margaret Rutherford and her husband Stringer Davis played the same parts in the original stage production. This was the third of their twenty-seven on-screen performances together.
Miss Muriel Whitchurch's comment about her brother growing groundnuts in Africa is a satirical reference to Clement Attlee's ill-fated post-war Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme (modern day Tanzania).
A reference to the movies of the J. Arthur Rank Organisation occurs when the St. Swithin's teachers arrive. Miss Gossage (Joyce Grenfell) loudly strikes the gong in the hall, whereupon Miss Whitchurch (Dame Margaret Rutherford) tells her "A tap, Gossage. I said a tap. You're not introducing a film."
Miss Whitchurch refers to the staff room as "Cold Comfort Farm", a reference to the novel by Stella Gibbons, first published in 1932. There have been two filmed versions - Cold Comfort Farm (1995) and Cold Comfort Farm (1968).