National Board of Education: Index Files (Archive Month #11)

The next several posts will be relating to the archives of schools in the parish and their correspondence with the Board of Education, which was established in 1831. Once schools opted to be “taken into connexion with the board”, there was a range of correspondence with the Commissioners for Education and notes kept by their Inspectors, which makes for very rich local archival data. The index to all of this information is in the National Archives on index cards, and for our local schools is reproduced below. Subsequent posts will provide the details of those archives.

There were several types of records. The two I focussed on were:

ED1: Applications for grants. These were applications for grants to be taken into connexion with the Board. They could be used to apply for school buildings, but in all cases relevant to us, school buildings already existed from local endeavours, so applications were usually for funds to pay for teachers and materials
ED2: Inspectors Registers. These are fascinating minute books recording any dealings with the school. They detail reports on teachers, school conditions, and so on.
(Also ED9: Files relating to individual schools)