England School Records Admissions and Discharges - International Institute

Admission and Discharge Records
These records for Board Schools date from the 1870s, with some as early as 1862, and name the child, his date of birth and date of admission, the father’s (and sometimes mother’s) name, address, name of previous school attended, and date of leaving. Some give further information about why they left and where they went, perhaps naming another town or school, apprenticeship or workplace. These records provide important primary information and can be especially useful where several generations have attended the same local school. For example, where there are several families bearing the same surname and each having a John, William, Mary and Sarah, school records can help sort out which ones survived infancy.

Some finding aids to admission and discharge records have been written for example Webb’s index of school records of (Greater) London. The county record office or local archives will usually know where those in their area are located if they don’t have them in their holdings list. A few enterprising people have started to put admission registers onto CD, for example for Derby British School 1871-1894 (Probert).

An example of an Admission and Discharge Register from Warlingham Board School, Surrey on film 1,472,619 is shown below. This register starts in April 1893 and has an index of pupils, by first letter only, at the front which gives their admission number, entered in chronological order. There is a two-page spread of columns which is summarized here:

Chart: Admission and Discharge Register Warlingham Board School, Surrey

From the index I found four Jupp children, all residing in Whyteleafe and having last attended Whyteleafe School, but from two families.

Chart: Jupp Children in Admission and Discharge Register, Warlingham Board School

Records of Reform Schools are also available, those for 1788-1890 of the Royal Philanthropic Society are on four films starting at 1470975. This was organized in 1788 for the admission of the offspring of convicts and the reformation of criminal poor children. The children were housed, clothed, fed, schooled and apprenticed so that they could become useful members of society. Most were from London and Cheshire, many absconded, but the records of those that stayed are extremely detailed, some with photographs. Excerpts from early girls’ records are in the following chart. Youths out of training were encouraged to emigrate, with dates, ships’ names and letters home being included in the records, and an example is given below.

Chart: Excerpts from Royal Philanthropic Society Records of Girls 


 * Charlotte Norman--complete report


 * Sarah NORMAN—complete record


 * Mary KING—extracts


 * Mary MITCHELL—extracts

Chart: Royal Philanthropic Society Admission Register for a Boy 1885 - John (Archibald) WEDDELL

This is a summary of many detailed columns

________________________________________________________________________________

Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course English: Education,Health and Contemporary Documents offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com] We welcome updates and additions to this Wiki page.